Get Your Goddess (For Juststeverogers)

[westfallcorndog]

After what happened at Halloween, Harrowheart avoided Steve's well-meaning attempts at a connection. During the winter holidays the two traded a plant for a promise of a dinner with family. Now that the celebrations have passed and things are calming down at Naugus' tower, Harrowheart finally sends a message to Steve to make good on his offer.

Steve! Come by Naugs tower. Virgin Mary is waiting for you and so is food (and my family.) Bring Bucky and Ethle and Sara too!!

* * *

At Ixis Naugus' tower signs of the human refugees who live and work there now are everywhere. A fence with a gate has been constructed which keeps strangers from accidentally wandering near. Beyong, a U-shaped table with benched seating has been assembled at the center of the property. Around it is the evidence of the family's farming. Though it's winter now and a thin snow covers the ground it's still clear that much of the land has been tilled, and in some places remnants of fall's harvest remain; the smallest stumps of cornstalks poke up from the ground, a conical bale of straw is piled in the center of what must have been a wheat field. Smaller gardens for fruit and vegetables are fenced off, but only one is currently being used to grow some type of bush with periwinkle berries the size of small tomatoes.

Two little creatures and a tall, blonde man are waiting to greet Steve and his monsters when they arrive. One of them is a kind of hairy piglet, while the other is a sentient coniferous tree no taller than knee height. Both of them have made a mess of the snow around them and are covered in sparkling frost, but they've still got the energy in them to play. More energy than their human friend, who leans against the fence eating a handful of those sunrise-purple berries.

It isn't Harrowheart, though at a glance they might be mistaken for each other. No, this is a living man bundled well against the cold with a bulky brown jacket and fur-lined boots. He wears a hat with ear flaps and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. From the looks of him he's in his late forties, but if it weren't for his lively color and age he could easily pass for Harrowheart. They must be brothers!

Comments

Steve looks at the MCU and realizes he has ten years of stories to tell

[juststeverogers]

Steve's home world and time are at least a little more easy to describe to the Weatherhills. They understand boats and flying machines and war machines even if they look different and are made of steel on Earth instead of wood, stone, and magic like on Azeroth's oft bled upon shores. They've heard of trains, like the tram that linked the Alliance's two largest cities. Steve talks of a land reminiscent of Dun Morogh or more closely to some of the lands up in Northrend. Sprawling hills and forests, ground either made rough by mud if you're lucky and ice and snow if you're not.

The world Steve comes from was locked in a brutal war to stop a man hell bent on genocide, but all the sides in this fight are human. One faction of humans fighting another slightly different group. One man declaring an entire subsection of their own kind unworthy of living. Steve spares them the details of the camps he saw. He talks lovingly instead of his hand picked team; the Howling Commandos. A special ops force in the army who had one job: fighting back Hydra at any cost. The special division of the army they were fighting against. But see, Steve's world isn't supposed to have things like magic. At least, that's what the thought was back then.

The Tesseract changed a lot of things on Earth.

Steve is brief when he says he had a chance to remove it from human hands and he took it. At the time he thought it would cost him his life. Whether because of the artifact or the changes that saved his life, he was merely in stasis instead for more than half a century.

"The world looked mighty different when I came to." Steve glances down at his bowl and takes another bite before he looks back to Harrowheart. "It looked more like the Earth everyone else in the Nexus talks about."

[westfallcorndog]

Stories of the lands of Earth are so much more pleasant than stories of war, but there's something enthralling about the struggles of a wholly human world. The Weatherhills whisper their doubts to Steve and among themselves: How could a world where everyone is the same race still descend into war? How could they decide who's worth living and who isn't?

The answers to those questions aren't the ones they want to know. What they want, and which none of them are able to express, is how something as deplorable as war could happen anywhere but on their own world. How could it be universal? Does it mean that war is inevitable? Is it really a part of life?

Even if there is an answer, perhaps it's best they not know.

Instead they listen to Steve's stories of victory, and, bitter as the ending is, it fills them with pride and excitement. Steve Rogers! The friend of their brother and their son! Their friend now, too! A war hero!

But none of them sympathize with Steve the way Harrowheart does. He claps a hand on Steve's shoulder and smiles, not joyously as his war-ignorant family but quietly and with the slightest upward tilt of his brows. "I know that a part of you didn't want to go," he says. "But the other part of you knew you had to. You probably hear so much of this you're tired of it by now, but... Steve... You've been through so much. I'm proud of you."

[juststeverogers]

Steve only knows a little bit about Azeroth, and much of that knowledge is years old now. Muddied by decades upon decades of dream filled sleep that twist and mold his memories until he's not so sure what is real and what is fantasy conjured up by a mind locked in solitary confinement for the better half of a century. It took Pepper calling him up and explaining that she'd found a collector that had some of his old sketchbooks and was willing to return them for Steve to remember the Nexus properly.

The hand he places over Harrow's respectfully is too large and too warm to be Steve's. No it is his now. This is his body. This is who he is. The scrawny illness riddled walking corpse he used to be died in the Arctic. The man who came out had lost everything. Bucky, Peggy, Howard, the Commandos. The Nexus. He had to read about his flourished and embellished past in museums and hear people talk about him like he was some kind of folk hero and all too quickly the fights came again. The battle for New York. The Winter Soldier. Ultron. The Accords.

How could Harrowheart be proud of a man who forgot him for years? During the war there was no time to be nostalgic for the Nexus, and after he was frozen it had begun to feel like something he cooked up during his long years of sleep. Having those sketchbooks back in his hands and seeing the faces of his old friends smiling back at him brought everything to the surface again. It's why when he went to ground after Bucky was safely handed over to T'Challa's people he came back to the only other home he had ever known.

The Nexus.

To think so little time had passed here! To think that the man who was used to losing everything still had something to come home to. Still had friends who knew him--really knew him--and not some built up legend of him.

"That's only the first part, Harrow. I've been fighting in that future Earth for years now too. Time travel is weird that way. I guess you could say I was catching up to the present when I made my way back here." And how wet and full of some kind of intense emotion Steve's eyes get then. "You were still here. You knew me. I missed you so much, my friend."

If anyone will understand that kind of emotion Steve holds in his heart he hasn't been able to speak about, surely it's the man who came back from the dead much more literally than Steve did.

[westfallcorndog]

Where the touch of their hands might have stirred the briefest disconnect in Steve, for Harrowheart it's the moment that it all comes together. This is his friend. This is Steve. After so many months -- imagine, that's all it's been for him -- his friend his back. His body may have changed, but his touch hasn't. His eyes haven't. His voice, his words, his spirit haven't.

"Steve..." The name comes quietly, sadly in a hushed whisper. "You've been gone for years."

It's really sinking in now. Years. Not just one war, but several. Years of death and violence. The thought of it burns at the edges of the scrap of a soul still left in Harrow's chest. It's too familiar, and deep down, hidden under the dark magic that hardened his heart, it hurts. It hurts to think about Steve's struggle. The physical battles, of course, but the emotional ones, too. How lonely must his friend have been? How lost?

Harrow knows how much. He can see it in his eyes.

He turns to his family and, attempting a smile, says, "Y'all mind if Steve and I go on outside?"

A few of them shake their heads. They understand. Harrow nods, stands, and motions for Steve to follow, if he will.

Outside, Harrow slowly takes a seat at the communal table. He doesn't look at Steve right away, but presses his palms together and watches as his fingers slowly intertwine.

"We got too much in common now," he mutters. "I said I'm proud of what you did, and I meant it, but... I know it don't feel like a proud thing to go through. I always hated when my family said they were proud of me for goin' to war, not just once but twice. Straight away it always took my mind to all the mistakes I made. All the things I did wrong, or didn't do enough of. All my selfish reasons for bein' on the field in the first place."

Finally he glances at his friend, a sidelong look that doesn't last.

"Is it like that for you, too?"

[juststeverogers]

Steve's grateful for the reprieve of watching eyes on him as he follows Harrowheart outside. His posture loses some of it's confident hold when Steve leans against the table instead of sitting. He looks like a larger version of the same old Steve like this with his hands in his lap and that frustrated grit to his teeth whenever someone or something reminded him about how frail he was.

"It is."

Steve doesn't need to elaborate when Harrow's explanation cuts to the meat of all the things the soldier wishes he'd done differently. All the accusations that Steve Rogers couldn't live without a war to be fighting in. The world he lives in now has two opinions about Steve Rogers; a radical vigilante who thinks himself above the law, or an untarnished symbol of American values and someone to idolize. There's no room for the man with real flaws and virtues just trying to do his best.

"I did things I'm not proud of. And I know I'd do most of them again, if I was in the same set of circumstances. So much has happened. Everything's a mess there now, but for one thing."

[westfallcorndog]

Harrowheart nods, then keeps on nodding. Everything Steve says, he feels himself. He's prepared to not say anymore, fully expecting Steve's words to end with a familiar if uncomfortable silence between two men who have experienced too much. But then Rogers goes and says something that takes him off guard, and he turns, quietly curious. It's a few more seconds before he braves asking, "Yeah? What's that?..."

My cat is so offended I'm writing this instead of snuggling with her bc it is bedtime

[juststeverogers]

Steve's smile is the same. He always has that same smile when he talks about the one thing that's always been important to him. Harrowheart knows before Steve speaks it's going to be about--

"Bucky's recovering somewhere safe. I can't go see him yet He needs time to find himself again. Walk on his own two legs. I won't take that from him. But he's back. He's really truly back and he's going to be okay."

Steve would do all of it again. Every mistake and every tormented loss if it meant his oldest friend would be okay like this. Some of the life that had left his face when he talked about being lost has found its way back to his features now.

"The world might have become a scary strange place to both of us, but we're at least both still here."

[westfallcorndog]

How did he know what it was going to be? It must have been the sound of Steve's voice, the real, pure comfort that finds its way into a person's words when their heart is full of love for someone else. And he was right. Bucky, Steve's best friend – maybe more, if Steve would ever admit it – is fine. Is himself again, even!

"So he's free," he says, and finds it in himself to smile too. It starts small, hesitant, but soon grows into something so sincere. He throws an arm around Steve's shoulder and laughs as the realization fills his own cold heart with the warmth of a little life.

"I know how much that's gotta mean to you, man. I wish – Shoot, I wish I had words, is what I wish. I can't wait to hear about the next time you see him."

He pauses a moment to look Steve's face over. To really get an idea of what he's thinking and feeling. His smile fades until only a hint of it remains and he pats Steve's far arm with his hand. "It feels right, don't it? Knowin' you got someone out there who really matters to you. You deserve that, man. He deserves that, too."

Steve you sweet summer child you have no idea what the MCU is going to do to you

[juststeverogers]

"Yeah. As far as I can tell he is. I haven't gone back to see him yet, like I said. He really needs to get himself sorted and if I go I won't be able to stop just doing things for him. I know myself."

Steve shrugs. It's hard not to be there for Bucky right now but he knows it's for the best. Not to smother the other when he's still relearning who he is. How to be a person again rather than just The Asset.

"It's enough to know he's alright. I'll get to see him eventually. Maybe I'll get the chance to bring him here, introduce him to my friends in the Nexus." He's sure Bucky would love to see Steve's sketches come to life right off the page. Discover all the things his pal used to doodle about in that notebook of his. Introduce him to Viatorus and Isidor, Blaze and Ghost, Harrowheart and his big family.

"Everything else, I'd do it again to make sure he made it out alright. But I can't just...you got me talking about me for ever, here." Steve gestures behind them back toward the door they came from. "What've I missed? How have you been, Harrow?"

[westfallcorndog]

Harrow nods along vehemently as Steve talks about the relief of having Bucky back. The idea of bringing him to the Nexus really brings a smile to his face, and he can't help himself but playfully slaps Steve's knee.

He laughs quietly when Steve tries to turn the conversation around on him. "I've been, man, I've been. Got... Nothin' worth sharin' goin' on in my life right now, y'know? Gimme a few months, maybe somethin'll happen. You've been gone a couple'a decades back on Earth, but it's only been, what? Couple'a months here? Life and unlife, it's the same as it's always been." His laugh becomes more honest now and the shaking of his head leaves him looking away.

"Sure would be nice to meet Bucky some day," he mumbles aloud. "Some day."