NOTES: written for Fandom Stocking - someone asked for an Avengers fusion AU and this is what I came up with: a fusion with His Dark Materials, involving daemons. Two chapters so far. There may be more in future.
The Daughter Of Crows
His mind still reeling with the news of Coulson's death, Steve feels slightly dazed as he makes his way through the belly of the helicarrier, Saavi's head close by his thigh. Guilt and grief and disbelief and anger churn beneath his breastbone, a melange of feelings he doesn't know how to parse.
"This modern world is so confusing," Saavi voices for both of them, aware of his disquiet through the bond between them. "I miss the old days."
So does Steve. But, "We're here, now," he says. "And we need to stop Loki and whatever he's planning to do with the Tesseract."
"That goes without saying," his dæmon murmurs. "But everything's so different now."
They come from an older time, another age, with different mores and different technology, and nothing's the same as it used to be – except, perhaps, the depravity of human nature.
As they pass a side corridor, Saavi stops, ears pricked. Steve turns. "What is it?"
"Something..." Abruptly, she lopes off down the side corridor, her golden pelt gleaming in the stark light of the corridor overheads.
Steve jogs after her, careful when he turns a corridor and finds part of the bulkhead crushed inwards, the floor buckled upwards and the side supports shoved into the corridor. "Saavi?"
"Still going," she calls, her voice calm and reassuring but also distant. "It'll be a narrow fit, but you have to come through."
He climbs in with care, wondering what caused this – then realises it could only have been Banner as the Hulk. Or possibly his dæmon. This would be something to see – the transformation from a chameleon to a bull African elephant.
Focus, he tells himself as he steps over steel grating that lies warped like melted wax. "Saavi?"
"Over here," she says, and now he feels the breath of moving air – tinged with smoke and oil from the engines Stark just fixed. "Near the hull breach."
Steve eases himself past a set of broken-off struts and hurries to the end of the corridor where Saavi is crouched by a tumble of fallen boxes.
"He's under there," she says. "Isthus. The crow."
"She's got no dæmon!" Saavi murmurs to Steve as the solitary woman walks up to Fury and reports all systems running at full. His dæmon's fur twitches, and her tail thrashes with alarm. Steve instinctively reaches out to touch her – the contact soothing them both.
"She must," Steve says, just as quietly. People always have dæmons – unless they've been cut. And she doesn't behave like a person who's been cut. Her eyes are clear and her movements brisk as she goes about her business on the bridge of the SHIELD airship - unlike the mindless, empty things that Steve remembers fighting on base after base after base during the war in Europe.
He doesn't dare ask where her dæmon is – not when everyone else treats her presence as utterly normal – although there are a few nervous glances from several younger-looking technicians. So this isn't something from the future – just an anomaly in the present.
Relieved, Steve forces himself to pay attention to Fury's words and not turn his head to look at the woman who walks without a dæmon by her side, without an other half.
Although he glances up when a cawing cry echoes through the room and a dark feathered shape swoops in through the high window left open far above their heads, circles once around the ceiling perches, and drops neatly to her shoulder, answering the question of where her dæmon was.
She lifts her face momentarily from her work and the pointed beak slides along her cheek like a caress.
Steve shifts the boxes very carefully as the dæmons talk. He doesn't want to inadvertently squash the dæmon who, from the sound of it, isn't in a good way.
"Was doing recon," is all the other dæmon says, hoarsely. "Aerin attacked me. Ducked in to hide and then the boxes fell."
It's as brisk as a report – as brisk as Lieutenant Hill at her most clipped and concise. Like woman, like dæmon, Steve thinks. Then he chides himself for being uncharitable. It's not as though he knows anything about Maria Hill other than her name and what she does on the helicarrier. It might just be that she's pure soldier when she's working, confining the nuances of her personality to her private life.
Then he gets the last box away and realises that the dæmon is injured – one splayed wing pinned beneath a strut which Steve strains to lift enough for Isthus to roll out from under it.
Or try. The crow squawks with pain, and it's up to Saavi to gently grab one of his legs in her mouth and pull him out.
Saavi sniffs around the wing as Steve lets the strut down again. "I think the wing's broken. You'll need to—" But here she stops, her large golden eyes suddenly reserved.
A dæmon interacts with their person, and with other dæmons on occasion. But contact between a person and another person's dæmon is…intimate. It's like touching someone else's soul. There are reputedly people who've been lovers for years who've never touched the other person's dæmon, although Steve doesn't see how that's possible – if you're intimate with someone, then surely—but he's distracting himself.
"I'm sorry," he tells Isthus, and while the crow doesn't have an expression Steve can read, he has the impression the dæmon is steeling itself.
The first brush of feathers is softer than Steve expected – the shining black plumage not as rough as he thought. He runs his fingers carefully along the leading edge of the wing. "Tell me when it hurts."
He's gentle – as gentle as he can be while his pulse races and sweat beads on his brow before being cooled by the flow of air in from outside. Still, Isthus says nothing, although he twitches as Steve probes where the strut fell on the dæmon. He can feel the break along the wing and knows that it needs support even before the crow moves.
"Can't fold it." The words are rough, as though forced from the dæmon. Then, softer, it says, "Want Maria."
Steve glances at Saavi, but she shakes her head. "You'll have to carry him back in your hands, supporting his wing against your forearm."
There's nothing else with which to carry Isthus. Steve takes a deep breath and eases his hand under the broken wing and under the crow's body, feeling the shuddering tension in the dæmon's body at being touched by someone other than its own human.
He feels dirty, touching the crow – not Isthus specifically, but someone else's dæmon. A woman's dæmon, too – a reserved, careful, self-contained woman who he's never actually met, although he noticed her of course, and Coulson spoke of her.
Get over it, Rogers, he tells himself as they reach the first obstacle back – and realises he can't navigate it with his hands full of Isthus.
"Fold it," says the crow. "Then hold against chest."
"Won't that hurt more?"
"Can't be helped. Do it." But Isthus squawks with pain as Steve folds the wing in, the tiny chest rising and falling with rough breaths.
"I'm going ahead for help," Saavi says as she slips through the gap with easy feline grace. "You'll be okay."
It's not a question, even if Steve thinks her faith is sorely misplaced. Holding Isthus now feels like a violation – not only touching the dæmon, but having caused it pain, too, no matter how benign. It's worse because he's holding Isthus against his chest, the way he used to hold Saavi when they were young – the cub almost too large for the frailty of his body – but this certainly isn't Saavi.
Still, now Steve can move through the twisted corridors of the helicarrier, sure of his step now that he has one hand free as the other cradles Isthus to his chest.
And then they're past the warped bulkhead and at the main corridor, there's the sound of running footsteps, and Saavi bounds around the corner and up to him, her head rubbing at his knee as Lieutenant Hill swings around the corner at a run and skids to a stop as she sees him, her whole body tensing as she realises what he's done.
There's a scrape across her cheekbone where something hit her, the smear of blood crusting dark against her skin, and her eyes – blue-grey or green-blue? – flick from her dæmon to Steve and then back to Isthus again. Then she walks towards him with all the wariness of a wild creature and holds out her hands to take Isthus back again.
Steve feels hot all over his chest and cheeks as he eases the crow into her hands. "I'm sorry," he says, and she looks up at him.
"It was necessary," she says, her voice crisp and terse as she gathers her dæmon back to her heart, careful of the broken wing. "Thank you."
But there's no softening in her voice, and Steve thinks he's never heard a gratitude sound so much like a curse.
Stark offers them spaces to stay that night. You don't want to go back to the helicarrier, he says, believe me.
Steve doesn't much like the idea of being beholden to Stark either, but he's got nowhere else to go. So he ignores the way Velys growls at Saavi, or the way Saavi's ears fold back at the wolf, and takes the offer. Maybe Stark isn't as bad as Steve thought he was, and he might have saved the day but he's still not a patch on his father or any of the other men Steve knew back in his time.
Saavi is curling up on the floor by the mattress when Steve remembers Lieutenant Hill and her dæmon. "I asked Barin," she says when he murmurs the thought into the darkness around them. "Agent Romanoff checked with SHIELD, and the reports say the wing is set and Isthus will recover fully."
"Good," Steve says, and means it.
But on the cusp of sleep, he remembers the way Isthus' little heart fluttered against his fingertips, and wonders what it would be like to feel Lieutenant Hill's heart pounding, thrilling, under his palm.
tbc
