The two men sat waiting inside the house, the long broken windows casting light shadows on their faces. Outside the sun shone, but inside they bathed in the night. Like they had been doing for too long. One of them had dark brown hair, the other dead black. The brunette sat at an elderly piano, though no older than he, a melody trickling slowly from his fingertips in slow precise movements. The other man sat in an elderly chair, but no older than he, carefully plucking the strings of a guitar. The music was sweet, but not playful. It danced in strange rhythms across the house, wrapping around the rickety banisters like vines and climbing the peeling wallpaper as if to restore a previous beauty.
They were both long haired, though the black hair man's was far longer than his companions. It dangled just above the base of his spine, sloping off his shoulders like a waterfall that wavered in the breeze. A veil of night over his pearly skin. He was beautiful, but his eyes were dulled with time and age. The other had his hair in a pony tail, where it just scraped his neck. His face was closed and made of cold.
The men of snow sat singing softly.
Sometimes they would seek each other out and sit in silence of understanding. Not pretend understanding, not the type of understanding that people mindlessly spewed when they heard their stories, not the type that the captain and Thor pretended they had. Only the tortured know what torture is. Only those force to kill, to murder, to be the bad guy so desperately wanted, understand what torture is. Only those chained to dungeon walls, by the neck, smeared with mud, blood and urine like an animal. While men stole his body and covered it with too many scars to count and demanded things of him. The black haired man had killed thousands, but he had saved the human race from extinction. And he couldn't tell anyone. He could only soil in his nightmares and keep his scars and his completion concealed.
Only those who have been brought down the rubble of the world, those who fell fast and fell free knew of torture. Those used and deceived and threatened with the lives they cared for most. Those who were tricked and demoted to the level of the fools they weren't. Those who killed the people they barely knew and brought them back to life, because the men who killed them were not the people they wished to be.
So they sought each other out, the broken men of snow.
They sat, drinking in their miseries like the old men they were, but failed to resemble. They sat in each other's company while men and women trudged through forests in search of their demise, just as they did a little to the left of the house.
The music stopped and the black haired man lent back in his chair, staring up at the cracked celling. The brunette swung one of his legs over the piano stool so that he was straddling it, his movements never made a sound. His metal arm glinted where the sunlight attacked it from the window. He stared quietly at the black haired man, who had closed his eyes like he was pained.
"So how's Asgard this time of year?" He asks quietly. The black haired man spared him a glance and snorts.
"Flamboyant" the brunette never expects more than a one word answer at the beginning of a conversation, he rarely speaks himself. There's room to be rusty.
"How long before they find you this time?" The brunette closed the hard wood cover over piano keys and brushed away the dust with his human hand. Resting his elbow on the knots of wood he looked back at his companion.
The black haired man laughed hollowly.
"I'm usually back in my cell within the hour. They're getting sloppy" the brunette hadn't the faintest idea who 'they' were, but he didn't ask. They didn't ask things like that, they weren't mean to each other.
"How long before you decide to go back?" The brunette rested his cheek on his closed fist, his metal elbow sitting on the stop of the piano, he looked bored, features closed like a cabinet. Not the solider, not the human either.
The black haired man shrugged.
"I'll get hungry eventually" both men were well aware that the black hair man held the cards. He would only be captured if that was what he wanted. There was no other reason to go back other than for strategic gain. He had everything, but all that had been taken from him, those many years ago.
The brunette sighed and the black haired man lent back again, smiling slightly, though the smile was sad, as if he was recalling a memory.
"I know a place" he said softly. The brunette relaxed, his tense shoulders sagging. He could feel a story coming on and there was little he loved more than the black haired man's stories of old. "A place far far away, not in this realm, nor either of its neighbours. A place where nobody recognises one another and there is rarely anyone around. I have never been there, but I suspect it is a port. I have sent products through there many times. Maybe... maybe it is time to stop my jumping from freedom the cell" he paused thinking about how to continue. "I… would like to sit down for a while" his voice was husky and uncertain, and yet certain all the same. The brunette didn't respond for a long time, his head down, eyes staring down at the wood of the piano stool. He had no doubt that the black haired man would still come and see him and they would have their odd conversations and brief moments of confrontation, but… in the other man's words he saw an option he hadn't previously thought of. He finally looked up and his companion looked back.
"Can I come?" His question was tentative, and closed. A defensive movement, expecting rejection. They both knew what he was proposing. The black haired man smiled fondly.
"There are few things that would bring me more pleasure" he nods as if the brunette hadn't heard him. They both stand, instruments of sound set aside for another stranger to find. The brunette linking his arm through the other man's bones, resting his head lightly on Loki's shoulder, closing his eyes, knowing what came next. Green light filled the room and seeped into all the cracks. Loki wound his arms around Bucky's waist as he had done many times in the months previously.
"Off we go" Loki said quietly. Bucky hummed in response and they fell through the floor.
And the men of snow, the misused toys, walked from the hell they had caused and went to find a port where they could sit and ponder and try to heal.
The man awoke will a cry, it echoed through their small cottage and awoke the sleeping man next to him. He stared at the wall, his breathing panicked. He was hunched over his knees, his hair falling around his face, tears already brimming around his eyelashes. He was hunched over his knees and he couldn't breath. The man beside him rubbed his back in silence. He wouldn't ask, he never asked. Instead he only planted soothing kisses on the brunette's shoulders, whether it be metal or flesh. Blue skin travels lightly over pale shadows, dismissing what ever memory was being relived. Finally the man sat back and a warm steaming drink summoned into his hands.
They sat together against head bored of their bed, shoulder's pressed together in the darkness, a never ending reminder. The cup in his hands warming his palms, his closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of the steam. He had always figured that it smelt like chocolate, then sometimes not. Sometimes it smelt like strawberries and sometimes mint. Sometimes everything at once, but it always relieved him of the panic, not the pain, but at least the panic went from his heart.
"I want to go home"
Loki could had heard this before, but he never mentioned it. He knew that 'home' wasn't Midgard, not as Midgard was now. 'Home' was a place even Loki's magic did not permit him to go, but if he could, if he could return the man beside him to where ever he belonged he would. Without a thought.
"So do I"
He felt a head drop down onto his shoulder and he let his cheek rest on messy hair.
"We will be okay"
They wouldn't. They wouldn't let all there feelings out. They wouldn't express everything they kept tightly on the inside. There was nothing else to tell, they already knew all the pain there was to be known.
"We will"
They sipped their drinks in silence, only the sound of their breathing filling the room.
"How are they doing?"
Bucky knew that Loki kept tabs on them. On the captain and Thor. Sometimes if Bucky wished he would be able to send messages to those he used to know through him.
"Your captain is happy, Love, he misses you, but he's happy"
Bucky nodded. He twisted his hand into slender blue fingers, quietly tracing the slightly raised lines. The steaming cup warmed his lap.
"What of your brother?"
Loki doesn't tense like he would any other, he merely sighs.
"He still searches"
Bucky could feel his eyes closing, as scarlet as they were.
"You will go back to him"
And then he could feel a slight smile.
"Perhaps"
The men of snow would walk. They had marched from the cells of their captures, they had walked while chained to the walls, they sought out the cold so that would not melt, and they sought out each other because that's what love does to broken men. It makes them feel whole enough to run away.