Archive of Our Own

“Stark. Stark!”

Tony looked over, blinking a little. Stare out at the winter seascape long enough and you started to squint, even with tinted goggles on. Virtanen waved, unnecessarily now that Tony was looking at him.

“There is something on the long-range sonar. They want you to look at it.”

Tony nodded. He turned back to the view for a moment. They were nosing their way through a field of broken ice, large unmoored slabs interspersed with pools of floating slush and the rare patch of visible water, so dark it was almost black. Three years ago this region was impassible to all but the biggest Russian icebreakers. Now Tony was getting through, just, with the Rauta Nuoli: a good, solid Finnish ship, but hardly up to the level of a nuclear-powered icebreaker.

What was good for the expedition was bad for the planet. Well, he was trying to do his bit. Watching the prow cut through a thick layer of slush made him think he should be doing more, but that was a line of thought for when he was back on dry land.

He followed Virtanen into the bridge, pushing the furred hood off his head as he ducked inside. He shoved the goggles up to his forehead and closed his eyes briefly to let them adjust to the much lower light levels. Captain Kivi stood with arms folded behind Møller, the young Greenlandic imaging specialist they’d picked up five years ago out of Nuuk Port at Tony’s insistence. Kivi eyed Tony and Virtanen. Møller was looking at the screen.

“What’ve we got?” Tony asked, making his way across the small space until he could look over Møller’s shoulder. “Ah--!”

“You see, he sees it,” Møller said triumphantly. Captain Kivi grunted, thick gray beard bristling. Møller tapped at the screen with a capped pen. “This lump here, a very strange shape. And not on the charts.”

“Plenty here is not on the charts,” Kivi grunted.

“Yes, yes. But this is different.” Møller tapped at the screen again. “Not big enough to be underwater mountain. Too small too for umiarsuit, a ship. And not moving, so not like to be a school of fish. It is in our target size and rough shape range, best I can see this far out.”

“Must be solid, to throw back that good a reading,” Tony muttered, leaning in closer. “If it is… wouldn’t he be more—I mean, by now, it’s been so long—"

Kivi shrugged. “Maybe, maybe no. Decomposed, in this cold, this salt? Not much. More eaten, I would think, the fish get at him, if the jääkarhu doesn’t. But,” he shrugged again, “also maybe not. Could be too deep, too frozen, and nobody will eat.”

“Oh, so now you agree it is something,” Møller snorted. “What, just because the American says so?”

“It’s something,” Tony said firmly. They’d argue amongst themselves for an hour if he let them get up to speed. “Whether or not it’s what we’ve been looking for, we’ll have to see. What do you think, we head over and try to hook it?”

There was silence for a moment as everyone thought it over. “Too small,” Kivi said eventually. “If the scan is right, too small and too deep. We can take all week trying to hook it out.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, thought it might be. Then I say we dredge and see what comes up.”

“Juu. Ruopata!” Kivi shouted. Virtanen ran back out onto the deck, and more shouting followed as members of the crew rushed to get the dredging equipment ready. Kivi moved over to the nav controls to match their trajectory to the coordinates on the sonar. Tony stared at the screen, that strange little blip.

The odds were in favor of it being nothing. Captain Kivi was right, there really wasn’t much in the way of ocean floor charting for this region. Maybe the Russians had a decent picture, but if they did, they weren’t sharing. So it could easily just be an unexpected minor geological formation. Could be the remnants of a regular shipwreck. Could be a relatively fresh whale fall. All these things were possible. Even likely.

But Kivi had been running the expedition for close to 20 years now, and wasn’t the sort of captain to dredge these waters—and risk disrupting whatever wildlife managed to eke out a meagre frozen living here—at every little pretext. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t just another blip.

Tony closed his eyes again, allowed himself exactly 10 seconds to feel excitement and anticipation. He opened his eyes, pulled his goggles back into place, flipped his hood up, and went back out into the light.

--

He’d been raised on tales of adventure in the North. When Tony was small, when things were still somewhat under control, his father went North once a year, for a week or two at most. By the time Tony was in boarding school, it was 4 months out of the year, spread out over several trips. Once Tony was safely ensconced in college, it got a lot worse: Howard would be gone 6, 7, 8 months out of the year, and was increasingly erratic at home when not on an expedition.

In the end, Tony wasn’t particularly surprised to hear about the car crash. By then Howard was barely paying attention to anything beyond the plan for the next trip out. The man’s life was taking place above the 60^th parallel, and he had nothing left for anything to the south of it. He was going to die before his time anyway; there were so many ways to die on the ice, if it hadn’t been an accident of inattention like the one that ultimately did him in. Sometimes Tony thought that Howard wanted to go out on an expedition, like some great polar explorer of the 19^th century. What a disappointment it must have been for him to die in the US, in a car, like any common civilian.

He knew what Howard was looking for. When he turned 13, Howard deemed him enough of a man to hear the full story. Captain America gave his life for the American people, for a future that he never got to see. If ever a soldier deserved to return to his home and native land, it was Steve Rogers. Tony even agreed with the idea of it, then and now. He just didn’t agree with the monomaniacal focus that Howard brought to bear on the project.

It never hurt Tony the way it seemed to hurt Howard, but of course Howard had actually known the man. To Tony he was just stories, albeit better-detailed and more personal stories than the ones that got written in the history books. Even relegated to the realm of myth, in some ways Captain America was the best part of Tony’s childhood; certainly some of the fondest memories he had of his father were tied up in those rare moments of lucidity when Howard was sober enough to talk about the war without getting maudlin or angry or both.

The way Howard told it, the only unreservedly good thing about the war was Captain America. The only person who was funny and kind and smart and quick and strong enough to impress Howard, ever, was Captain America. Tony hadn’t exactly enjoyed that—knowing he was never going to be as good, in his own father’s eyes, as a long-dead supersoldier—but he did like the stories, and the idea of the hero that emerged from them. Howard wasn’t much given to poetics, but he could spin up a lively image of the Captain: broad shoulders that made the Army tailors despair, quick blue eyes, the bright blond hair kept neat even in a foxhole, the deep determination to do the right thing, an abiding belief that there even was a right thing to be done, an attitude that somehow never got hammered out of the man, no matter how much ugliness he faced.

Tony was pretty sure that Howard never believed in anything like An Actual Path of Righteousness, but he believed that Captain America did, which was almost the same thing. The icy waters of the Arctic ocean could snuff out Steve Rogers’ life, but they couldn’t come close to snuffing out Howard Stark’s belief in Captain America.

This was a Stark tendency. When something was important enough, Tony could feel a hint of that same impulse, a burning obsession just under his skin that could keep him from food and company for days, weeks-- or, on a couple memorable occasions, months-- until the necessary work was done. He didn’t share his father’s specific fixation, but he had his own little quirks, especially later, and—well, he understood it. To an extent.

The one thing Tony would never forgive Howard for was taking Maria out with him.

So Tony had a complicated relationship to the North. At first he wanted very badly to go there and have grand adventures like his father. After his parents died, he wanted nothing to do with the place. He figured it had taken his mother from him, by way of Howard, almost as surely as if she’d slipped into an icy crevasse herself. The expeditions continued, running on contracts that hadn’t yet expired, with little guidance. Reports came in after each one, which he noted with mild annoyance and gave to Pepper for filing and then ignored.

Gradually, as Tony grew up and settled in and started to work in earnest, he found his thoughts turning to the ships that were still going out, at least once a year. Seemed like a waste of money. Not that he was feeling the pinch, but some part of him couldn’t stand to see a job poorly done on his payroll, no matter what he thought of the job itself. He started to do a little research into glaciology. Then a little more research into things like climatologically-impacted fluid dynamics, ship design, ice-penetrating radar technology. He started to get ideas.

If the expeditions were going to continue, better for them to work in a systematic way, instead of just blinding striking out into the ice. If they were going out there anyway, why not have them serve as a sort of testing ground for the latest and greatest in surveying and imaging technology, rather than muddling along with the same old fish finders they’d been running for years? Obie tried to talk him out of it, perhaps seeing an echo of the madness that had consumed Howard, but that, perversely, just made Tony more determined to get involved.

A lot happened since that first decision to take more of an interest in Howard’s old quest. Weapons manufacture was out, green energy was in. Tony fell in and out of favor with the SI Board of Directors more times than anyone could count. Obie fell out of favor so hard he obliterated himself in the landing. Iron Man was born in desert sand and honed to a knife’s edge keenness in New York.

He never spent the kind of time on Arctic expeditions that Howard did. He had Howard’s shining example in front of him, after all, a cautionary tale of what lay in that direction. Tony settled on a one-month commitment each year. One-twelfth of his life, where he would immerse himself in the killing cold and see if he could find what his father never did. Never more than that, though. The other 11 months of the year he kept himself busy with SI and Iron Man, his bots and his own projects and what little remained of his personal life. He kept the ice out of mind when he wasn’t actually out there.

Maybe that was why he’d chosen red and gold for the armor. No color scheme could possibly be farther from that of the far North. Bad enough that the arc reactor glowed a frigid 9,000 K; that was a color borne of its physical properties, nothing much he could do about it unless he installed a filter on the glass, which struck him as too pathetic to even contemplate. But he could surround his unfortunate little accessory with colors that wouldn’t make anyone on the planet think of ice, and let that be a personal reminder that he was his own man, free of the manias that brought his father down.

--

Watching the dredge boom lower into the water was as satisfying and nerve-wracking as any field test, really. This was new tech, one of Tony’s own designs: a dredge system that could be retrofitted to smaller, more mobile, less specialized ships; a cutter head that could be fine-tuned far beyond what was currently available; a boom that could be switched from cutter suction dredging operation to a grab bucket for a non-destructive specimen reclamation mode. All innovations he’d come up with specifically for these expeditions—all innovations that had real commercial impact. Getting to see the latest model in action was as good for SI as it was for private Stark interests.

Tony smiled thinly to himself. There was a balance that Howard never managed to strike.

Inside the bridge, Captain Kivi and Møller were at the controls, operating the dredger and coordinating its movements with what the sonar and ice-penetrating radar told them. Tony stood on the deck with Virtanen and the rest of the crew under the high vault of the blue sky, the Arctic wind tightening the exposed skin of their faces. The boom stirred up frozen foam in white and silver as it sank into the depths, and the wind picked up tiny particles of ice and whipped them at the crew.

The boom shifted this way and that, making small searching motions, leaving little trails in the slush that quickly refilled. Suddenly the entire ship juddered, hard, and the boom jounced in the water. A loud gunfire patter rang out as pieces of ice struck the hull near the waterline. Tony grabbed onto the rail to keep from being thrown off his feet. Virtanen, standing next to him, just spread his boots a little. Several of the crew ran over to the boom and peered down at the place where it disappeared into the water.

“What the hell was that?” Tony shouted over his shoulder, still half turned to stare sat the water. Waves propagated out from their position, rucked up by the ship. Shelf-like ice floes tipped up and down at crazy angles as the water surged beneath them.

“Boom or bucket hit something,” Kivi called back from the cockpit. “Would have shoved us off if not for the spud.”

The spud—a long vertical pole that anchored the ship to the bottom—was an essential component of standard dredging ships, where they were typically used in pairs to fix the ship in place for a dredging sweep, and then shuffle it along as it cleared the ocean, harbor, or canal floor. The Rauta Nuoli had a singular spud, a retrofit of Tony’s own design. It wasn’t strong enough for standard commercial dredging, but the idea was that it might serve well for the lighter dredging that was useful to scientific surveys, or to clear small debris from shipping channels while minimizing disruption to plant and animal life. They used it every time they deployed the dredge, but so far as Tony knew this was the first time its staying power had really been tested. He let go of the railing and ran back to the aft section of the ship, where the spud was located.

He knelt down on the deck, heedless of the freezing cold salt water sloshing across the surface. The clamp that circled the spud where it went through the deck was still in place, but as he leaned closer he could see a small deformation in the metal to one side. It must have bent when the boom struck whatever it had struck and the weight of the whole ship pushed back against the spud. He hissed through his teeth in annoyance and shuffled around on his knees to the clamp’s other side. He propped his goggles up over his eyebrows to get a better look at the mechanism, poked his fingers in carefully, mindful of pinch points and his reduced dexterity in thick gloves. What was this, steel? Cast or forged? If it was cast steel some heads were going to roll when he got home.

“Stark. Stark. Stark!” Tony looked up from the clamp, annoyed. Virtanen took a deep breath with the edged relief of someone who had been trying to get Tony’s attention for a little while. “Møller thinks he has mapped the edges of what we hit. They’re going to bring the boom back up, change heads, make some little cuts to get it free. Then back to the bucket to pick it up.”

“Great, fine,” Tony said. Changing out the boom components that many times would be annoying for the crew, but it wasn’t a big deal. If he could just get back to—

“Stark,” Virtanen insisted. Tony sat all the way back on his heels and spread his hands in a sarcastic what the hell do you want gesture. Unbothered, Virtanen calmly indicated the spud. “To grab, we were right on top of it. To cut, they want to back us off a little. So this—”

“Has to come up, all right, I get it.” Tony clambered to his feet with just a little difficulty. The knees of his heavy canvas pants were soaked, despite the supposed waterproofing. “Fine. Just tell them to go slow, the deck clamp is a little bent out of shape.”

“Yes, sir,” Virtanen said, turning on his heel to go relay this to the cockpit.

There was something inherently sarcastic about Finns obeying orders, Tony thought. Or maybe it was just this crew, and maybe just when he was on board. Rude bastards. He grinned to himself, licking frozen salt spray from his mustache. There was a reason Captain Kivi had stayed on for as long as he had; it would be awfully hypocritical of Tony to mind a little sarcasm and surliness, so long as he was working with the best people for the job. And the crew of the Rauta Nuoli was, so far as he was concerned, the absolute best option for this very particular job.

--

Shards of clouded white ice littered the surface of the water, bits that had broken off when the dredge cutting head had engaged with the obstruction on the ocean floor. Tony fished one out with a long-handled scoop and turned it around thoughtfully in a gloved hand.

Virtanen leaned on the rail next to him, watching. “What are you thinking, Stark?”

“This isn’t very old ice.” Tony held the shard up so that a little sunlight filtered through it. “Not in the geological sense, I mean. You can tell in part by the color. It’s so white because it has hundreds of little bubbles in it. Older ice is under compression for longer, and some of the bubbles get pressed out, especially the small ones. The rest of the ice would be clearer, or bluer.”

“So it may be from our time range. Since we are not looking so far back, in the geological sense.”

“Maybe. You know, here’s something I’ve always found interesting about ice. You leave it undisturbed, and it’s kinda like a time machine. The air trapped in old ice is in a capsule straight from the past.” He turned the shard over in his hands again. “If this is from the right time range, and I let it melt here in the sun, it’ll release little bits of air that it’s been holding onto since World War II. Like re-breathing that air back into the present.”

Virtanen just snorted and shook his head at that. Tony shrugged and flipped the shard of ice around again. The ambient air was so cold, and his gloves were so well-insulated, that it hadn’t yet begun to melt despite all the handling. He toyed with the idea of putting it in a cooler and taking it back to his workshop; he could probably rig something up to sample the air trapped inside those bubbles without contaminating it. He could run tests, see what had changed in all the years since this particular piece of H₂O first solidified. Probably see different pollutants in the air, and wouldn’t that be instructive? To see what had been fouling up the air in the past, and compare it to what was fouling up the air here in the present—

The boom made a loud creaking noise and started to rise out of the water, shedding bits of ice and slush and sheets of water. The metal groaned and the ship tipped a little, but held position. The whole dredging rig was clearly under strain, taking something up from the depths.

Tony tossed the shard of ice back overboard and turned his attention to the dredge boom. Now was not the time to get sidetracked.

--

“Do you see that? Holy shit, do you—”

“Mitä helvettiä!”

“How is that possible? It’s like—"

“Are you seeing this? Am I seeing this?”

“Hän näyttää melkein nukkuvalta…”

“—perfectly preserved, even the fabric is mostly intact, incredible—”

“—is that the shield? Piru! It’s unbelievable--”

Tony leaned over the rail and stared at the enormous chunk of ice that they’d hoisted out of the sea, currently hanging in midair, winched up and secured with an ad hoc rigging net while the crew decided how to get it onto the deck. He pressed his glove to its glassy surface, his fingers splaying out against it. A couple feet away, deep in the heart of the ice, was a man, eyes closed, mouth open a little, blond hair in only slight disarray, preserved as perfectly as the air in a long-frozen bubble.

Tony breathed onto the ice. Its surface clouded briefly, then cleared again as the colder air whipping around the ship enveloped it once more.

“Hello there, Captain.”

--

Kivi poured a generous measure of vodka into the glass in front of Tony. The clear liquid tumbled over the ice cubes and floated them up like miniature ice floes. He poured for Virtanen, Møller, and himself as well, but Tony couldn’t stop staring at the ice cubes bobbing in his glass.

Holy shit.

“Congratulations,” Kivi said, raising his glass. Tony raised his almost on autopilot. “What is the plan now?”

“I have no idea—” Tony started, but that was autopilot too. He stopped, took a sip of vodka, let the burn gentle his throat, and started again. “We need to chisel down that block, get rid of as much of the waste ice as we can so we can actually get it on board. Save some samples for the freezer chest in the hold, we can run tests later. Then we—I guess—we need to think about thawing him out.”

“Is that such a good idea?” Virtanen asked. “I mean, he has been in there all this time. What if exposure to the air makes him… ah… you know, the smell…”

Kivi frowned, thinking. “We could make a tent on the deck, maybe. A place to work, but still cold enough to maybe preserve once he is out. And then—you will be wanting a coffin, yes? For proper burial?”

“That was always the plan,” Tony said. “Get him back to American soil, lay him out in Arlington with a flag for the casket and a stone and full military honors and all that. Back home—” He shrugged, took another long sip of vodka. “If you’re the kinda person who believes in souls, his must’ve been wandering long enough. Bringing him home was the main thing.”

Virtanen nodded, on firmer ground with something related to logistics. “If we call ahead to port, we can have one ready first thing on the docks, no trouble. Good Finnish pine.” He squinted at Tony. “Unless you want American wood.”

“No, Finnish pine is good. Great.” Part of Tony felt like he was having an out-of-body experience, sitting in this close cabin with half-frozen fingers wrapped around a glass too cold to sweat with condensation, Captain America’s body encased in a huge chunk of ice currently swinging from the side of his ship. They were talking about the wood that would be used for Captain America’s casket, for God’s sake.

“Inuulluaqqussut,” Møller said, raising his glass. “Congratulations,” he added when they all stared blankly at him.

Tony took another long sip of vodka. He wondered if his father had ever imagined this day, and, if he had, whether it had looked anything even remotely like this.

--

The final stages of defrosting were going well. They’d hand-hewn much of the larger block of ice away, using picks and axes and chisels, with blowtorches for the stubborn bits. The ice closer in had to be removed with washes of warm water, just enough to loosen it, taking care to not let the water contact the body. It was still astonishing how perfectly it had been preserved, and Tony was not about to let it be damaged through clumsy handling at this stage.

With most of the ice gone it was just a matter of attending to the final details. The Captain’s uniform was frozen stiff; some heating pads, on the lowest setting, were laid all up and down the torso. The hope was that the fabric would still hold once it had been defrosted. Tony wasn’t going to be too upset if it went to pieces—the main thing was preserving the body itself. Still, if they could keep the vintage uniform in the condition it had been in when it went into the water, it would make the kinds of people who cared about military history very happy.

Clumps of hair also still stubbornly held onto ice. Tony had taken charge of this last detail, and the crew were all too happy to pass on the responsibility to someone who could only get mad at himself if it went awry. So Tony sat in a hastily-rigged-up tent on the deck, dressed for the cold so that only his eyes and the tips of his fingers were visible, delicately sponging tepid water onto Captain America’s eyelashes, hopefully removing the ice without causing them all to fall out. Which would be horrible.

A slight breeze shivered through the tent. He couldn’t feel it, bundled up as he was, but the body’s eyelashes fluttered a little. Tony huffed. They should secure the tent flap better. This sort of work required a steady touch, like soldering miniature circuit boards, and any unexpected movement in the work surface was potentially a problem.

The eyelashes fluttered again. Tony started to get up, grumbling about having to fix the tent flap himself, when the body made… a noise. He froze in place, staring down at it. That wasn’t a wind noise, or a ship noise, or a loose-ice-hitting-the-side-of-the-hull noise.

There it was again—something like a very quiet gagging sound.

“What the fuck?” Tony muttered. He leaned closer to the head, a little nervous. Was there… was there an animal in there? Had some sea creature burrowed into the body and made its home there? Was he going to have to deal with the marine biology version of that one scene in Alien?

He reared back as the throat unmistakably rippled, and that muffled gagging noise happened again. That was—that wasn’t—

“Virtanen!”

“Stark?” Virtanen poked his head into the tent, looking from the body to Tony and back again in confusion.

“It’s… it’s… he’s…” Tony flailed, then pointed dramatically at the body as it did its little gagging routine again.

Virtanen’s eyes widened. “Mitä helvettiä?!”

“I don’t know,” Tony moaned, “I don’t know how it’s—but I think he’s—god, I’m losing my fucking mind, help me turn him on his side.”

“Hitto soikoon,” Virtanen muttered, “hell’s bells,” but he came up beside Tony and between the two of them they managed to carefully turn the body onto its side. The limbs were still rather stiff, but Tony dragged one leg forward and got one hand underneath the head in an approximation of the recovery position. Virtanen nervously tugged one of the heating pads away. “What do we—”

“Clear the mouth,” Tony said. Virtanen looked up, eyes even wider, and they stared at each other for a moment. They both looked back down as the body twitched, a very small motion, mostly concentrated in the neck.

“Jumalauta,” Virtanen moaned.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Fuck.” He wished he wasn’t wearing fingerless gloves, but there was nothing for it. “Hold it—hold him, one hand on the head, one on the shoulder, I’m going to—ok…”

Virtanen swallowed hard and moved into position, letting out a tiny noise of nervous disgust as he touched the wet hair. Tony took a deep breath and grasped the lower jaw firmly with one hand. He pried downwards, careful steady pressure, until the mouth opened. With his other hand he quickly reached in—it was cold inside, and that was the tongue, oh gross, gross gross gross—and swept the mouth free of obstruction.

Slush and salty water splashed out onto the deck. For a single, held-breath moment, nothing happened. Then the body convulsed hard from the abdomen up, and a great wave of water poured out of the mouth and nostrils like it had been shot from a hose.

Tony swore, jumped back, then jumped forward again and grabbed the head to keep it from turning over and reswallowing the water, which was still streaming out in disgusting frothing gray pulses. Virtanen grabbed the shoulders, preventing the body from convulsing itself off the worktable. After a minute he started hesitantly patting it between the shoulder blades. Their eyes met as it shuddered and shook and expelled huge quantities of ocean water and slush.

“Fuck,” Tony said.

--

They all stared at the body—at Captain America—in silence. He was still on his side, just as Tony had arranged him, now bolstered all around with neon orange emergency flotation vests to keep him in the correct position. He wasn’t conscious, and his breathing was uneven, faint, with a nasty wet rattle to it. But he was breathing.

Eventually Kivi’s eyes drifted up towards Tony’s.

Tony held up his hands. “I swear to you, so far as I knew, we were looking for a body. A skeleton, even. I was hoping for something I could take back for a decent American funeral service. That’s all.”

“This man is alive,” Kivi said bluntly.

“How is this possible?” Møller whispered. An entire bottle of Kahlua was clutched in his hands like the world’s most incongruous security blanket.

Tony closed his eyes, shook his head, opened them again to stare at the unreal bulk of Captain America’s upmost shoulder, rising and falling slightly. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve been thinking, and…” He paused. Captain Kivi had been on the expedition for a long time, and the entire crew knew who they were looking for, but Tony wasn’t sure how much any of them knew about exactly what Captain America was. He didn’t know if they knew about the serum, didn’t know if they should know about the serum. “You know that he wasn’t always Captain America. The—procedure that made him Captain America, it changed him.”

Kivi and Virtanen both nodded. Møller just clutched his bottle a little more tightly to his chest.

“I don’t know exactly how this might work. But the only thing I can think is that this… this way he was changed, it interacted somehow with the extreme cold. And maybe the saltwater. And instead of killing him, it just… suspended him.”

“Suspended,” Kivi repeated. “Like kryogeniikkaa.”

“Exactly like cryogenics. Only… accidental cryogenics.”

“Will he remember, do you think?” Møller asked.

Tony shrugged helplessly. “He might not even wake up. I really have no idea. He could have massive brain damage for all we know. He might thaw all the way out and then die from medical shock. He could wake up and have no idea who he is, or have reduced mental capacity, or… I mean, anything. He’s been in the ice for decades.” He moved a little closer to the table, enough to put a hand ruefully on one of the flotation vests. “If I’d had any idea this was even a remote possibility, I would’ve had the ship outfitted with a full medical suite. At least a proper hospital bed. As it is…”

“We have basic hypothermia protocol, supplies for it, and things for frostbite,” Virtanen said slowly. “We can treat him like a… like a person who fell overboard. But if he needs more than that, we are not equipped.”

“The thing that makes him Captain America,” Tony said, choosing his words carefully. “It might help. One of the things that it did, as I understand it, was make him heal better, and heal faster. Which I am guessing partly explains current circumstances. And that might be enough to fix, uh, whatever is wrong with him at this point. But we are way out of anyone’s depth here. I may have a handful of doctorates, but I’m not that kind of doctor. This situation calls for actual medical expertise.”

“We are at least a month out from Helsinki if the weather is good,” Virtanen pointed out. “More if there are storms, or bad traffic in the Danish straits.”

Møller swallowed hard. “We could go to Greenland, maybe. Ittoqqortoormiit might just be open, and we might be able to get a helicopter from there to hospital on the other coast.” They all looked at him. He shrugged weakly. “But the bay might also be frozen, this time of year.”

Kivi shook his head. “We may as well go to Iceland if we go that far west.” He combed a gloved hand through his thick beard thoughtfully. “If we need real hospital, I think the best, closest option is Svalbard. The Isfjorden should be clear, they keep a good eye on it. But if we need real real hospital, much as I do not want to deal with mainland Norwegians, I think we need to put in there. Maybe at Tromsø.”

“Probably a week even to Svalbard,” Virtanen said.

“We should lay in a course for Longyearbyen, then,” Tony said, thinking out loud. “Maybe they can stabilize him there, enough so we can get him to Tromsø if we need to. I have to imagine that a hospital on Svalbard would be good at dealing with cold-related injuries, even if they’re good for nothing else. And if things go bad along the way… well, we’ll be closer to the mainland than we are right now.” Not for the first time, he wished he could bring the armor along on trips like this. If he could just figure out a way to pack it down—a large suitcase or piece of rolling luggage would do--

“I will talk to the crew.” Kivi paused, grimaced. “And explain the situation.”

“Better you than me,” Tony muttered. Virtanen chuffed out a short laugh.

“But you have to decide what we do now—what we do with him. I run the ship, but this is a Stark expedition. So far as I know, I run scientific survey, salvage operations. And this—” Kivi gestured at Captain America’s prone form—“is, what do you say, above my pay grade?”

“Mine too, I think,” Tony sighed.

“I did not think anything on this planet was above your pay grade,” Virtanen said dryly.

--

Did you know? Tony wondered. It was late, and he stared up at the ceiling of his tiny cabin as he lay in his narrow bunk. Not that there was anything to see, aside from the plating seams and rivets, a few chips in the paint. Did you know that there was a chance he was still alive?

Maybe Howard suspected what the serum could do. Maybe he hoped. Did this possibility—the possibility of Captain America surviving the crash, surviving the depths of the Arctic for so many years—explain the fervency of Howard’s obsession? Or had he come to that obsession without anything so bright as hope, truly just fixated on a dead body that he wanted to possess one last time?

Tony didn’t know which was worse. At least the obsession would make a little more sense if Howard thought he was rescuing a Steve Rogers who was still capable of being rescued. But the idea of the man staying intact and alive for all those years—it was monstrous. If Howard knew that was a possibility and never said a word about it…

Tony didn’t know.

And here, in the dark of night, alone in his cabin, with nothing but miles and miles of Arctic ocean, icebergs, and ice floes pressing in from all sides, north of almost everything in the world, it felt like Howard’s ghost was closer than usual. Like any moment now a translucent version of that hard face might shimmer into existence, mustache tilted in the sneer he habitually wore around Tony, a ghostly glass of bourbon in one hand.

And what if I did know, boy? Would it make a damn difference? Whether he was dead or alive, I was the only one left who’d made him what he was. He’s mine, my salvage, my intellectual property, my right. I had to find him. I had to have him. But if it couldn’t be me, at least it’s a Stark, even if it’s a lily-livered pansy little shit like you. He’s your heritage, boy. Make the most of it.

Tony’s pajamas were made of the most advanced heat-retaining fabrics, and his bedding was the highest expedition-grade quality available, but under the blankets, he still shivered.

--

The crew seemed to mostly accept whatever it was that Kivi told them. There was only a little joking about demons and the unnatural. Still, Tony noticed that about half the crew went out of their way to avoid passing in front of the tent’s opening.

They couldn’t spare the night watchman to sit with him, but during the day they tried to have someone in the tent at all times, monitoring the Captain for changes. If his health—tenuous and ill-understood as it was—started to deteriorate, there probably wasn’t much they could do to keep him alive until they reached land. But they could be alert to signs of new frostbite or increasing wakefulness.

“Or if he starts rotting,” Møller said. Tony stared at him. Møller shrugged. “Hey, I am just saying. We do not know that he is out of the forest yet. Sure, he seems alive—”

“Møller, he’s got a pulse and a respiratory rate—”

“--but like you said, this is way out of any of our depths. Maybe he is becoming, ah, you would say animate? but not alive.”

“You mean like a zombie,” Tony said tiredly.

Møller nodded. “Night of the Living Dead, yes? We are off the charts. This is not a thing that has happened before, and I think maybe he is showing some pieces of life without actually being alive. That is as likely as him being alive all the way.”

“We sure are off the charts,” Tony muttered. “I mean, I guess we don’t have a way to actually disprove that theory… wish we had the equipment to do an EEG… but I don’t think he’s going to wake up and start trying to eat our brains.”

Møller shrugged. “That is what they all say, yes? If he does, we simply must be ready.”

“I’ll bear that in mind for my shift.”

“Good luck,” Møller said brightly. Tony rolled his eyes and lifted a hand to catch the tent flap, ducking in as Møller ducked out. He waited the obligatory moment to let his eyes adjust, then walked over to the camp chair they’d set up next to the table, dropping himself into it with a groan. He pushed his hood off and tipped his head back, letting the base of his skull rest on the thick ruff of fur as he propped his feet up on the foam cooler they had tied down under the table.

The radar bounce from the nearest weather buoy showed a storm to their south. They’d need to wait at least another couple days before they could resume their course towards Svalbard. Annoying, but there was nothing he could do about it. All the money in the world still didn’t mean he could control the weather.

Maybe he should look into weather control satellites. That was a thing that would potentially benefit billions, and totally wasn’t a supervillainous project at all.

He tugged off one glove with his teeth and pulled a tablet out of his coat, one of the special winterized versions with the cold-proofed silicone shell that he always brought along during Expedition Month, and set to work on some preliminary sketches. Maybe the satellites could be manufactured sustainably-- that would go over well, given their intended use. You didn’t mass-produce satellites, though, and that made sustainable manufacturing, which was much more cost-effective at scale, a tricky proposition. Maybe it would be enough to make them with sustainably-sourced materials…

An enjoyable couple of hours passed like that. Engrossed in a new set of designs, Tony could almost forget about the cold, the harsh wind that the tent only mostly cut, the nasty wet sound of Captain America’s fitful breathing— actually, as soon as he thought about it, he realized that the rattle had smoothed itself away sometime while he was distracted, and the Captain was breathing strongly now, with a regular rhythm, healthy inhalations and clear exhalations.

“Huh,” Tony said. He saved his work, stood up, setting the tablet in the chair, and put both hands on the edge of the table. He leaned on it—the legs were bolted to the deck, it wasn’t going anywhere-- and stared down at the Captain thoughtfully.

They’d cleaned him up as best they could. His face was still pale, but it had lost the sick grayish pallor it had had straight out of the ice. The tip of his nose had been nearly white, and there had been much speculation about whether or not it would blacken with frostbite when exposed to the air, but now it looked like the opposite was happening: it seemed healthy, maybe even with a hint of pink. Someone (not Tony) had taken the time to comb his hair out so that it no longer hung in lank tangles across his forehead. Someone (not Tony) had carefully removed the old uniform and somehow had gotten the lax body into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, then draped a thick felt blanket on top of him.

He looked young, now that Tony stopped to really look at him as something other than a dead body or a freaky example of science run amok. The Captain America from Howard’s stories was a hero who always knew what had to be done and just how to do it. But this Captain America, despite the broad shoulders, was barely a man; he looked younger than Tony. He could easily be a green crewmate on his inaugural trip out to sea, exhausted by a hard day of swabbing the decks or whatever, who fell asleep on the first flat, dry surface he could find. Tony’s hands itched with the urge to tuck him in and pat him on the head.

Captain America snuffled in his sleep. Tony smiled to himself—cute—then jumped back half a step. Whoa. Whoa. That was almost like—

Captain America’s hand, the one not pillowed under his head, came up from under the blanket and rubbed clumsily at his closed eyes. The movement dislodged a flotation vest, which fell onto the deck with a soft thump.

Tony definitely, definitely needed to call someone. He needed someone else here right fucking now. He needed someone to—

Captain America opened his eyes.

Blue, Tony thought, very very blue, and then, shit.

--

“You’re ok, you’re ok, you’re among friends. Americans. Well, one American and a bunch of Finns. And one Greenlander. But I’m paying for everything, that makes it American. Uh, I’m the American, by the way. I guess we are sailing under a Finnish flag. But really this is an American undertaking.”

Captain America’s eyes got wider and wider during this little speech. Oh god, Tony was not doing this right. Sure, just throw a handful of word-vomit at the poor guy, that was definitely how you helped someone wake up from a multi-decade… nap? Coma? State of suspended animation? Whatever they were going to call this. Shit, hadn’t Finland been fighting with the Axis powers at one point? Had they switched sides by the time Captain America’s plane went down? He couldn’t remember. Did he just tell Captain America that he was on a boat full of probable Nazis?

Captain America’s lips moved. No sound came out. Tony stared at him nervously, watched as he tried to lick his lips. Right, this he could do. He darted in to grab a bottle of water from the cooler under the table and stood back up warily.

“OK, your mouth is probably pretty dry? I have—there’s water here. I’m going to help you drink some, ok, but you have to go slow. I’m going to have to touch you to help.” He uncapped the water and very, very gently touched the side of Captain America’s face, tilting his head slightly. Those blue eyes followed him—definitely focusing at close range, great—but there was no reaction otherwise. Tony carefully tipped a little water into his mouth, just enough to wet his lips and tongue. When that seemed to go all right, he tipped in a little more, until he was feeding Captain America water in a slow trickle. After about half the bottle was gone, he stepped back.

“Where’m I?” Captain America’s voice was rougher than rough, whispery and jagged like his vocal cords were being dragged over loose gravel. He’d been frozen for over 60 years, though, so the fact that he was talking at all was pretty goddamn remarkable.

“You’re on the Rauta Nuoli, a Finnish research ship currently in the Arctic Ocean north of Russia—and I mean very north of Russia. We think you must have been jettisoned out of the wreck and then drifted—anyway. Uh. That’s where you are.”

“Who—” Captain America’s eyes closed. “Said y’were ‘merican.”

“Yeah. I’m American as they come, a real defender of capitalism right here. From New York, even.” Tony fretted for a moment—what to say, how much to share—before deciding, fuck it, wasn’t like there was a playbook for this particular interaction. “Your war’s over, Captain. We won. America and the Allies, I mean. Hooray for democracy.”

A huge scratchy sigh deflated the Captain briefly. His eyes fluttered back open, blinking blearily. “What… what day’s it?”

“It’s Thursday, October 13.” Tony frowned. “But that’s not the question you should be asking.”

Captain America peered at him, innocent and trusting, or at least still too medically compromised to react any other way.

Tony smiled what he hoped was an apologetic smile. “Welcome to the year 2011, Captain.”

--

Tolerance of the situation only extended so far. There were no fresh accusations of witchcraft or anything like that, but none of the crew wanted to bunk with a revived Captain America, and he couldn’t very well stay in a tent on the deck now that he was awake. Tony could see Kivi working himself up to the responsibility, and stepped in to take it on first. Sleeping on the floor of his very small cabin was not going to be comfortable, but it was probably his duty as an American, or something. And it might only be for a few days. He was hoping they’d be able to fly out of Svalbard, although there was still the thorny issue of how to get on a Norwegian airplane with a man who had neither current passport nor any other internationally recognized form of identification.

It took both Tony and Virtanen, one on either side, to walk Captain America belowdecks to Tony’s cabin. Tony wished, yet again, that they had more advanced medical equipment on board. Was the Captain just stiff, as anyone would be after staying in a single position for decades? Were they dealing with muscular or skeletal atrophy? Could he have internal frostbite? Was ‘internal frostbite’ even a thing? They had no way to tell. All he knew for sure was that Captain America could move, but not well, not much on his own, and he grimaced in pain when they had him up on his feet.

There was real relief on his face by the time they tipped him onto Tony’s bunk. It was a tight fit on Tony and wasn’t quite long enough for the Captain to stretch out fully prone, so they piled the pillows up at one end and helped him lean against them. With his head and shoulders propped up a bit, he could just about fit his feet onto the bunk. Someone had gotten thick wool socks onto him at some point, but nobody had thought to find a spare pair of boots.

Tony stared down at him, hating this helpless flailing. They simply weren’t prepared for this. The expedition had never been set up to bring in a living person, someone who might have actual needs beyond simple storage. This man should be in a hospital, not crammed into a ship’s sleeping berth with sheets that hadn’t been washed since they got underway.

“OK?” Virtanen asked. Tony nodded. “OK. I want to check the weather beacon again, see if we can get moving. So.” Virtanen looked at Captain America, waited patiently until Captain America looked up at him. “If you need something Stark cannot provide, you ask for me. Jouko Virtanen. Anyone on the ship, you ask.” That speech made, he clapped Tony on the shoulder briefly—incredibly demonstrative, for him—and left.

“Right,” Tony said. Captain America’s gaze turned to him. “I’d ask if you were doing ok, but I guess that’s a pretty stupid question right now.”

Something resembling a smile rippled across Captain America’s face for a moment before everything slipped back into a pale neutral mask, animated mostly by those bright clear blue eyes. “That man called you ‘Stark.’”

“He sure did,” Tony said, very tightly.

“Do you know…” The Captain paused, like he wasn’t sure what question to ask. “Are you…”

Tony put a hand up over his mouth to hide a grimace. He didn’t want to do this. If he had to do this at all, he would have preferred to do it back on American soil, after he’d slept a few nights in a real bed, and had a real shower, and got a good haircut, and had a chance to put on some proper clothes that made him feel sleek and powerful and in control. Right now he was shaggy and unkempt, his face and cheeks were peeling from windburn, he had an owl-eyed sunburn from the goggles, and he was wearing several layers of shapeless insulating clothing, all of which smelled like brine and fish. He was in the far North. Howard was already far too present. Tony didn’t want to talk about him.

He lowered his hand and stepped back to the opposite wall, let himself slide down it until he was sitting on the floor, even though he knew that dragging his parka down the wall like that would leave a scrim of salt that he’d need to scrape off later. Captain America stared at him warily.

“It’s 2011,” he said.

“You said that before,” Captain America said softly. “Not sure I believe it. But I don’t know—right now I don’t know what—”

“Yeah, I bet. This is a little mind-blowing for me, I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. But I promise you that I’m telling you the truth. And, in fact, the thing you don’t know how to ask about is probably the best proof of it you’re gonna get out here.” Tony inhaled deeply, held it for a beat with his eyes closed. When he opened them again, Captain America was staring at him very intently, almost searchingly, those blue eyes making small darting motions as he looked at every part of Tony’s face.

“You knew Howard Stark,” Tony said, only just managing to stop himself from grimacing again as the name passed his lips. “My name is Tony Stark. I’m his son.”

Captain America reared back, although he couldn’t go very far in the shallow berth. “You can’t be,” he whispered, eyes still locked on Tony’s face. “Howard doesn’t have a son. He’s not even married. He’s definitely not old enough to—you can’t be—"

Tony thought about arguing, but opted to just unzip his parka, shoving it off his shoulders. The next layer down was a thick, almost felted wool sweater, much more function than fashion; it wasn’t totally unlike a wool sweater from the 30s or 40s. He pushed his hair out of his face and turned his head slightly, letting the Captain get a good look at his bone structure.

He knew that he looked a lot like Howard. He wasn’t happy about it, but he doubted someone who had known Howard well would be able to miss it.

Captain America shook his head, eyes still not leaving Tony’s face. “You must be a… a cousin, or something. A secret brother…”

Tony smiled, only a little grimly. “Careful, Captain, you’ll tie yourself up in knots, reaching like that. The simplest answer is the right one in this case. Howard Stark married Maria Carbonell after he came home from the war. They had one child, a boy. Me. Anthony Edward Stark.” He thumped the metal wall next to him. “This ship is the latest to run a series of annual expeditions to the Arctic, funded by Stark Industries. Started by my father. They’ve been going for decades; they never stopped.” He finally managed a real smile for the Captain, even if it was a slightly sad one. “Howard never stopped looking for you. I just picked up the reins and kept it going.”

The expression on Captain America’s face was clearly sliding towards one of distress. “You can’t be,” he repeated. “Sure you look like him, but you can’t… you’re too…”

“If you say old, Captain, I’m going to be very hurt.”

“But you are.”

“Truly wounded,” Tony sighed. “I should point out that you are not seeing me at my best. I don’t normally walk around looking like I’ve been living on a deep-sea research vessel for almost a month. Back in New York I’m much better maintained. But for our purposes, that doesn’t even matter, does it? Any adult age for me is too old for what your brain is telling you. You’ve gotta listen to your eyes over your brain on this one. It’s the honest-to-god truth. We’re in the year 2011,” he repeated. “Stark Industries is me now. I’m sorry.”

Captain America put his head into his heads. Tony shifted uncomfortably, not entirely sure how to respond to that. Should he get up and… do something? Pat the man on the shoulder? Would it be better to leave the room? But it was only a minute or so—a long, agonizing minute—before Captain America looked up again. His eyes were mercifully dry, if somewhat hollow.

“I’m sorry. You’re… this is just. I still don’t know what to believe. It’s impossible. You can’t be Howard’s son, even if you do have his looks. You just can’t be. You say you’re from New York, and you do sound American, but it’s not really a New York accent, it’s not right. It can’t… it can’t possibly be 2011. But I’ve been staring at your coat, and it oughta be a wool or a waxed canvas or a leather, but I can’t… I can’t work out what sorta fabric it is. I’ve never seen something like that.”

“Yeah, the outer shell is an expanded polytetrafluoroethylene interwoven with ballistic nylon fibers. Waterproof, tough… not particularly warm, but there are layers under the shell that do most of the heat insulation. They definitely didn’t have anything like it in your day.” Tony shoved off from the floor and heaved himself upright, pulling the parka up with him. He brought it over to the bunk, hesitated, then knelt at the side of the bed and held out a sleeve. Captain America raised a hand, shaking slightly, and felt at the fabric. Tony smiled encouragement. (Peripheral nerve endings must be healed or healing, good progress.)

“That’s something,” Captain America said quietly. “That’s really…” He took in a slow, careful, deliberate breath and looked up into Tony’s face again. “It’s really 2011?”

“Really. Yeah.”

“And the war’s really over.”

“Yes.”

“We really won,” Captain America said, the look on his face a mix of relief, exhaustion, and a bone-deep sadness as he eased his head back onto the pillows.

“The Allied Forces won,” Tony said quietly. “I know this isn’t—it can’t be what you imagined for yourself. But the future you’re in now, it’s a future you helped secure. I don’t think any of this would be here if it wasn’t for what you and your friends did. I know I wouldn’t be here, for sure.” A wild urge to reach out and stroke Captain America’s hair suddenly rose up in him, but Tony clenched his hands in the parka instead. “I know it’s probably too much to take in right now, and that’s normal. I mean, I guess? The whole situation is highly abnormal. But I hope that once you’ve had some time to come to terms with, uh… everything, you’ll remember that. What you endured in the war—the sacrifices, all of it-- it made the modern world as we know it possible. You did good.”

Captain America’s head shifted on the pillows, turning his face slightly towards Tony. “And you. You’re really Howard’s boy.”

Tony grit his teeth, then deliberately relaxed his jaw. “I am.”

“Howard’s… retired?” Captain America asked, tentative, like he was trying the concept on for size.

“No. He’s, uh, not,” Tony said, then decided, fuck it. “He’s gone. Dead. It’s been a long time.”

Captain America’s face started to sort of… crumple, as though it were collapsing inwards. “Are they… are they all…”

“Ah, jeez. I don’t know. We’d have to… you’d need to give me names, and I could check. But I’m sure some of the people you knew—I mean, it’s been a really long time, Captain,” and this was awful, it was cruel, but Tony wasn’t going to lie to Captain America. Most of the people he knew from his original time probably were dead. But the pain that wrenched its way across that somehow still-young face was horrible. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, Tony thought, and he leaned over the bunk and pulled Captain America into an awkward hug.

Captain America clung to him, face buried in Tony’s neck, arms wrapped around Tony’s shoulders-- thick, strong arms, not the arms of someone with muscular atrophy—fingers clenched tight in Tony’s sweater, breath unsteady again, but this time with emotion, not seawater. “There, there,” Tony murmured, which was perhaps the stupidest thing he’d ever said while sober, but he’d already done enough damage with the truth, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say when faced with a double armful of heavy, shaking, anachronistic soldier.

--

They stayed just outside the storm for two days, but on the third day the winds changed and their luck ran out. Within the space of a couple hours the bright blue midday sky turned black with clouds and the tiny wavelets of a calm ocean whipped up into a jagged frenzy of peaks. Sheets of hail alternated with freezing rain, blowing in sideways. And this was just the edges of the front. The crew raced to secure everything on deck in case they found themselves driven any deeper into the storm.

Tony was no sailor, but he’d been on enough expeditions, and he knew the Rauta Nuoli well enough, to help out in a pinch. Getting suddenly caught up in a bad autumn storm was definitely a pinch. He was up on the deck with Laaksonen—one of the younger crew members who’d joined the expedition just last year—trying to take down and stow the tent. There had been no great rush to deal with it before, even once Captain America was no longer stashed inside. Bad decision, Tony thought, grimly, as they grappled with one of the lines while the wind tried to tear it away.

“What can I do to help?”

“Excuse me?” Tony turned, as much as he was able to without losing his grip on the line, to see Captain America standing in the doorway to the stairs that led down to the cabins-- although ‘standing’ might have been giving him too much credit. He was upright, for sure, but he was also leaning at an alarming angle and gripping the doorframe with a desperation that suggested it might be the main thing keeping him off the deck.

“How can I help?” Captain America repeated, raising his voice a little to be heard over the howling wind.

“Jesus Christ, get back belowdecks!” Tony yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Hullu kuollut mies,” Laaksonen muttered, hauling down hard on the lines opposite Tony. Crazy dead man.

“Hänellä ei ole edes kenkiä,” Tony said. He doesn’t even have shoes. Laaksonen laughed in agreement as he wrestled one corner of the tent back down. Between the two of them they managed to secure the corner to the bolts welded to the deck. Once it was all tied down, it would be easier to remove, but there was no point in freeing a corner or side until the whole thing was secured; otherwise they were just creating a flying, flapping hazard. Tony had learned about flying, flapping hazards on his very first expedition out, and it wasn’t the kind of lesson that was easily forgotten.

Tony threw himself at the next tent corner, angling his body to counteract the force of the wind. Laaksonen tried to do the same on a third corner, with less effective results. Captain America was still teetering in the doorway behind them, but Tony wasn’t sure what to do with that, so he opted to simply ignore it for the time being.

It felt like the wind was getting stronger with every passing minute. “Hurry up!” Tony yelled at Laaksonen. “The storm is—” But he didn’t have time to say just what the storm was, because the next gust of wind blew Laaksonen clean off his feet. At the same time a huge swell of water tilted the deck to a nearly 75 degree slope. Laaksonen slid towards the rail, scrabbling desperately for the closest tent line. Freezing cold water and bits of hail skittered down the deck around him and sluiced into the foamy black waters below.

Tony didn’t even think; he just threw himself forward, winding whatever tent line he could grab around his right wrist and arm in the same motion. He went down on one hip and into an only semi-controlled slide down the deck, then flipped himself over so he was sliding mostly on his belly, free arm outstretched, eyes locked on Laaksonen, whose own eyes were wide with panic—

Tony clamped down on one of Laaksonen’s wrists, gripping hard at the gap between Laaksonen’s glove and his parka sleeve. Laaksonen’s boots swung out under the rail into the empty space beyond the edge of the deck, gravity and wind both pulling at him. The lines that Tony had hastily wrapped around his arm went taut at the end of their length with a hard jolt that jerked his whole body around and slammed his chin into the deck; his left-handed grip on Laaksonen didn’t falter, but his right arm felt like it had been wrenched out of the socket.

Laaksonen was staring up at him in silent panic. Tony flexed his jaw, testing—sore but moveable. Maybe something was broken, but at least he could still work with it. He inhaled, freezing salt spray stinging his nose and throat, and yelled as loud as he could. “Get your other hand up and grab the rail!” Despite the shock and fear, Laaksonen immediately flailed for the rail. His gloves glanced off it, ice making the metal slick, adrenaline making his fingers clumsy.

The ship was starting to list, very slightly, back in the opposite direction. Tony groaned, closed his eyes, and pulled back against his tethered arm, not exactly dragging Laaksonen all the way back onto the deck, but giving him a little more leverage. The pain was a fire-streaked burn through his shoulder, all up his arm and down his back and side, but after a moment he felt a little less pressure on his other hand and opened his eyes. Laaksonen had grabbed onto the rail and was taking a bit of his own body weight again.

“Hyvä jätkä,” Tony said. Good dude. “Stay with me here, just hold on.”

He started slowly wriggling his legs under himself, trying to reverse the direction of his body without the use of either arm. It hurt like hell, but simple physics meant that he could inch Laaksonen up the deck that way, enough to get him out of immediate danger, at least. The soles of Laaksonen’s boots were just clearing the edge when Virtanen appeared, shouting in Finnish so rapid that it just sounded like a string of looped-together vowels. Virtanen pulled Tony by his right arm—Tony slid a little further across the deck and whimpered from the pain—then moved to grab Laaksonen under both arms and drag him up towards the center of the ship.

More hands appeared from somewhere behind Tony, picking him up off the deck, cutting the lines that still roped him to the ship. He fought them for a moment, twisting around and ignoring the Finnish shouting that resulted, until he could see Virtanen standing over Laaksonen, who was sitting up with his back against the bridge wall, looking stunned but generally all right.

“Good, great,” Tony said, and promptly lost consciousness.

--

A confused couple of days followed. Tony was awake for some of it, but he didn’t retain much of anything; people came and went in a blur of colors and sounds that he didn’t feel any real urgency to react to. The next time he woke up and really felt awake, there was a large gray beard nearby bristling in his direction.

“How do you feel?” Captain Kivi asked, glowering from behind the beard.

Tony blinked a few times, thinking about that. He was back in his own bunk, lying on top of the blankets. He rolled his jaw around, looked down and watched himself make a fist with his right hand. The arm itself was held tight to his chest by a blue fabric sling. “I’d give me a solid 6.5 out of 10.”

Kivi nodded. “Your arm, it was…” He made a popping noise with his tongue. Tony winced. “Virtanen put it back. You have some bruises on your front arm. Lucky it was not cuts, you have a good anorak. Also three stitches in the chin.”

A small meep of alarm escaped Tony without his permission. He quickly felt at his chin with his unbound left hand. There sure were a few stitches there, in amongst the slightly-too-long hair of his goatee. “You people better not have disfigured me.”

“Kuka näki eron?” Kivi muttered, rolling his eyes.

“I heard that, and my adoring public definitely will be able to tell the difference if you guys did a hack job.”

“I am sure you will survive it.” Kivi tapped the side of his own head. “Probably you have a concussion also.”

Tony sighed. “Brain damage, fabulous. I knew it was a possibility when I, you know, started really doing the whole Iron Man thing. Didn’t think I had to worry too much out here.”

Kivi sat down; Tony blinked again, and saw that someone had dragged a camp chair into his cabin. The space was so tight that, when sitting, Kivi’s knees touched the edge of the bunk. “I run a good ship,” Kivi said. “But we are in the Arctic. No matter how good a ship I run, this is not a safe thing that we do.”

“No, I know,” Tony said. He closed his eyes briefly and concentrated on the motion of the ship. “We’re through the storm? Everyone ok?”

“Yes, yes. Laaksonen is fine. Better than you, even.” Kivi lapsed into silence for a long moment, not quite making eye contact. In almost any other setting, Tony would have started squirming. But he was used to this from expedition teammates—most of the Finns he’d met, really—well, but Møller did it too, so maybe it was Northerners in general. Or maybe it was just a Rauta Nuoli thing. Anyway: Tony was used to it, so he sat in the silence, letting himself concentrate on different parts of his body, feeling how the intensity of pain roved around as his attention did.

After a bit Kivi shifted his gaze; again, not quite making eye contact, but looking slightly above Tony’s sightline this time instead of below it. “You did a good thing. You reacted like real crew, and there is no tragedy as a result.”

Tony waved his good arm a little. “No big deal. I’m Iron Man, I’m a superhero, this is kind of my thing, you know.”

“You do not have the Iron Man suit here,” Kivi pointed out. “Here you are Tony Stark, American man with money.” He leaned back in the seat and clapped his hands down on his knees, looking satisfied. “I knew you could help already, but it is good to know you are really crew.”

“OK. Um.” Tony did squirm now, but only a little, and just because he wasn’t sure what the correct response was for that sort of thing. “You’re welcome?” he tried.

Kivi nodded once and abruptly stood up. “Three days to Svalbard, unless another thing happens. You will rest.” With that, he turned and left the cabin.

Tony barely had a second to process any of that before Virtanen poked his head in. “Are you awake-awake?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” Virtanen came in and put his hands on the back of the chair, but didn’t sit down. “Møller is very interested to know if you have become soft in the brain.”

“Lovely to see that everyone’s so concerned,” Tony said.

Virtanen shrugged. “Well, I will tell him that you are a sharp-headed asshole like always. But your secret now is out, there is no taking it back.”

Tony squinted at him in confusion. “Secret? What secret?”

Virtanen grinned, and leaned in, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “You are not really an asshole at all.” Tony’s face must have done something that reflected the not-wholly-pleasant effect of those words—on the one hand, he did want most people to think he was an asshole, that was safer and easier, there was no way for him to disappoint anyone if they never liked him in the first place; on the other hand, he’d been working with the core crew for years, and did they really still…? Virtanen rolled his eyes at him. “Of course I already know this. Captain Kivi already knows this. Even Møller already knows this. But the rest of the crew, they only know it a little, especially the ones who are alokas, rookie. Now they know it like we do, and you will not be able to pretend to be such a big asshole to keep them out of your hair.”

Tony looked down at his lap. “You guys are making a much bigger deal of this than it needs to be. I only did what every other person on this ship would do if they’d been in the same spot.”

Virtanen frowned slightly. “You estimate other people too much. Or else you estimate yourself too little. Either way you are an idiot. Very smart, but an idiot.” He slapped his hands together and turned to go. “Even your kävelevä ruumis knows it now.”

“My… walking… body?” Tony puzzled over the phrase as Virtanen left. “That doesn’t make any—”

Captain America peeked around the cabin door frame.

“Ah,” Tony said. “Walking corpse.”

--

Nothing he said could convince Captain America to take the bunk back. Tony only had a recently-un-dislocated arm and a mild concussion; Captain America had been frozen for over 60 years. To Tony, that was a pretty compelling argument for who should have the bunk. It turned out that the Captain did not agree.

Eventually Tony had to give up and wriggle under his bedding while Captain America fussed over the nest of sleeping bag, pillows, and blankets that Tony had been using to sleep on the floor. It felt wrong.

“This just feels wrong,” Tony said.

“Feels fine to me,” Captain America said. He had more or less gotten himself situated, with two sleeping bags underneath him, one big sleeping bag butterflied open on top of him, padded all around with pillows and blankets. “Used to sleeping rough by now. Don’t need anything fancy.”

“It’s not about fancy, no part of this is fancy. I just don’t think the very minor—”

“It’s not minor,” Captain America interrupted. This was the rudest thing he’d done since waking up, aside from unconsciously vomiting seawater all over the deck. Tony actually stopped talking, more out of surprise than anything. “It’s not minor,” Captain America repeated. “You’re injured.”

“This barely counts as an injury—”

Captain America turned over onto his side, propping his head up on one fist so that he could stare thoughtfully at Tony. “You know, you really aren’t as much like him as I thought.”

It was as if a piece of one of the icebergs outside had suddenly teleported into Tony’s stomach. “What.”

“Howard never missed an opportunity to play the hero. And, I mean, he was the hero, sometimes. But you could count on the man to talk up every single thing he did, no matter how small—if he had the littlest part in it, he’d turn it into an epic tale, and himself right in the thick of the action. If he’d gotten hurt pulling a man to safety in the middle of a storm, he’d be shouting it from the roof and rushing to wire every major paper back home. But you-- you didn’t do something that’s gotta be exaggerated six times over before it’s even worth noticing. You really did do something big, and here you are, trying to convince everyone around you that it was nothing.” He shook his head, causing his knuckles to scuff in his hair a little. “I thought—I mean, there’s the family resemblance. And you’re smart like him, and sometimes when you get to talking all fast and technical, and it flies over my head, it’s just like being back in the lab with him back… back home. So I thought maybe you were a lot like him in more than just looks. But what you’re doing now-- it’s the exact opposite of what Howard would’ve done.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint, but I’m no Howard,” Tony said, very tightly.

Captain America kept staring at him, calm and even, something mildly speculative in his gaze. “It’s not a disappointment. I think—I mean.” He finally dropped his gaze, focusing instead on one of the pillows making up his floor nest. “I think I like this better.”

That’s nice, but I don’t care was right on the tip of Tony’s tongue. He didn’t say it. He found, actually—horrifyingly—that he sort of did care. Even though there were a million reasons not to, starting with the fact that he barely knew this overgrown antique and going on from there. But goddammit, nobody ever said Tony was good at denying himself his idiotic selfish pleasures, and it was idiotically, selfishly pleasant to think that Captain America preferred him to Howard in some small way.

“Goodnight, Captain,” he said instead.

--

Longyearbyen was… sparse. The buildings were mostly simple box shapes, sharply peaked roofs reaching for the ground in long downslopes. The land was brown, gray, and white, with almost nothing in the way of vegetation. They didn’t see a single tree, or even a shrub, the entire drive from the harbor to the hospital.

The hospital where they dropped Captain America off was a small, plain building that barely looked like it deserved to be called a clinic, let alone a hospital proper. They had debated what to say before they docked—it probably wasn’t a good idea to just go around telling everyone that you’d pulled a real live WWII hero out of the ocean-- and settled on a story about a crew member who had fallen overboard and hit his head, which would hopefully explain any frost-bite-type damage and any topics of conversation that might trip the Captain up.

“They will take good care,” Kivi said, nudging Tony away from the hospital and back towards the truck that they’d rented at the harbor. “As you say, if there is one thing they are good at here, it is injuries from the cold.”

“You’re right. You’re right.” Tony looked back over his shoulder at the building but allowed himself to be steered away. “It’s fine. He’ll be fine. Nobody knows who he is. It’ll be fine.”

“Fine,” Kivi repeated firmly. “Now, I am going to do a full systems check while we are in dock, and Virtanen is going to see about fuel. What will you do? Sitting here is not an option.”

Tony hopped ahead and pulled open the driver’s side door before Kivi could beat him to it. He swung himself up into the truck a little awkwardly, working around his sling. Kivi snorted and shook his head, but went around to the passenger side without further objection.

“I’ll drive you back to the docks,” Tony said. “I want to pick up Møller and go take a look at SvalSat.”

Kivi blinked in obvious surprise. “You have clearance?”

Tony grinned at the road, feeling the rough diesel rumble as he started the truck. “I have connections. I made some calls, they’ll let me in. And if Møller’s with me, they’ll let him in too.”

“Just be certain he does not try to hide there and stay forever,” Kivi said, only half joking.

--

Driving up the road to SvalSat was as close as Tony had ever come to visiting an alien planet. Dusky pinks and oranges already tinged the horizon, despite the fact that it was only early afternoon. This far north, this late into the season, daylight hours were short, and they were in for a long cold night.

The truck rumbled over a rough road that cut up the side of a snaking snow-covered ridge. There were no plants. No animals. No people. No buildings. Even the ocean was hidden from here, as other ridges cut off the view to the coast. The road made a sharp right, almost a hairpin turn, and their climb leveled off as a wide, barren plateau opened up in front of them. The ground was a vast flat field of broken black stones, dusted with powdery white snow. From this unusual landscape rose the most unusual feature of all: large white spheres and geodesic globes, scattered over the rock field like alien eggs.

“Radomes,” Møller breathed. His face was pressed to the truck’s passenger window, breath fogging the glass as Tony carefully maneuvered the truck around potholes and small craters in the road.

“There are a couple in Greenland,” Tony said, amused. “You never worked on any of them?”

“No.” Møller finally sat back in his seat, still looking out the window. “Greenland is big.”

“Well, they’re pretty critical to operations up here. Being this far north is great for satellite communications, but the weather is not friendly to delicate radar dishes. They kinda need the radomes to keep the instruments functional.”

“I know. I mean, I know it in theory. Seeing them…” Møller grinned and shook his head at himself as Tony pulled up next to a low brick building in the midst of the globes. A surly, weatherworn woman in a beat-up green parka stood by the door, arms crossed, watching them.

The snow was so deeply frozen that it crunched brittle underfoot when they got out of the truck. “Hilde Larsen! Long time no email!” Tony said, throwing his good arm out in a broad gesture. The woman eyed his sling, then turned to offer a gloved hand to Møller.

Larsen walked them to the nearest radome, answering Møller’s rapidfire questions with short, curt responses. Tony had never actually met her before, but they emailed whenever he needed to discuss high-level SI satellite communication logistics; it delighted him to find that, in person, she was just as brusque as her emails. Still, she never actually ignored his messages, no matter how long or outlandish, and she wasn’t brushing off any of Møller’s questions now, despite his eager overexcitement.

She brought them inside one of the radomes to look at one of the actual radar dishes. It was all white: white dome, white dish, white struts, white support structure. Even Tony, who knew the function, rating, and use of every part in view, had to admit that it was beautiful, in an austere minimalist sort of way. Møller was nearly beside himself with awe and delight.

SI worked with SvalSat. They had an entire antenna bought out for their own satellites, they were a major financial contributor to the project, and might be looking to expand their access in the future, maybe with a timeshare on an existing antenna that had openings in its schedule, maybe with new construction. SvalSat was so remote, and visits so tightly regulated, that nobody from SI had actually been there before this unplanned, unanticipated stop. Tony had come out here mostly for the kid and for his own enjoyment, but this was actually turning into an important, work-related trip.

At least, it would, if he could stop thinking about goddamn Captain America.

He shouldn’t be thinking about anything but the technology on display, the facility unlike any he’d toured before, the things Larsen said about Kongsberg’s most recent infrastructure investments. This was an opportunity, a business opportunity, and one that he’d be foolish to squander, given the fact that it was unlikely to be repeated anytime soon. Hell, even putting aside the usefulness of this visit from SI’s perspective, there was plenty worth paying attention to just for him, as an inventor and engineer who could appreciate such a dramatic example of advanced applied science.

But all he could think about was what Captain America might be doing, back in the Longyearbyen hospital. Was he all right? Were the doctors treating him well? Had they uncovered any serious underlying conditions or damage? Was Captain America managing to keep up with their cover story? Was he bored or lonely? Was he scared? Of course Captain America wouldn’t be scared, the man had faced down Nazis on their own turf in a time before computer-guided drones existed… but that was the original Captain America, the one Howard had known. This Captain America was the one who woke up in 2011, still soft and muddled and trying to get his head around things. He might be scared. He shouldn’t be alone. Or, well, he wasn’t alone, he was in a hospital that was whatever passed for ‘fully staffed’ out here, but he shouldn’t be separated from the only people he knew in this new era, which was the crew of the Rauta Nuoli and also Tony. Tony should have never left the hospital. What if Captain America needed him? What if--

Jesus Christ. He had to get a goddamn grip.

Howard’s error, or sin, was that he focused all his attention on something—someone—that wasn’t actually there. He let the past, and maybe an imagined future, stop him from spending any time at all with the present. He ignored the people and the life right in front of him in favor of a constructed memory, an idea.

Tony inhaled as deeply as the reactor let him, the cold dry air prickling his body into alertness. Larsen and Møller were on the far side of the radome’s walkway, looking at the backside of the antenna dish. He had been listening to Larsen, even as half his brain mooned over his little soldier problem. This particular antenna was not fully scheduled. There was a chance that SI might hop on, fill some of those gaps sometime in the not-too-distant future.

He was here, now, in this place, in this time, with these people. That was enough. It was more than enough: it was the point.

He started walking towards them, getting a closer look at the dish as he went. Ten-year-old tech on the elevation drive assembly—if SI was going to sign a contract on this one, they’d need that updated. Larsen turned as he approached and frowned, probably sensing that he was thinking uncharitable thoughts about her antenna. Tony grinned widely. He could feel the long, detailed, incredibly technical debate about antenna engineering, primed for an opponent who knew the particulars even better than he did, bubbling up inside him. Oh, Møller was in for a treat.

--

By the time they got back to Longyearbyen, Tony had a phone full of photos and lists of technical specs, antenna schedules, and prospective agreement drafts for the SI contracts team. Møller was nearly catatonic from sustained glee. Larsen had been polite the whole time, in her curt Nordic way, but was plainly glad to see them go. You probably didn’t live full time on Svalbard if you craved an active social life, Tony figured.

There was a café across the street from the hospital, attached to a building that was either a library, a cinema, or some kind of performing arts center. Possibly it was all three; it was hard to imagine the population was large enough to support them separately. Tony parked the truck and hopped out. It was close to fully dark out now, but strong outdoor lights illuminated the area around the building. Virtanen, Laaksonen, and Captain America were sitting at a picnic table outside the café with enormous pastries on paper plates and steaming cups of coffee. A few other members of the crew were around the corner, smoking and leaning against the building with the slight wobbliness of men who were more used to a constantly rocking deck than the steadiness of dry land.

“Coffee,” Tony said, using his good arm to shove Møller towards the café door. “And get me one of those cinnamon buns. Kanelipulla, ok? It’ll be something close to that in Norwegian.”

Laaksonen and Captain America both looked up as he approached; Virtanen ignored him. They were bundled up—you couldn’t sit outside and not be fully bundled up—but Captain America’s parka was just loosely draped over his shoulders, and he only had a t-shirt on underneath. Tony kept walking until he was right in Captain America’s personal space and he could grab one wrist, critically examining the bandages there, then the other, tugging the Captain’s arm out straight so that he could see the bandage at his elbow. “What else?” he asked.

Captain America glanced at Laaksonen and Virtanen. “Well, they put me in a sort of… a sort of hot pool thing with moving water. For circulation, they said, and, uh, and to get the dead tissue off—”

“Whirlpool therapy,” Tony said impatiently. He dropped Captain America’s arm and hooked a finger into his t-shirt collar, pulling it away from his neck so that he could peer in. Yes, still very pink from the collarbones all the way down his chest and onto his belly, which meant it must have been raw red not that long ago. “What else?”

“Not much,” Captain America said, after another glance across the table, this one bemused. “They didn’t think I needed… I guess there’s medications? They didn’t think I needed any. They said I was lucky, the damage was mostly superficial. Nothing that wouldn’t heal.”

“Only because it’s been healing, with no help from us. It was much worse a week ago.” Tony compressed his lips unhappily. “We should’ve had you in a hospital the day we got you out of the ice.”

“Yes, yes, we all thought it. If it was possible, we would have done it,” Virtanen said. Tony dismissed him with a shake of his head. He tugged Captain America’s parka back up over his shoulders and flung himself down onto the bench next to him, leaning moodily on the table. Virtanen rolled his eyes.

“Kanelipulla,” Møller said, dropping a plate onto the table in front of Tony so that he could let the hilariously oversized cinnamon bun thump onto it with great drama. He set a cup of coffee down much more gently. “You are welcome.”

“Literally the least you could do after the candy shop tour I just took you on,” Tony said, pulling both pastry and coffee towards himself. He was abruptly starving. He tried to remember when he’d last eaten, couldn’t come up with anything concrete, and mentally shrugged. Food was here now, it didn’t matter.

Møller shoved Laaksonen over and wedged himself in next to Virtanen, immediately launching into an account of SvalSat. Captain America shifted to accommodate Tony’s presence on their own bench, then hesitantly leaned his shoulder back into place, pressing into Tony.

Oh, hell.

--

Scandinavian Airlines and Lufttransport both flatly refused to fly a nominally American passenger without identification off the archipelago. Tony could charter a flight, probably, eventually, but he could tell that the crew were itching to get back underway, and he knew that Kivi wouldn’t leave until he was sure that Tony was in the air, like an anxious boyfriend waiting in the car to make sure his date made it into the house all right.

He could tell them to go. Make it an order. He didn’t actually throw it around too much, for all that he talked about it, but he paid everyone’s salaries, he set the expedition objectives, and he owned half the equipment on board. He wasn’t the captain of the ship, but he was, in fact, the expedition boss. He could order them to leave, and they’d have to do it.

He thought about that as he stood at the bow rail, watching the crinkled, flat-topped ridges slide by on either side as they motored along the deep blue waters of Isfjorden, back towards open water.

“I’m sorry to cause all this trouble,” Captain America said, coming up to the rail next to him.

Tony didn’t look away from the Svalbard coastline. “No trouble. The Rauta Nuoli was going back to Helsinki no matter what. Whether or not you and I would be on board, that doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Captain America bent down, leaning on his elbows on the rail. He didn’t have his hood up, and the wind whistling over the waters of the fjord ruffled his hair. “I know you went to some trouble trying to get a flight out. The crew all say—”

“Oh boy,” Tony muttered.

“The crew all say that you’re a city man,” Captain America went on, undeterred. “That you run Stark Industries and it’s a lot bigger now. You do the…  the research. And you go to all the parties, and you’re in all the society papers, and you have a flying suit of armor and you help people with it.”

“Fewer parties these days.”

“But you can’t do any of that out here. And I know you have all your papers in order, you could’ve caught a plane back yourself. It’s me who’s causing the trouble. I’m sorry I’m keeping you out here longer than necessary, when you’ve got all that to get back to.”

Tony shook his head, still staring out across the water. “We’re not even overdue yet, and when we are, it won’t be a big deal. Things can get rescheduled. The expedition sometimes runs into weather, my assistant knows how to handle it when I'm late getting home. I’m not upset at a few more weeks out here, I have tons of plausible deniability to ignore all the emails I want to ignore, it’s kind of like the world’s coldest and least luxurious vacation. The only reason I was trying to get back to the States sooner was for you.” He frowned at the horizon. “You’ve been away long enough.”  

Captain America was silent for a long minute. A small boat zipped along far off their port side, closer to the coast, dodging the little chunks of ice that the Rauta Nuoli just nudged out of their way. “It’s all going to be different, isn’t it.”

It wasn’t really a question. “Yeah,” Tony said anyway. “Pretty different.” He guessed that Svalbard hadn’t been much of a preview, although perhaps the hospital had given him a taste of shocks to come.

“I think I’m not in any rush, then,” Captain America said. “I’m still… it’s still a lot to get my head around. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to take a few weeks out here, try to get an idea of it a little at a time.” He looked over his shoulder at Tony, almost shyly. “And I’m still sorry you’re stuck here, but I’ve got to admit it’s nice to have a familiar face around.”

Tony whistled through his teeth. Wow. That was probably one of the most fucked-up double-edged things that had ever been said to him, right up there with some of the shit Obie used to say, in the worst of it. Somewhere, deep down in the depths of Hell, Howard was cackling in triumph, he just knew it.

Although he didn’t totally hate the idea of Captain America wanting… well, wanting to spend a little more time, not just away from other people, but with him, Tony, specifically. He shouldn’t enjoy that—the whole situation was already horribly complicated, and he was self-aware enough to know that the more he let himself enjoy it, the more complicated it was going to get—but goddammit, he did.

He closed his eyes. The air was cold on his eyelids, and the tang of salt on his tongue was sharp, fresh in a way it only got in the northern latitudes. “Glad to be here, Captain.”

“Steve.”

“Sorry?” He opened his eyes and looked at Captain America, who was smiling crookedly at him, with that ridiculous jawline and his blue, blue eyes.

“You don’t have to call me ‘Captain’ all the time. My name’s Steve. You can just call me Steve.”

“Glad to be here, Steve,” Tony said.

Captain America—Steve—turned a blinding smile on him, bright as the sun reflecting off a pure white iceberg. Tony smiled back, helpless.

If it felt like he was on top of the world, well, that was only logical. That's exactly where they were.

--