In the last week before the world changed

[captain_rogers]

How many hours he had spent exploring the halls and grounds of the Nexus Hotel, Steve was pretty certain he'd lost track. It surprised him to find that he was not climbing the proverbial (or literal) walls with so much time without a mission, although that might have been largely in part to do with Bucky's presence and what he recognized as a half-masochistic desire to take all the time he could with the other man without spilling the beans. Since their days in the orphanage and their meeting in one of the many Brooklyn back alleys he'd been getting beat up in, all until the war, there hadn't been a day he hadn't been sure what Bucky was up to or where Bucky was.

The war had changed that in ways Steve had never anticipated. What had come after had only driven him further apart from those nostalgia-colored memories of a childhood that was, in retrospect, far from grand.

Despite his promise to his friend that he could hitch a ride back with him, if only he could find his door, Steve had avoided much of investigating the many doors of the hotel as he worked out whether or not such a thing were even possible. That he actually wished for a moment that Stark was there to babble at him in his science-speak about dimensions or temporal paradox or whatever else might have been on the menu was a fact he thought he'd best keep to himself. Best forget entirely before he had to think on that for too long.

Instead he had toured the art gallery more than a dozen times, poked around the library, devoted early mornings and late nights when he was unable to sleep in the basement gym. In between times he unnerved the staff at the bistro with the amount of food he could pack away in a sitting, and how many times a day he could come back for a refill and still have that vaguely hungry feeling gnawing at his belly. Just then, with something unsettling and all too vague itching at the back of his neck and weighing at his shoulders, he buried himself in the cheap sketchbook and pencil he'd picked up in the hotel shop, sitting with his back against the wall of the lobby as he idly sketched bits and pieces of the people who passed through on their way to one place or another.

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[captain_rogers]

Steve wasn’t sure what that meant. Not that he literally did not understand Thor’s words, or that he had not begin to take in details of the man’s appearance that did not fully back up his having come from a year after himself, but that the idea of Loki having been from before New York had consequences he did not even know how to begin wrapping his head around. Thor had been so quick to defend his brother up until those very last days, only faltering in being reminded of how many people Loki had killed on Earth in what amounted to a single weekend.

“That’s understandable,” he said, taking the leap of faith that the Asgardian having acknowledged that his brother wasn’t to be entirely trusted, and proving that he would not forget what had happened (even if it hadn’t happened yet to Loki…a thought that threatened to give Steve a headache if he had to think about that for too long) would mean that he could rely on Thor’s judgment in the matter.

“I ran into a friend of mine here,” he admitted. The subject of Bucky was one almost more personal than any other, and one that he had not felt comfortable speaking of to anyone else he had met at the hotel. “A friend I lost in the war.”

[almightythor]

"I thought that humans did not live so long," Thor said, frowning a little. "Has he too not experienced everything you have experienced?" It seemed to be a common thing with this hotel and Thor wasn't sure how to approach it. He was normally fairly accepting of the unusual and not quick to judge but this place tried his patience with matters like that.

Still, if this was an ally of Steve's, it could be someone that Thor could extend his trust to if things went badly with Loki once more.

[captain_rogers]

None of those he had met in the hotel thus far had been anything but friendly, warm (in manner, if not body temperature) and willing to help him. And yet, as he stood there beside the Asgardian he had fought beside only weeks ago, there seemed to be none he could speak to more freely than Thor. Theirs was an alliance that felt as if it could bleed easily into the friendship shared by all those who had become comrades-in-arms, and while he did not think Stark or some of the others would have understood it, he thought that on the level of one soldier to another, Thor would understood what he meant.

It was in the directness of the other man’s gaze and the open honesty of his speech that allowed Steve to speak to him of things that could not go beyond the two of them, not anything he had read in the man’s S.H.I.E.L.D. file or information he had been given secondhand.

“No, we don’t.” That was easy enough, as while his own mortality (or at least the length of it) was something of a question mark according to Erskine’s words, the basic human lifespan was not up for questioning. “He-” his voice broke, brows furrowing as he searched for what might explain it best or how he might say it in a way that would hurt the least. “He died in that war, Thor. I was there, he- he fell.”

[almightythor]

"And yet he stands here, still healthy and hale," Thor said, musing out loud as he tried to understand yet another of the hotel's particular quirks. It was an unusual place but, as he had experienced more and more over the last few years, Thor's life in general had become very, very unusual.

"Is he sound of mind or is he having trouble understanding this place? It is disorienting to go from one place to another and to go from dead to alive, though I suppose I do not have to tell you that. It is something those of us who fought together probably understand better than most."

[captain_rogers]

Thor mused and Steve found himself nodding along, the fact of Bucky’s presence in the hotel one that had become one that more or less defined the whole of his stay. He had heard so much about the doors that studded the walls of the place and led to worlds he could not have touched in any other way, and yet he had held himself back from every doorway for fear of crossing into some place that his friend could not follow. He had sought out as much of the man’s time as he could manage without raising suspicions, and hated every second he hid the truth from the same man who he had known nearly all his life, who had been with him every step of the way and who had never failed to have his back. Whether it had been a back alley in Brooklyn, or through a sniper scope in Switzerland.

“He seems…bored, actually.” It was said not without humor, as Steve could never not smile even a little when he thought of his friend and the distinctive pout on his face while he was stuck drinking and flirting with every woman he came across (although Steve was sure he hated that). Even as he himself worked to memorize every detail, every expression, every drawl of the other man’s voice in knowing how soon he would lose him again, the joy of being around his friend once more overwhelmed all else. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here, Thor,” he confessed after a moment. “What I’m supposed to tell him. Whether I should stay.”

The reference before to Loki having come before New York had him asking aloud, “Have you told your brother? What happens?”

[almightythor]

"I have told him. We fought bitterly about it, as he claims he has no knowledge of New York and what happened there. I also told him about my mother's death, our mother's death, and it seems to have mended the rift somewhat."

Thor wished he knew how to bridge the gap between he and Loki but it seemed impossible. There was too much bad blood and betrayal, seemingly on both sides, and Thor had always had trouble seeing things from a point of view that was not his own. He had always been blinded by his own opinion and sense of morality.

[captain_rogers]

Where he had heard nothing of Thor's mother or what state she was in at the time of New York, nothing beyond the insinuation in Thor's file that his kind were extremely long-lived, there was no answer to that statement but the one that Steve gave then. "I'm sorry," he said, reaching out to place a hand on the other man's shoulder in a display of empathy that was anything but faked. Whether it had been through a long, drawn out illness as his own mother's death had been, or a sudden event, he understood the pain of having lost a mother all too well.

The years that had passed had only lessened the pain with distance, but never erased it.

"With the time that's between us and them," he said after a moment, searching through his memory for anything he might have read or heard to do with time travel and coming up scarce beyond 1941, "Do you think we could change it? That we could warn them?"

Then, after a moment more, "Or even that we should?"

[almightythor]

"Changing the course of events might cause more problems," Thor said, mulling that over. "Things are meant to occur in a specific sequence. To interrupt it, to change it, even to save someone - it might bring on Ragnarok or something worse."

It could end up being the death of all of them later and perhaps more sinister and Thor didn't want to take the risk.

[captain_rogers]

He had heard of Ragnarok while hunting Schmidt down all those years ago. The stories he had heard were more likely to be copies of copies of anything Thor knew, and as such far from reliable, but it did not take much clarity on the subject to understand that bringing down Ragnarok on their heads was not what he wanted to do.

He nodded after a moment, face solemn but calm. "I understand."

[almightythor]

"It is something I have struggled with long and hard," Thor admitted. It seemed easier to admit weakness to Steve if only because he had the sort of caring warmth that made things feel safe; Thor did not often let down his guard emotionally unless it was to show anger. Never uncertainty or fear, that was for certain.

"But it is for the best because I have to think of the others who reside in Asgard and Midgard and not just myself."

[captain_rogers]

No matter the confusion over his own life and the question of Bucky of past and present, Steve still reached out to lay a hand on the other man's shoulder. There didn't seem to be anything he could say, nothing to say, and what could not be spoken in words could be better communicated with a squeeze of his hand at Thor's shoulder and an evenness of his gaze as he nodded.

[almightythor]

Thor could see why people looked to Steve as a leader. He had the qualities that all good warriors had and then some, something deeper. Thor broke his melancholy for a moment to smile at the other man.

"It is good to have someone who understands."