CHAPTER I can count all your teeth

I must go one standing

I'm not my own, it's not my choice.

Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs

Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls

Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood

-Apres Moi by Regina Spektor

Steve had always hated the cold. As a child, he hated the way it burrowed into his lungs for the duration of winter. Any exercise was an ordeal: the sharp cold stabbed him from the inside out when he went to play with the other boys, or when he walked to school.

His father's drinking was worse in the winter. He'd look out at New York's snowy streets, his eyes distant. Even when they'd been rich, he'd drunk heavily during the storms. After they lost everything, it had gotten worse.

"He's remembering, dear," his mother had whispered when Steve asked what he was thinking about. His dad would stand at the window for hours, moving only to stoke the fire. pressed. His mother's lips thinned and she shook her head.

In the mornings, his father was always the first to clear the walk. Their neighbors hired people to do it, but Steve's father refused. The scrape of the shovel against the cement woke Steve every time. He'd go downstairs to help, but his father unfailingly steered him back inside, towards the fire, where Steve would sit and cough from the cold.

It wasn't until years later that Steve read up on his father's war and began to have a better appreciation. It was several years after that he'd truly understood.

He could still see Bucky's look of surprise as he plummeted into the icy valley.

He remembered the faces of fallen men, rigid and blue in the snow banks in Germany, dried blood still vivid in the snow around them.

He remembered the impact as his ship hit the frozen ocean. The ship proved true and remained watertight, but it hadn't kept the cold away.

The cold now bit his cheeks and nose and crept into his lungs. He wondered how much longer he could go on.

He chanced a look at his enemy. Loki ignored him.

Their only companion was the crunch of their boots against the permafrost and the howling wind over desolate plains, and Steve had never felt so lonely. The presence of occasional giant snow drifts was the only indication that they were moving. The cold bit into Steve's skin and bones, and they walked until Steve forgot both warmth and comfort.

"So you're the bad apple, eh?" Steve said, because he was tired of the sound of

silence. His voice was raw in his throat.

"I am myself," Loki returned. "I have nothing to say to you."

"Well, tough luck. I'm all you got."

"I would prefer silence," Loki stated.

"I told you before I've fought men like you. There's nothing special about you," Steve said, with more bravado than he felt.

"I am not a man!" Loki roared, turning on Steve. His teeth were fine points, his blue lips thin, and curled around them was a pointed tongue. His red eyes flashed.

"You're not," Steve agreed. "But I've fought monsters before, too. You all die, sooner or later."

Loki, enraged by the remark, took a feverish swing at Steve with his staff ; Steve barely had the time to throw up his shield.

"Hey! We agreed to a truce!"

"You are wretched," Loki said, lowering his staff. "It would be my luck to drag your carcass through this wasteland."

"Don't think I'd be such an easy target."

"You would've been little more than a smear on the ground if your ostentatious friend hadn't shown up in Germany when he did."

"You shouldn't have counted me out just yet."

"I'm a god, you pitiful thing."

"That's blasphemy."

Loki scoffed.

"Show me another who has lived as long as I and who is critical to the end of the world. Only then may we talk about blasphemy. Tell me, human, how many times have you seen this god of yours?"

"I don't need to see him to believe in him," Steve returned.

"Perhaps not," Loki acknowledged. "And yet, I am here and he is not."

"Your hubris will be your undoing," Steve said.

"I have long heard this, and yet the sagas swear I will be there at the end, and I will see the death of Odin and your Earth, and everything in between. Where will you be?"

"I will be fighting you," Steve snarled.

"You're foolish and you are the same as every other self-declared hero in the history of men. And just like them, you will die and I will be there to relish in it."

"I have died, and I was mourned. When you die, your people will rejoice."

Loki butted his staff out, low this time, catching Steve below the shield. Using his shield as a battering ram, Steve launched himself at Loki. The two fell to the snow, sinking into the bank. Steve pinned Loki's free arm and elbowed him in the face with their conjoined hand. Blood erupted from Loki's nose, scattering bright across the snow.

Loki grunted, kneeing Steve in the gut. Steve hit him in the fact again, getting a couple of hits in before Loki cold-cocked him with the side of his staff. Steve fell to the side into the bank, trapped by the snow and his tether to Loki.

Loki grinned bloodily, rolling over to pin Steve. "We are in my element. You have no chance."

Steve brought his head up, smashing it into Loki's brow. Loki reeled back and Steve kneed him, pushing him off completely. Loki fell back into the snow next to him.

They both stared up at the stars, multiplied in number.

It was almost warm, in the snow.

"You're not so tough," Steve said, spitting out blood from where he'd accidentally bitten his tongue.

"Were I not so reluctant to haul around a corpse, you would be dead."

"Fine words from the one with the broken nose," Steve said, struggling to his knees. Loki clambered up beside him. Blood poured from his nose, freezing instantly in the cold air. He gave Steve an appraising look.

"This is folly; we will both die here if we continue this," Loki said as he brushed snow off his clothes.

"Then a truce for real, until we're free."

"Until we are free," Loki agreed. "And then I will kill you."

"You can try," Steve said. "But I wouldn't count on it."

"I almost did, before."

"But you didn't."

Loki spat blood on the snow, a bright splatter that marked their passing, and they continued to trudge through the ice fields. Steve wondered how long they had been here. The stars above hadn't moved since their arrival.

"My name is Steve Rogers," Steve finally offered.

Loki lifted a dark brow. "I do not care."

"Maybe," Steve agreed. "And yet, there you have it."

"Indeed," Loki said. Finally, he added, "I am Loki the Trickster God, Master Liesmith and the Silvertongue. My father is Laufey, king of the Jotun, but it is Odin the Allfather who raised me."

"Why?" Steve asked.

Loki looked at him in surprise. "Why should you care?"

Steve shrugged.

Loki looked at him a long moment. "I was born small and my father was

sure I would die. After the great war between our people, Odin found me on a rock,

exposed to the elements and waiting for my death. He took me back to Asgard to be

raised as his own."

"And you hate him," Steve guessed. Loki gave him a withering look.

"You don't know anything," Loki snapped.

"No," Steve agreed. "But a dutiful son wouldn't be hell-bent on destroying his world, either."

"What of you, human?" Loki asked after what could have been minutes or hours.

"Steve," Steve said.

"Have you a father awaiting you that you hate?"

"No, I don't."

"Ah, he is already passed."

"Yes," Steve said.

"Killed in one of your wars?"

"No, after," Steve said shortly.

"An inglorious death, then. You may find him here."

"He's in Heaven. He waits for me. My mother, too."

"All those who do not die from a glorious death wait in Niflheim."

"I don't believe in this mythology of yours," Steve said through cold teeth.

"Here we walk, Steve Rogers, and yet you do not believe. It is a curious ability, peculiar to your race."

"You say that, but Thor loves you and swears your parents do too. You live with that love every day and you deny it. Perhaps it is an ability peculiar to your race."

"Frost giant," Loki corrected. His brows furrowed. "You presume to know me."

"I know you're an ass, is what I know," Steve said. "But your brother is great and honest and if he says he loves you, I believe him."

Loki sneered. "Thor is simple. Do not speak of things you do not understand."

"Then don't talk to me about my parents being in this wasteland of yours," Steve snapped back.

"I will say what I want," Loki said snidely. Steve shot him a look and they fell silent again, the wind and ice glancing across Steve's ears and nose until he felt sure he would never feel them again. He began to worry that despite hours of effort, they had not moved. The landscape remained unchanged. Perhaps he was wrong; perhaps this was hell and he was doomed to wander the ice fields with his wretched companion forever.

As they walked, the memories of Steve's life were slowly drowned out by his dreams from when he was frozen. He had told SHIELD he remembered nothing from his time in the ice, but that hadn't been true.

Steve dreamed. For seventy years, he dreamed. In every waking moment he sought to forget those dreams, and in repairing Stark Tower with Welles and watching movies and talking to JARVIS, he had mostly succeeded. Although he had never admitted it, he'd been loathe to sleep, in part, because he was afraid of dreaming.

He dreamed he had returned to Peggy and taken her dancing at the Ritz. At the end of the night, he'd asked her to marry him and she'd accepted.

He spent thirty years in the Army and picked up General. He had three kids: two boys and a girl.

He dreamed about Bucky, watching him fall over and over. No matter how Steve fought his opponent, no matter how hard Steve grasped, Bucky always fell.

He dreamed of Bucky's frozen corpse, a misshapen thing, back broken and mouth gaped open.

In Steve's dreams, his nightmares walked.

They walked now.

Steve's breathing came ragged and he pulled at Loki.

"We gotta run," he said, eyes wild. Loki gave him an exasperated look.

"From what?" he asked dryly.

"They're here."

"Who's here?" Loki asked, his tone the same as when he spoke to Thor, but he chanced a looked across the empty plains.

"The dead," Steve breathed.

It was the dead of all those killed in any war. They trudged towards them, their forms rigid and frozen and hideous. Loki had been wrong; all dead waited here. They waited for him.

Loki used his free hand to shake Steve's shoulder. "Concentrate," he demanded.

"Look at me."

Steve swung his gaze towards Loki. The dark red broke through his hallucinations. He sought to calm himself, forcing his breathing to regulate. Panic fluttered in his chest and caught in his throat.

"The things you see are in your mind. Focus on me, if you must, but focus, damn you, or we will be lost forever. These are the hallucinations of the ice fields. When you succumb, you are cursed to these fields. We venture to the trunk of Yggdrasil where we will be free."

Steve nodded numbly, forced his eyes shut, and when he opened them, his nightmares were gone. He focused his mind on their mission, cursing himself for showing weakness to his enemy.

They walked.

After a while, Steve noticed a faint flicker out of the corner of his eye. Whenever he tried to focus on it, it was gone. Steve tried to pass it off as snow blindness, but when it persisted, he focused again on Loki.

The frost giant was beautiful, in his own terrible way. His skin was a deep hue, his black hair crystalized in ice. Those horrible eyes reminded him of dying embers in a forgotten fire.

"I see them too," Loki said, interrupting Steve's thoughts.

"Who?" Steve asked.

"Corpse lights. It is the souls of the lost, seeking to trick us off our course. But they cannot fool me. I am the master trickster."

"And where are you taking us? It seems we haven't gotten anywhere," Steve demanded.

Loki caught him in his eyes. "To our freedom," he sneered.

"You say that, and yet it seems we haven't moved."

"If you have someone else to trust that you are bound to, then by all means, follow him. Otherwise, shut up."

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

"It is not I who was deluded by figments of my imagination," Loki pointed out.

"That's true," Steve said. "You have to have a soul before you can be afraid of something."

Loki scowled.

"You state things as if they are truth; and yet, you are nothing and you know nothing."

"I know love. That counts for something."

Loki scoffed. "It counts for nothing."

"You deny your family's love. Thor often speaks of saving you, and you ignore him," Steve said. He was exhausted. He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been walking in these icy fields. The troubles of Bucky and Peggy and World War II belonged to another man, like a story he'd heard once in a bar.

"He is a cur. He would love anyone."

"But he loves you," Steve persisted. It became incredibly important to him that

Loki know this. He could his feel his memories fading, but Thor stood broad and sure in them. If only Loki could acknowledge it, Steve was convinced they could be free of this wasteland. The wind kicked up around them.

"Maybe," Loki said after a long time. "But I have never been as worthy in my father's eyes."

"I remember my father, but not well," Steve said, surprised at his honesty.

"Why do you persist in trying to befriend me?" Loki said.

"He drank himself to death," Steve continued. "If he loved my mother and I, he wouldn't have abandoned us. Living is hard," Steve said, unsure why he was telling Loki this. He realized he couldn't remember what his parents looked like.

His parents suddenly stood beside him, looking at him accusingly with formless faces. In a gust of wind, they stood as tall shadows in his mind, and they were Sorrow and Broken Dreams.

"Nothing I have ever done has been good enough for my father," Loki admitted, irritated, as though the words betrayed him. "I sought a war to win his approval."

"You were good enough for him as you were. Maybe it was the deceitful man you became that he disliked."

Loki turned rapidly on Steve, his eyes burning. "What do you know about such things?"

"I know what it is to have a dream bigger than yourself," he said. It wasn't what he had wanted to say, but the words slipped from his mouth unbidden.

"If anyone should be asking forgiveness, it is him," Loki said bitterly. And Steve realized that Loki the Liesmith could not lie in this land.

They walked.

Steve wondered that maybe he had never been freed from the ice. Perhaps this was another wretched dream. Being freed had only ever been a trick of his dying mind.

The tears froze on his face.

"Thor is not smart, but his heart is large and he loves all who should enter his life. I am not worthy of it," Loki suddenly declared, looking pained that he had confessed this.

"I have forgotten my mother," Steve said brokenly. "There was also a woman, once, who I loved with all the love I could give. And I can't remember her name."

Loki turned and gave Steve a piercing look. "We walk in lands no mortal was ever meant to walk. I have hated my family these many years, but I cannot remember why. Yet it burns in me, like the coals of a fire. I do not know love as you knew it. Her name was Peggy."

"Peggy," he repeated, holding the name close to his heart. He wondered how Loki knew it.

He suspected there wasn't much that could be kept secret between them in this icy waste.

He sought to recall Peggy's face and couldn't. But she stood there, and she was Love. His shadows followed him.

"What is your name?" Loki asked after an age, when Steve began to think that he was snow, and he had always been snow.

"Steve," he recalled through frozen lips. "I am Steve Rogers."

But he could not remember anything that came before or after him, and his name began to fade from memory.

"Steve Rogers," Loki said, and Steve was himself again, a cold man, trudging through the snow plains. "I will remember you."

"And you?"

"I am Loki Laufey, of the House of Odin."

"Loki Laufey, of the House of Odin. I will remember you."

And for a while, Steve and Loki walked amongst the snow fields, and tried to remember one another as best they could.

"I remember," Steve said.

"What do you remember?" Loki asked, his voice desperate and thin.

"I remember when I was a frail little boy. I would have been a frail boy forever had a doctor not saved me. But even when he made me a great man, I couldn't save my friends."

"What was the doctor's name?" Loki asked.

"I don't remember."

And the doctor stood beside him, and he was Hope. He joined the other shadows.

They walked over icy fields and under barren trees, silver limbs spindly and crooked.

"I don't remember," Loki said.

"What?" Steve asked, or meant to say, but he had forgotten how to form words.

But Loki knew.

"Anything. I don't remember anything," Loki said brokenly.

"I remember Peggy," Steve said. "And Thor and Tony, Natasha and Clint, and a man who was a monster but also the smartest man I've ever known. His name was Bruce.

"And you," Steve continued, determined, "are Loki, Son of Laufey, of the House of Odin, and your brother loves you as much as any man can love another."

As Steve spoke the names of his teammates, their faces faded. And they became Determination, and Pride, Solitude, Cleverness, and Rage but also Intelligence. They were tall shadows that followed Steve, even as he willed them away.

"I am Loki," Loki said. "Steve Rogers," he prompted, "tell me of your friends. My brother, I think, had many. The Warriors Three. They suffered me, for I was his relation. I do not remember them well. There was one, a woman, whose hair I stole."

And so Steve told him what he could, of the tall shadows that followed them, but whose faces he could not remember.

"You were another man, once," Steve said when he was done. "With green eyes."

The visage that had been Loki's human form faded, and he walked beside them and he was Envy.

"I do not remember," Loki said, stricken.

And Steve couldn't, either.

They became the wind, howling across a wasteland. They were the snow, gathered in banks and scattered across fields of ice. They were frozen, trapped in the plains they walked.

After the greatest length of time the man once called Steve had ever endured, they arrived at a door.

They paused at it.

"This was our goal," the creature once called Loki said, but he sounded unsure.

The shadows shuffled around Steve impatiently. They gathered at the door.

"It would be easier to drift here forever, no responsibilities," the shadow called Sorrow said. "You have already suffered so much. None would begrudge you."

"There is everything to be learned should you go through," the shadow called Intelligence said. "You'll go places no man has ever seen."

"And you would be the greatest," the shadow called Pride said, excited. "To see the things no man was meant to see."

"There are those waiting for you," the shadow called Determination said. "You must go through that door."

"There are great things behind that door, but also terrible things," the shadow called Broken Dreams said, and Steve knew that this shadow spoke truest of all. "But you will regret most of all if you never try."

"But I am afraid," he told his tall shadows, "that I will go through those doors and none will remember me."

"Even if we are no longer there, we will remember who we you were," the shadow called Love said. "And that is better than never being remembered at all."

"The greatest horror any mortal should ever witness is being forgotten," the shadow called Solitude said.

Steve pulled a great metallic item from his back. He knew it, once. He held it forward.

"Loki, son of Laufey of the House of Odin, we must break through that door."

"I do not want to."

Conflicted red eyes pierced his own, and Loki was a little boy, with eyes too large for his face. The tiny boy looked up at Steve, his brows furrowed in worry. He was frail and small, and he reminded Steve of himself.

Steve knelt and placed an icy hand on Loki's shoulder.

"We are loved, and we cannot be forgotten. We must go or we will be lost."

Loki regarded him with wide eyes. "I am afraid of what I might remember."

"It doesn't matter," Steve said.

"I do not remember those that wait for me, but I fear they will not be happy to see me."

"But I will be," Steve said solemnly.

And he knew there was a reason, once, when he wouldn't be happy to have Loki beside him. But he could not remember why.

They pushed through the door.

A/N Niflheim exists in Norse Mythology

HEY, sorry for the goof up post. MY BUST. Hope you like this longer chapter!

Also, please ya'll, if you like this, please go ahead and review. I'm already failing organic chemistry, I don't need to feel like I'm failing at ficcing, too!

(And hell, if you don't like it, drop a note to tell me why!)