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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"I know, I read about him at the museum."

He doesn't bother to say which museum, though there are exhibitions and small plaques to Howard Stark at a number of museums dedicated to science and technology. His mention in the Smithsonian is actually his smallest plaque, just a footnote of Captain America's much bigger story.

"He was a jerk."

Wait.

Why did he say that? It just sort of slipped out, like he knew first hand.

Tony snorted. “Yeah. He really was” That always came across in the articles, though Tony tried not to badmouth the guy that started the dynasty too much to the media. It was really no big secret how Howard Stark was an asshole womanizer, though. People just tended to ignore that in favor of his genius and the contributions he made to the world.

Was it right? No. But they tended to do the same to Tony. At least he’d settled down now. And was faithful.

“Have a seat. You’re going to have to help me out here with the compartments. I don’t want to go yanking at your nervous system again,” he muttered. He was much too self absorbed to realize what it was Bucky said.

James took a seat where he was told to-- or... he sat down for a brief half second and then stood again, before slumping down to sit on the floor instead. He was slowly beginning to learn his limits, and being worked on in a chair was one that would likely end in a world of pain for Stark.

"You can do it down here. And I can't help you, I don't understand how it works or how it's put together."

That hadn't been considered essential knowledge for the Soldier, he had just been required to lie still and obedient while others worked on him.

“Awesome. Okay. So I need verbal consent that if I accidentally kill you, I’m not at fault.” He wasn’t sure if the classic Good Samaritan Law applied here considering he was working on a crazy guy with a metal arm and too much ability to somehow break into his home.

He pulled up on the legs of his pants and the crouched to take a look at the things he might need. Gloves, obviously. Forceps. The usual toolkit—

He pulled up the scans JARVIS had already taken and compared them with the scans from the last time Mr. Cyborg came to visit. It wasn’t good.

“If I hit something vital, scream.”

Luckily for Tony, there wasn't any records of this man being alive at all and so nobody would come after him if he got killed doing this, nor would James be entirely too sad if he ended up dead.

His accent and language suddenly took a shift back to American, the twang of Brooklyn overlaid onto his words.

"I don't scream, and you're gonna hit vital things, that's how it's all connected. I'm sure you're as good an engineer as your old man, but do you have to talk as much?"

“Do you think you can stick to one accent?” Tony was already pulling on some gloves, red ones because he was an egoist, but he had to really put the kibosh on the talk about his father. “Dad still takes me to school sometimes but I gotta tell you, I’m pretty much the big cheese of the tech world. Guessing that’s why you’re here.” He didn’t mention that whoever made Bucky’s arm obviously was some sort of genius themselves. Crazy. Horrible. But a genius just the same. “I just—“

Wait.

“As much? Oh ha ha. You’re going to tell me that dad didn’t have enough love children so he decided to cut some guy up and attach some metal to him? Listen. That all goes through legal. You want some sort of payout, you talk to them.”

Tony pulled his tools over less gently and plopped down on the floor to get to start working. He was not too thrilled to say the least.

Did Howard Stark do this?

Hard to tell, he did remember Stark, but he didn't remember whether those times were from before or after the Soldier, his memories were fragmented a lot of the time and it was easy to get confused. It didn't matter even if it had been Howard Stark, all research he had done said that Tony Stark wasn't HYDRA.

"I don't want any payout, I just want this fixing."

The idea of him getting reparations was almost funny in a bitter sort of way.

A quiet chime from the ceiling was JARVIS' covert way of saying that he had some information that might be of interest. He had, of course, been running facial recognition and scan recognition against all databanks he could access, legal and illegal.

Tony was quiet, not because he was asked to be, but because concentration had gotten the better of him. Sassy as he could often be while working, this was a challenge. He was working on robotics that likely had a connection to nerves and that meant that anything he shifted or even just touched could cause pain. And he was worried about that, or rather, he wasn’t sure if he could keep going if the patient happened to find this process to be intense enough to consistently remind him that he was engineering on a living human being.

He was almost glad for the distracting ping, and he poked at the display screen hovering between himself and Bucky to pull up the alert. He was expecting word of another mechanism failure, but not a profile recognition match of a guy that ought to be dead.

Tony shifted from sitting on his heels to sitting cross legged on the ground, huffing slightly. “So you served when my dad was effectively draft dodging, huh?”

Steve was going to freak out.

James frowned as he saw the alert come up between them and saw his own profile on the screen, wearing a uniform in a black and white still. He was unmistakably the same man, or else a clone based on the facial structure, but he scowled instead of mimicking the easy smile of Sergeant Barnes in the picture.

"That man died in the 1940s."

Does he look like he's nearly a hundred?

"Your computer is broken."

“Wow, take that back,” Tony grunted. “JARVIS can’t help what he is. But he’s absolutely not broken.” He dismissed the screen as if the information didn’t concern him. Right now, it didn’t. He gave James Barnes a little shove to lay back down so he could work on the inside of his arm.

It was going to take a lot of concentration just to untangle the mess of fused wires and parts here, and he could deal with the ramifications of what this whole thing meant later.

Hopefully before Steve Rogers decided to drop by for his every-other-day attempt to get Tony to stop pouring his entire self into his work. Or to discuss the Loki and Thor problem. Or with information on why Captain America and Iron Man needed to go out and beat up some baddies.

JARVIS himself didn't interrupt because he knew that his master was concentrating, but he also felt offended at the accusation that he would be broken. He had done a lot of cross referencing and the nearest picture was that of James Barnes, it was him or a direct descendent with a 98% probability.

James, however, looked less impressed as he moved to go back down and let Stark keep working on his arm. The arm was living proof that if someone stopped caring about the comfort and wellbeing of their patient, that the achievements they could push through were astronomical.

"I'm hungry."

It came out quietly after another two hours of silent work, almost as if he were surprised that he needed to voice something like that.

“What?” Tony didn’t usually take breaks to eat. The things he worked on never needed to eat either. He’d actually forgotten that there was a living person under his hands and that made him sit back and stretch. “Oh. Yeah. Pizza from the usual place, J.”

He took the time to get up and walk around so that the blood went back to his legs again.

“I think we can skip having Rogers deliver. Just send one of the Legion.” It was pretty obvious to him that Bucky and Steve would have some words. And none of those words would end well. “Extra cheese and pepperoni work for you? Get five pies.”

Steve could eat three in a sitting. He assumed Bucky probably could too.

It was interesting that Tony would just assume that Bucky was somehow like Steve, when such a huge part of the history of the world following the war was that there were no other super soldiers, no other serum out there. Hell, that was the reason that a man called Bruce became big and green now.

James stood up once Tony had retreated from him to order the pizza, rolling his shoulder experimentally even though there was still exposed wiring from where Tony hadn't finished working yet.

"I don't have anything to pay you with."

For the work or the pies.

Weirdly, Tony was a fairly logical human being. He so happened to be eccentric too, but physics and mechanics still managed to ground him enough to follow the principal that simplest explanation was probably correct. Was it possible for someone to have a copy of the formula that made Steve into Cap? Sure. The creator fled Germany with it. But maybe they could develop the same thing or something similar. There’s also no such thing as an invention being created once. That’s why there are pyramids all over the world. Not because the people spoke to each other, but because congruent technological evolution was a reality.

Tony would have shrugged off anyone actually questioning his thoughts on Bucky. Until his theory was disproven, it was what he was sticking with.

“No one asked you to pay me. Been awhile since I’ve had a challenge. That’s payment enough. Don’t pick at your scabs, jeez. Sit down or you’ll mess me up.”

"You're a weird guy."

That was actually more compliment than insult. It was refreshing to meet someone who didn't seem to want what everyone else wanted, and it was actually kind of comforting that Stark only seemed to see him as the challenge of his arm. It was a midway point between being seen as human, and still being seen as an object, and that was sadly more comfortable now than being fully one or the other.

"I'm surprised you're still alive, if this is how you deal with people breaking in."

“You would be surprised, lately, how many people break in,” Tony replied with a shrug as if it didn’t matter. “But you’re right. JARVIS, move intruder death ray to the top of my priority list.”

“As previously stated, Sir, you’re not capable of keeping any semblance of s priority list,” JARVIS shot back and Tony rolled his eyes.

“Not even my own kids respect me,” he said to Bucky, snapping his fingers at the man to get him to sit back down. “We have twenty minutes at least. Let me finish up the hardware removal and— It’s going to disable motor function in your arm below the elbow so don’t freak out on me.”

He really hoped that he wouldn't freak out, but he hadn't been in a lot of situations like this yet and he wasn't sure just what might set him off. Stark had been good to him so far, helping him without asking for payment and not treating him in a cruel or dismissive manner, he didn't want to repay that by harming him.

"It might be better to restrain me while you work."

Assuming that Stark had anything that would restrain him effectively.

"I don't want to hurt you."

“I don’t think I have the stuff I’d need to make sure you stay down unless I put you out and even then— Yanno, people have tried and failed with Cap. Metabolism issues. You guys burn hot.” Hes still running off of the assumption that James is a knock off super Soldier here. He’s seen nothing to tell him otherwise.

Tony sits back, frowning.

“You’re going to have to try not to murder me while I do this. It’ll be less likely to happen when I shut this off, though. I just want to tell you ahead of time what to expect. It won’t be painful, just very heavy. I’m removing the pressure pistons.”

Tony should really be careful about making genius leaps that nobody else would make, because they'd all assume that the serum had existed only for Captain America and then never been successfully replicated again. It made him suspicious to the non-geniuses in the room... namely James, who looked at his benefactor with slightly narrowed eyes.

"How do you know about my metabolism? That's classified."

Only HYDRA agents knew that.

Had he made a mistake? Was Stark actually a HYDRA agent?

“Educated guess work,” Tony said, dragging over a screen shot from the tablet on the ground to the virtual screen between himself and Bucky. His fingers move behind the image, highlighting various aspects and figures running over a stand in body for Bucky himself. “Healing factor. Same as Cap’s. You literally wouldn’t be able to use this thing without it. Also, it’s making it a bitch to fix. And your vitals. Here, see?”

He pulls up Steve’s as well, just to show Bucky.

“I have to scan you. No way around it. And J is running DNA samples concurrently as I work. Why are you being so paranoid?” The Russian to Brooklyn accent had been bothering him but now…now he was well and truly starting to get unnerved as his genius caught up with him. The smirk fell from Tony’s face. “SHIELD only ever made one. You’re obviously some sort of Russian copy.” Crap. Could he be some sort of clone? “No offence.”

Poor Tony, it might be safer for him if he wasn't such a genius. He needed time for his thoughts to process before saying them out loud, or else his lightning deductions might get him into trouble... like now.

"You should be careful where you say things like that," James warned in a low voice, all the more threatening for being so calm and emotionless.

He didn't want to hurt Stark, the man had helped him when he didn't have to, but he knew a suspicious amount for just guesswork and the more he knew, the more of a liability he was to just leave without being silenced.

“If I was going to tell Rogers about you, he’d already be here,” Tony said, either oblivious to the death stare he was getting or simply not caring. Probably the latter, though he might well be immune to death stares now. It came with the territory. “And I wouldn’t be hypothesizing to you.”

Of course, that was right about when the arm went dead on James. Tony had severed the receptors and was already pulling out one of the mini circuit boards. This technology looked fairly recent, the upgrades newer, at least within the last two years.

“It helps to know what I’m working with but I don’t have to. And you know that. It’s why you came to me for blind repairs. Stop half-threatening me.”

James went incredibly still when his arm went dead, almost as though he were no longer breathing. It sent his mind into a flat spin of fight or flight survival response, even though he had been warned to expect it, and it took a hell of a lot of self control not to just lunge for Stark on the spot.

Which was probably why he switched back to Russian, his most comfortable language now even if he didn't want to admit it, once again sounding like a native of the country.

"You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't know how deep this goes."

“Uh huh,” Tony said, just a sort of sigh. He wasn’t entirely paying attention to Bucky (and this was usually how he got himself hurt, by being unaware of an oncoming explosion), much too focused on fixing a module component in the arm. It made Bucky’s pinky finger lift and fall, which Tony must have taken as a good sign because he sat back to wipe his hands again.

He really didn’t like the amount of red there was. Did they have to tint the lubricating oil that color? Seriously?

“If I don’t understand something, it’s because I haven’t had a damned minute to look at it. Stop being so threatening. I’m helping you. That’s what I do. I help people.”

Five years and counting. And usually it’s pretty fun.

That wasn't what he had been talking about. Stark no doubt understood the workings of his arm much better than James ever would; though the lubrication did need to be red, because it also served as a link to the blood supply from his actual body, circulating real blood through and out.

"Back. Step back."

It was a sudden and snapped order, and Stark would have about five seconds to obey before James lost what self control he did have. Hopefully Stark listened and got out of the way, and didn't end up being kicked in the face...

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