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shieldborne“The thing is, just because the odds were 50-50, that doesn’t make it fair,” Steve says into the heavy silence of the room. “Believe me, I feel that the same way anyone else does.”
The support group is sparsely attended today. There’s a lot of sickness going around in the tail-end of winter, and not enough doctors, and leaving home is a risk. But Steve is one of the few that can’t catch or carry the flu, or chicken pox, or scarlet fever, or anything. He remembers winters laid up in the tenement bedroom, the scent of his own fever sweat making him want to throw up, or scream, or peel off his skin and run away from it, as he choked on his own lungs. He can’t get sick. He heals from most injuries. Starvation and thirst could still kill him, but chances are he’ll be the last man standing no matter what.
So this is where he’s standing.
“Actually,” he adds, more quietly, “Kinda felt that way ever since World War Two. Why me? Why was I the one to get the serum, why am I the one that made it when so many others, good men, good friends of mine...didn’t.”
“Survivor’s guilt,” says the woman to his right. She’s got a round face and tired eyes, hot pink compression socks on her legs to ease the pain from varicose veins. She’s a nurse, he knows. In an assisted living home. A goddamn hero as far as he’s concerned; she’s probably the only trained medical staff the place has after all the losses.
“I know,” he says wryly. “That’s what Sam always told me.”
“Well, he was right,” she smiles weakly at him. “We all got a coin flip. That’s not fair, it’s just impartial. Sometimes it’s easy to get those two things mixed up.”
A man in the back of the room is crying quietly behind a tattered handkerchief.
“Does it make it better or worse, you think,” Steve asks, “that we’ve all got the same guilt, too?”
“It is what it is,” she says.
“Yeah,” he smirks. “I’m not so good at accepting ‘it is what it is’.”
A couple people chuckle; they know him here.
“You’re a fixer,” the nurse says. “So am I. The memories keep replaying in my head. I was helping a patient with her oxygen tanks when everything just...you know? Does everyone else get that too?”
Steve swallows hard, imagining a body dissolving into dust and blowing away in the slight puff from the oxygen tank, circulating, clogging the cannula, settling on the polished floor. The canopy of the Wakandan forest darkened with flickers of ash. A cry and silence.
“Yeah,” he says, “Pretty sure everyone else gets that, too.”
-----
It’s twilight by the time he locks up the room and leaves. He should eat something, but he can’t muster the appetite for rice and beans. Sugar, meat, and dairy are rationed. Just like back in the 40s. He can have coffee, though, and he’s turning toward the nearest bodega without thinking about it when he almost runs headlong into a very familiar face.
He staggers back a step and a metallic arm reaches out and steadies him. The fingers are cold through his jacket.
“Christ, Rogers, you never did learn to watch where you’re going,” Bucky says, and smiles.
There’s a space of half a breath before they’re hugging.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Steve laughs, spirit lifting, all but squeezing the air out of his old friend’s lungs. “You’re supposed to be in New Asgard.”
“Yeah, well. Surprise!”
Steve doesn’t know how Bucky does it. After all he’s been through, all he’s seen, all he’s suffered, he can still muster that boyish, cocky smile he had when they were kids. It’s not as shiny, not as confident, and there’s always steel behind his eyes, but it’s still a smile, and it’s still good.
“I was about to start checking alleys,” Bucky adds. “Because I know old habits die hard.”
“Jerk,” Steve holds him at arm’s length. “I’ll fight you in an alley. Seriously, you didn’t just come for a visit.” He knows, because that’s not Bucky’s way any more. He’s recovering, to an astonishing degree, but sociability will be the last of his old traits to return to him, if it ever does come back. “Spill it.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Bucky pulls out a small object: Steve’s PINpoint. It hasn’t worked for months, not since the fight with Thanos. He’s had dozens of people look at it, tinkered with it every way he dared, tried texting over and over and over and finally had to give it to someone lest the obsession drive him crazy. There’s no one he trusts more than Bucky.
“It beeped,” Barnes says. “Got some scrambled letters, and then it died again. And that’s not all.”
He meets Steve’s gaze, voice dropping as he murmurs, “The Casket’s stirring, too.”
----
It always ends in a fight. You step back from behind your eyes, like a mariner leaving the bridge of the ship. It’s okay, the ship knows how to fight without you. It only needs you there to STOP fighting.
It’s going to be okay, it’ll be fine, just don’t think don’t scream don’t hear the screams. You don’t have to be here, only your body does and as much as it’s gone through with you in it and out of it, it probably won’t even notice if it gets shot.
There was a soldier once when you were on the front lines in the War. Well, there were a lot of soldiers, but this was the only one that got picked off by a sniper right next to you, and you spent the next five hours with his brains and blood on your jacket.
Steve never needed to know about that.
When you became a sniper you wondered if there was some other green guy out there, some poor asshole who didn’t know what he was signing up for, who ended up with a dead man’s brains on his coat because of you.
You’re way beyond wondering now.
There’s a furry thing that can shoot, and it wants your arm and you almost tell it sure, because it’s not like any of it belongs to you anyway. Not really. But Shuri made this one and you should probably keep it, so you just walk away. And then there’s more running. More guns. More blood and brains.
Steve’s yelling, no words just noise and that’s just about the only thing that could snap you back into your body during a fight. You’re there, suddenly, color blazing around you red and purple and sun-gold-blond and Steve is grappling with someone three times his size--that’s not new, but the purple skin is--and then you’re not even sure what you’re picking up, except that it’s small and blocky and it glows blue when you touch it. It must be Steve’s, or the alien’s, and something in the back of your head whispers screaming there’s screaming--
You hold the box over your head and maybe you scream too or maybe not but the wave of cold that surges from it cascades over you, over Steve, over the monster he’s fighting, pours down with a crushing force and for a fleeting moment you see the reflection of your face in the solid ice before the world goes black.
It’s two months later when you wake.
Steve is alive. Not many others are. You’re not sure if you failed or succeeded, given all you were thinking about was him.
“We weren’t sure you’d make it,” Steve tells you, teary eyed. “You were frozen solid and I--”
He shakes his head as if to try clearing it of memories. “But you slowed him down. You did. Probably saved my life, Buck.”
The box, he explains, is called the Casket of Ancient Winters. Loki loaned it to him.
(Loki? The douchebag that attacked New York? Yeah, that Loki. He might have changed. Or he might just hate Thanos more than he ever hated anyone or anything else.)
“Didn’t work though, did it?” You say. “Didn’t kill Thanos. Didn’t save half the universe.”
“No,” Steve says. “But I think it saved me and you.”
It belongs under Asgardan protection, this weird magical thing, but it also lights up when you get close, and you’re terrified of what that might mean, but everything else is weird and crazy and fucked up so you might as well roll with it.
And so you move to New Asgard, and next thing you know you’re the Guardian of the Casket, at least until Steve finds a way to get back to the Nexus and return it to its previous owner.
----
“It’s glowing,” Bucky says as he and Steve huddle over cheap coffee. “And there’s a layer of ice forming on it. I mean there’s a layer of ice on everything, it’s fucking Norway in February, but this isn’t normal.”
“If you say it’s weird,” Steve tells him. “I believe you.”
“Valkyrie’s watching over it now,” he says. “But I need to get back soon. Only what the hell do you think it means?”
Steve turns the PINpoint over in his right hand. It’s dead as a radio with no batteries right now, but it worked once. And it flickered for a moment, Bucky said, and so has the Casket…
“I think it means someone from the Nexus is trying to break through,” he says. “And I think we want them to succeed.”
The support group is sparsely attended today. There’s a lot of sickness going around in the tail-end of winter, and not enough doctors, and leaving home is a risk. But Steve is one of the few that can’t catch or carry the flu, or chicken pox, or scarlet fever, or anything. He remembers winters laid up in the tenement bedroom, the scent of his own fever sweat making him want to throw up, or scream, or peel off his skin and run away from it, as he choked on his own lungs. He can’t get sick. He heals from most injuries. Starvation and thirst could still kill him, but chances are he’ll be the last man standing no matter what.
So this is where he’s standing.
“Actually,” he adds, more quietly, “Kinda felt that way ever since World War Two. Why me? Why was I the one to get the serum, why am I the one that made it when so many others, good men, good friends of mine...didn’t.”
“Survivor’s guilt,” says the woman to his right. She’s got a round face and tired eyes, hot pink compression socks on her legs to ease the pain from varicose veins. She’s a nurse, he knows. In an assisted living home. A goddamn hero as far as he’s concerned; she’s probably the only trained medical staff the place has after all the losses.
“I know,” he says wryly. “That’s what Sam always told me.”
“Well, he was right,” she smiles weakly at him. “We all got a coin flip. That’s not fair, it’s just impartial. Sometimes it’s easy to get those two things mixed up.”
A man in the back of the room is crying quietly behind a tattered handkerchief.
“Does it make it better or worse, you think,” Steve asks, “that we’ve all got the same guilt, too?”
“It is what it is,” she says.
“Yeah,” he smirks. “I’m not so good at accepting ‘it is what it is’.”
A couple people chuckle; they know him here.
“You’re a fixer,” the nurse says. “So am I. The memories keep replaying in my head. I was helping a patient with her oxygen tanks when everything just...you know? Does everyone else get that too?”
Steve swallows hard, imagining a body dissolving into dust and blowing away in the slight puff from the oxygen tank, circulating, clogging the cannula, settling on the polished floor. The canopy of the Wakandan forest darkened with flickers of ash. A cry and silence.
“Yeah,” he says, “Pretty sure everyone else gets that, too.”
-----
It’s twilight by the time he locks up the room and leaves. He should eat something, but he can’t muster the appetite for rice and beans. Sugar, meat, and dairy are rationed. Just like back in the 40s. He can have coffee, though, and he’s turning toward the nearest bodega without thinking about it when he almost runs headlong into a very familiar face.
He staggers back a step and a metallic arm reaches out and steadies him. The fingers are cold through his jacket.
“Christ, Rogers, you never did learn to watch where you’re going,” Bucky says, and smiles.
There’s a space of half a breath before they’re hugging.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Steve laughs, spirit lifting, all but squeezing the air out of his old friend’s lungs. “You’re supposed to be in New Asgard.”
“Yeah, well. Surprise!”
Steve doesn’t know how Bucky does it. After all he’s been through, all he’s seen, all he’s suffered, he can still muster that boyish, cocky smile he had when they were kids. It’s not as shiny, not as confident, and there’s always steel behind his eyes, but it’s still a smile, and it’s still good.
“I was about to start checking alleys,” Bucky adds. “Because I know old habits die hard.”
“Jerk,” Steve holds him at arm’s length. “I’ll fight you in an alley. Seriously, you didn’t just come for a visit.” He knows, because that’s not Bucky’s way any more. He’s recovering, to an astonishing degree, but sociability will be the last of his old traits to return to him, if it ever does come back. “Spill it.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Bucky pulls out a small object: Steve’s PINpoint. It hasn’t worked for months, not since the fight with Thanos. He’s had dozens of people look at it, tinkered with it every way he dared, tried texting over and over and over and finally had to give it to someone lest the obsession drive him crazy. There’s no one he trusts more than Bucky.
“It beeped,” Barnes says. “Got some scrambled letters, and then it died again. And that’s not all.”
He meets Steve’s gaze, voice dropping as he murmurs, “The Casket’s stirring, too.”
----
It always ends in a fight. You step back from behind your eyes, like a mariner leaving the bridge of the ship. It’s okay, the ship knows how to fight without you. It only needs you there to STOP fighting.
It’s going to be okay, it’ll be fine, just don’t think don’t scream don’t hear the screams. You don’t have to be here, only your body does and as much as it’s gone through with you in it and out of it, it probably won’t even notice if it gets shot.
There was a soldier once when you were on the front lines in the War. Well, there were a lot of soldiers, but this was the only one that got picked off by a sniper right next to you, and you spent the next five hours with his brains and blood on your jacket.
Steve never needed to know about that.
When you became a sniper you wondered if there was some other green guy out there, some poor asshole who didn’t know what he was signing up for, who ended up with a dead man’s brains on his coat because of you.
You’re way beyond wondering now.
There’s a furry thing that can shoot, and it wants your arm and you almost tell it sure, because it’s not like any of it belongs to you anyway. Not really. But Shuri made this one and you should probably keep it, so you just walk away. And then there’s more running. More guns. More blood and brains.
Steve’s yelling, no words just noise and that’s just about the only thing that could snap you back into your body during a fight. You’re there, suddenly, color blazing around you red and purple and sun-gold-blond and Steve is grappling with someone three times his size--that’s not new, but the purple skin is--and then you’re not even sure what you’re picking up, except that it’s small and blocky and it glows blue when you touch it. It must be Steve’s, or the alien’s, and something in the back of your head whispers screaming there’s screaming--
You hold the box over your head and maybe you scream too or maybe not but the wave of cold that surges from it cascades over you, over Steve, over the monster he’s fighting, pours down with a crushing force and for a fleeting moment you see the reflection of your face in the solid ice before the world goes black.
It’s two months later when you wake.
Steve is alive. Not many others are. You’re not sure if you failed or succeeded, given all you were thinking about was him.
“We weren’t sure you’d make it,” Steve tells you, teary eyed. “You were frozen solid and I--”
He shakes his head as if to try clearing it of memories. “But you slowed him down. You did. Probably saved my life, Buck.”
The box, he explains, is called the Casket of Ancient Winters. Loki loaned it to him.
(Loki? The douchebag that attacked New York? Yeah, that Loki. He might have changed. Or he might just hate Thanos more than he ever hated anyone or anything else.)
“Didn’t work though, did it?” You say. “Didn’t kill Thanos. Didn’t save half the universe.”
“No,” Steve says. “But I think it saved me and you.”
It belongs under Asgardan protection, this weird magical thing, but it also lights up when you get close, and you’re terrified of what that might mean, but everything else is weird and crazy and fucked up so you might as well roll with it.
And so you move to New Asgard, and next thing you know you’re the Guardian of the Casket, at least until Steve finds a way to get back to the Nexus and return it to its previous owner.
----
“It’s glowing,” Bucky says as he and Steve huddle over cheap coffee. “And there’s a layer of ice forming on it. I mean there’s a layer of ice on everything, it’s fucking Norway in February, but this isn’t normal.”
“If you say it’s weird,” Steve tells him. “I believe you.”
“Valkyrie’s watching over it now,” he says. “But I need to get back soon. Only what the hell do you think it means?”
Steve turns the PINpoint over in his right hand. It’s dead as a radio with no batteries right now, but it worked once. And it flickered for a moment, Bucky said, and so has the Casket…
“I think it means someone from the Nexus is trying to break through,” he says. “And I think we want them to succeed.”
