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.

Comments

[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."