fossilised | Jotunheimr

Tony could see the red flags immediately. Another one of those things? That seemed really unlikely. He smirked, shooed DUM-E away from his truly, horrifyingly messy attempt at cleaning up Thor’s initial mug of coffee, and dropped into the long black couch facing the one Thor and Loki were seated on.

“I’m just going to call bullshit right here,” Tony said, elbows on his knees as he put his mug on the coffee table. He didn’t bother with coasters. This was glass he had designed himself for cellphones and it didn’t smudge. “There just so happens to be another super dangerous item that you need my help breaking you into and you hope Rogers here will play Boy Scout and give you permission to take it?”

He glanced up at Steve and shrugged, as if to apologize without actually apologizing.

“It is true, friend Stark,” Thor said, following suit by putting his mug on the table as well. Gently. He paused to see if there would be praise and when there wasn’t, he straightened up again. “As amusing as your tiny animal portraits are, we have another task to complete. There are six gems in all. We have found another on Midgard. The others are being sought out and obtained as well.”

"It is important that Thanos does not regain control of any of these gems, his name as the Destroyer is aptly given as he has sent several worlds into ruination and extinction. Should he turn his gaze to Yggdrasil's branches, I fear that many lives would be lost and some realms ash by the time he was driven back."

It would be better to avoid any war at all.

"We have already met the one who holds the gem we seek, he is one of your mortal sorcerers, though I believe a large part of his magic comes from manipulating objects which have been infused with seidr."

His 'sling ring', his cloak, his amulet; none of this was innate power within him, only the discipline of how to use the objects provided.

“Why aren’t you hanging out trying to be a Magician’s Assistant then?” Tony did not believe in magic, not the way that other people might. That had little to do with Loki’s obvious skill because Tony did have an open mind when it came to somethings and he believed that science, ultimately, was the explanation behind everything Loki could do. But here on Earth? No way. Tony had the technological edge on everything (or so he assumed because Wakanda was not open to the rest of the world) and he would know about competition.

HAMMER was done. AIM had more or less been reigned in.

Steve glanced at Tony, so willing to write off what these two were saying, and tried to combat Tony’s blasé attitude with a little more clarity. “If you know the person who has another gem, what is it we can help with?”

Thor, decidedly, like Rogers much better than the impossible to understand Stark that Loki seemed amused by or at least fond of. “We have chosen Stark as our Guide. It would be unseamly not to abide by his role as such.”

Tony narrowed just one eye and bunched his brows together. “Guide, huh? Sounds… Like a lot of work. Fine. Who are we looking for? J, invite the guy to dinner.”

"We are seeking Doctor Stephen Strange, who we last saw in London."

Loki at least remembered the town name that they had found themselves in, where Stephen Strange had attempted to find out why they had come from another realm to invade Midgard and its peaceful isolation from everyone else.

"Doctor Stephen Strange was a renowned surgeon," JARVIS supplied. "However, he has since left the medical profession after an accident damaged the nerves in both of his hands, rendering him unable to perform surgery."

"His hands seemed well to me."

None of this made a lick of sense to Tony. He ran his hand through the back of his hair long his neck, glancing from Thor to Loki. “Do you... what? Need me to break into where he lives? I’m really not cool with stealing. As a prank, it’s fine. I’ll give you that. But we really need to stop breaking the law here. It’s bad for my brand.”

He wasn’t even sure if he could trust Steve to back him up here. The guy was a loose canon sometimes and really unpredictable.

And normally? Tony liked that.

“J, do we even know where this guy is?”

The AI took a few long moments to answer and it wasn’t anything Tony wanted to hear. “Sir, it seems as if there is no such man as Stephen Strange. I have isolated his image on the street just yesterday but it appears he no longer exists.”

Tony groaned. “Why is everything so weird lately?”

"I will be able to find him when we are close, the proximity of the stone he carries will call to me. But in order to get close, perhaps it might be wise to consult with other Midgardian sorcerers?"

Loki looked expectantly at Tony and Steve, waiting for them to provide the names of any sorcerers that they knew of. Surely Stephen Strange could not be the only one.

"Uh-- I didn't even know we had magic at all," Steve said apologetically. "This is a whole new ballpark for me."

"How can you not be aware of magic on your own realm?"

“Because m, oh I don’t know, we’ve figured out that there are good explanations for it?” He wasn’t trying to be rude but Tony was Tony, and rudeness was just a part of his very being. “Magic is a term you use when you don’t know how to explain why something works. We’ve pretty much got it figured out. Minus the stuff you do. That seems like magic.”

He wasn’t painting a very good picture here. Loki was giving him a look he really didn’t like. As the resident genius of the world, he really wanted to stick to his guns there and represent.

“If, and that’s a big if, there’s magic? No one talks about it.”

"There is seidr, what you call magic, throughout the whole of Yggdrasil. The World Tree has roots in magic and that spreads to all the realms on its branches, even Midgard, though the seidr here is small and weaker than in other realms."

Loki truthfully did not mean that as an insult, it was a genuine comment of fact. Midgard simply wasn't known for having sorcerers and to have found them was a surprise in itself.

"It is ignorant to believe that just because you do not understand it, it does not exist. And foolish to bury your head in the sand and refuse to discuss the possibility."

“I’ve been called worse—“

But Steve cut him off, crazily enough, by touching his arm. Tony was momentarily floored and he blinked up at the blond as if the most grievous of sins had been committed. When Tony was under pressure, like he was now, he couldn’t help but be immediately angered by the smallest of things. “If that’s true, then that explains why there isn’t much magic here. Or why it’s underground and no one believes in it anymore. I’ll help you find Dr. Strange. If he has something like SHIELD did, I would feel better getting it off of the planet.”

Tony didn’t understand why Steve was so willing to agree. For all they knew, these aliens could just be stealing from them. Or worse, planning them harm.

This was so short sighted and he threw his arms up in protest.

Thor immediately misunderstood. “And Stark is with us as well! I enjoy a good journeying party. Let us away!”

Loki didn't misunderstand Tony's gesture, but it amused him to see Thor's enthusiasm and so he didn't correct him. He did, however, give the mortal man a slight reprieve if he wished to take it.

"I am certain that you will wish to consult your electronic guides to help you find the one we seek. Perhaps we should set forth with Steve Rogers to the location where I met him last, and you can join us once you have completed your initial research?"

He liked Stark, and he was growing to quite like Rogers as well, he would quite like to keep all of them amenable and not drive any of them away. Thor was genuine and kind, but he needed a tempering and diplomatic force at his side.

Tony has no intention of using his know how to do anything more than track Loki. Sure, he likes him, but liking does not equate to trust. The last few years have really given him some trust issues and while Steve seems almost blasé about the whole situation, Tony isn’t about to let his world get overrun by aliens.

He’s seen those movies. They do nothing for him.

The moment the three leave, literally blinking out of being (haha, poor Steve) Tony is already in surveillance mode. Even with Pepper trying to get him to come back to bed.

It just goes to show how amazing she is by not being offended when he barely looks at her.

In London, however, Steve ducks into fight mode, fists raised and weight on his back foot. “What is this? What did you do?”

"Be at peace, we merely travelled to London."

Loki was quite amused at the sight of the mortal so riled up just because of their mode of transportation and he didn't hide it very well, grinning widely. He knew that Thor was also unused to teleporting without the Bifrost, but he had at least experienced it once or twice on Jotunheim and therefore wouldn't disgrace himself by showing consternation.

"I could have carried us here through other methods, but I do not believe that Midgard possesses anything so large as a gryfhawk."

Back at Tony's lab, he might not realise that even as he observed Loki through his surveillance, someone was watching him in turn, hidden from JARVIS in the air ducts, waiting for him to be fully alone. He needed the woman gone, she was a factor he didn't want to deal with.

Pepper doesn’t usually stick around when Tony’s like this. If he won’t talk to her, she has other things to do. While Steve is calmed down and Thor shares with him triumphant stories of battle on the way to see Strange, Tony is left flicking through cameras on London streets. He’s picked up Steve’s GPS on his phone pretty quickly and London is better than New York with the amount of cameras.

At least JARVIS doesn’t protest this one.

Tony is keeping an eye on a teammate…on a fellow superhero who sometimes works with him. They might have a difference of opinion on many things, but Steve has become a friend and they do collaborate very well together.

Tony isn’t going to let him ride shotgun on this one alone with a sorcerer and a guy who can drink his wait in 150 proof alcohol.

At least they’re walking now. And walking gives Tony time to refresh his coffee while he waits to see where they’re headed.

The man in the vents doesn't know exactly who he is. He knows who he has been for the last sixty or so years, but that's not who he is any more. Something happened, something went wrong with his programming. He was brought out of freeze like normal when he was needed, a task to destroy the newly found Captain America given to him, eliminate the man before he could rally people and become a symbol again.

But something went wrong.

He had stared down the scope of his sniper rifle as the blond man left his apartment building, and then again three times more. He had the perfect shot, he had made much harder shots in worse conditions, but he never took it. The longer he stared at him, the more his head ached, until all of a sudden an explosion of memory hit him from the inside out. Not enough to know who he was, but enough to know that he wasn't the Soldier.

And so he had run.

Of course HYDRA had been trying to track him down since, but they had only succeeded in damaging him, which was one of the reasons he was here. This man was a technological genius, though there were other things about him that itched at the back of his skull, he couldn't quite get what they were. The other reason was that he seemed to be working with, and a friend of, Captain America.

He needed more information to find out what had happened to him and who he was now.

When Tony turned back around from refilling his coffee, he would find a man in the room that hadn't been there before, just casually stood in the middle of his secure lab as though it was easy to wander in from the street. He had slightly messy hair and his clothes - a faded red Iron Man hoodie and some jeans - were slightly grubby. But otherwise he looked like a normal guy.

Startled enough to spill the coffee, slightly, over his hand, Tony stepped back abruptly and transferred the cup from one hand to the next. He shook the sting away and grumbled under his breath for JARVIS to schedule himself for a diagnostic.

Iron Man hoodie? Unwashed hair? Yeah, Tony knew the type but the type didn’t usually get passed all of his many varieties of safety check points. What happened to his redundancies? What about the three separate codes needed to get up the elevators? Or the thumb prints to use the stairs? What about Happy?

Tony didn’t panic. He kept hold of the coffee, though, watching Bucky cautiously. “You need to go downstairs and make an appointment with the guy at the desk. I don’t do autographs.”

Something about this man seemed so familiar, but off in a way like he was an image distorted by one of those fun-house mirrors. He had no idea why, though, he hadn't yet remembered Howard Stark or what he had done to that man and his wife.

It took him a second to speak up, he still was more used to silence than anything else and it was obvious when he did speak. His voice was slightly raspy as if rarely used, a bit too quiet, and the accent was hard to place. It seemed to swing from Brooklyn to Russia and back.

"I don't want an autograph, I need an engineer."

“Uh.. So same rules. You go downstairs, make an appointment. I’m a busy man.” Like, for instance, right now he was missing out and Thor patting Steve on the back and sending the guy flat on his face. He would have really have liked to see that but instead, there’s a crazy homeless guy here that probably wants to cut his face off and wear it.

It happens. Hollywood tells him it happens a lot more than people thing.

Tony gestures with his coffee. It’s still his current only weapon.

“So you want to head that way, down the corridor to the elevator and take it all the way downstairs. There’s a big guy, a little dumb looking, sitting behind the desk. You tell him that you want to make an appointment and we’ll go from there.” The ride down would let Tony call the authorities, get in his armor and meet the elevator in the lobby too. Win-win.

He couldn't make an appointment even if he were so inclined to try, he didn't exist. The man he used to be, whoever the hell that was, had died a long time ago and the Winter Soldier only had very classified files that proved he ever existed. Besides, he couldn't risk making an appointment and showing up at a later time, it could be a trap.

He didn't bother to argue, he knew he didn't have the right words yet.

Instead, he just pulled off that Iron Man hoodie. He wasn't wearing anything underneath, so his torso was plainly displayed. A criss-cross of scars and impressive muscle definition, and that segmented, beautiful, one-of-a-kind prosthetic with the Soviet star on the shoulder.

"The cooling is broken."

At first, Tony is poised to toss the coffee onto the guy hastily opening his hoodie. Bucky, however, is fast and Tony is unnerved enough to just stare. It could have been anything. The guy could be wearing a wired up explosive. He could be getting ready to show off a horrible tattoo of Iron Man or maybe show that he was armed.

But none of that happened. Tony stood for a long while, coffee mug held out in front of him and tipped towards Bucky. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t do anything but swallow and then draw the cup back towards his chest.

“Oh…kay.” He has no idea about the Winter Soldier, no idea who the Ghost is or that there’s even an operative going by the Ghost. HYDRA has been defeated, there’s no thought that they might still exist and might still be operating in SHIELD or various world governments.

So that star on his shoulder? That means nothing.

“So you have a metal arm. Right. All right, are you going to kill me with it?” He rubs a hand over his beard. “I hate almost being killed.”

That was one of the reasons that HYDRA were so keen to recover their lost Soldier, not just because he was a valuable Asset, but also because he could blow the lid on their carefully maintained and hidden organisation. They were so close to achieving what they wanted, just another few years, they couldn't have that jeopardised.

He frowned as Stark asked his question, before running over his own words in his head to see if he had been unclear. Perhaps Stark thought this was just a solid piece of metal strapped to him, not the fully functional arm that it was. So he moved it up and around to the sound of hissing.

"I told you, the cooling is broken. I need an engineer."

“Ten words that no one knows.” He hopes. They’ve captured Zemo, T’Challa confiscated the book that had been on him and had sealed it. Steve isn’t as naïve as so many people expect him to be, however. He knows that there may well be a cleaned up or found footage recording of the phrases from when Bucky had last been triggered. Steve’s not in a place or a position to make sure that they get out. “Ten words that… I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to properly string them together. And you know them, right? If you hear even the first one you can get out of dodge.”

That’s the idea. It shouldn’t be possible for Bucky to regularly be restrained (or ever restrained again if Steve can help it). But he’s realistic. He knows he can’t always babysit Bucky and he knows his friend would never allow it anyway.

“And I can bring you back. I’ve done it already. Twice. Right?”

No. No Stark was pretty sure that the arm was functional and he was having flashes of being strangled to death by s robot hand. And this was after being melted by an alien death ray. Someone needed to make sure he got out in the sun more after this. His imagination was getting away from him.

“I heard you,” Tony said, but the struggled hiss of that appendage made him momentarily forget his need for self preservation and head over to Bucky.

And none too carefully either.

If he was going to be robot throttled, so be it.

“Sit down. Let me take a look.”

Lucky for Tony, he wasn't about to be strangled by a robot hand today. The man who had broken into his secure lab just sat on the corner of one of the desks obediently and remained still as his arm was examined. Nowhere else in the world had technology like this, it was leaps and bounds ahead of every other prosthetic and it always had been. A vibranium alloy casing to make it as sturdy as possible, and then top of the line electronics underneath.

"Can you fix it?"

If he couldn't then he'd just leave, he'd lived with worse than a broken cooling system. But he wanted to be top of his game for the others that would come after him in the future.

Vibranium? Tony’s only ever held one piece as big as this before in Cap’s shield before he returned it to the guy not too long ago and it was just a flat disc. But this? This is complex and beautiful and Tony can actually feel saliva starting to gather in his mouth. His whole body stiffens just a little, probably because something like this deserves a full body hard on.

He lightly touched the joint between skin and metal, flips up an access panel he never would have known was there if it hadn’t been krimped up, and then stands back abruptly, hand over his mouth for a moment.

It’s not just electrodes peeking through. It’s coolant. It’s the ends of nerves. This arm isn’t just robotics, it’s cybernetics. Whoever this guy is, he’s one of a kind. Tony could cry in happiness.

“I can fix it. Yeah,” he says with a nod. “I can absolutely fix it.”

Shit.

“I need to get you downstairs and—“. He turns to glance at the monitors and curses. Shit. “Can you give me like half an hour? I just have to make sure someone doesn’t die.”

Whoever he is now - Soldier, or Bucky, someone inbetween, or someone else entirely - he knew he was unique. Nobody else would graft an arm like this onto someone because it's not ethical; even if the attachment to his nerves gives him an almost perfect range of motion and control, it's also so damaging to the skeletal structure that he's in near constant pain that he'd never be able to control if it weren't for the bastardised serum in his body.

This is where doctors want prosthetics to be in the future, able to properly replace limbs down to the fine motor control, but this isn't an ethical way to do it.

"No."

It's an immediate answer. He won't just hang around here waiting for a trap to spring; this gets down now, or it doesn't get done at all.

"I can't wait around."

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