Chapter Text
Bruce stepped out of his cabin and breathed deep, the scents of the forest filling his nostrils. It was one advantage of what he'd become. When he stood here, in the patch of forest he'd made his own, nothing could hide from him.
He shook himself, ears rattling, and scratched his horns, then glanced up through the branches at the sky, working out where he could find the best light.
It had been a good day today. He'd spent the morning working in his garden. In the afternoon, Steve had arrived, walking with him down to the cove to meet Bucky, who'd been grinning up at him from next to a bulging sack. They always brought it with them when they came to visit, filled with things they thought he might find useful.
From the uncertain way Steve had watched him, wrapping a nervous wing around Bucky, Bruce had guessed this time they'd brought something unusual.
When he'd unfolded a bundle of rough cloth, revealing oversized quill pens, far too large for a human hand but just right for his, he'd understood Steve's nervousness. The feathers were too big to have come from any bird.
Steve had fidgeted and said, "Nowhere had pens big enough for you. Not even close. We had to get them made and the only feathers big enough were…" He'd trailed off, but his wings had flicked forward, pinions unfolding—pinions identical to the quills Bruce was holding in his hand.
"And the books would have been useless without pens to write in them." Bucky had nodded at the sack and Bruce pulled out a stack of blank-paged leather-bound books. "I thought," he'd added softly, "you might want to start writing down some of the things you know."
He hadn't touched pen and ink since he'd been exiled, since he'd been cast out because the Masters had refused to believe he was still who he'd always been. It had been like a holding a memory of a different time.
Bucky had looked concerned at his silence, Steve downright worried, so Bruce had shaken the memories away, smiling as he held up a pen. "Thank you," he'd said, having no way to put into words what the gift, and Steve's willingness to sacrifice his own feathers, meant to him.
Steve had beamed back. "You're welcome."
"But that's the only body part you're getting your hands on," Bucky had added, sly and teasing. "The rest are mine."
Steve had groaned and smacked him with a wing while Bucky ducked away, grinning, and Bruce had laughed, deep and heartfelt.
They did that, the two of them; they made him laugh. It made him happy to see them together, to see how at peace with himself Bucky had become. When Bucky had saved him, when he'd let Bruce stay with him, he'd let Bruce find a measure of peace. It settled something in him to know Bucky had finally found more than a mere measure. With Steve, he'd found an ocean and a sky's worth.
When they'd gone, leaving him with pens and ink and books and promises to return in a couple of weeks, Bruce had returned to his patch of forest and carefully put everything safely away. Now he was standing outside his cabin, holding a pen made from a white feather almost as long as his forearm, a bottle of ink, and an empty book, studying the light.
He chose a spot under a tree whose branches split, opening a path for the sun. When he opened the journal, pen at the ready, he hesitated. He wanted to write out histories and scribble alchemical formulas and diagram the movement of the stars. There was too much. Where did he start?
A branch cracked and he lifted his head sharply. Breathed in.
He was on his hooves, the journal and ink carefully set aside, the pen in his hands like a weapon, by the time the man stepped into the clearing he called his own.
Bruce lowered his head and let out a loud, threatening snort, tail lashing.
"Woah, hey, no charging." The man, who was rather short and had facial hair like a badger curled on his chin, held up his hands. There was a slowly fading glow around his torso that made the air shimmer. "No charging. I come in peace. I just want to talk to you. I think I want to talk to you. Maybe?"
"If you come looking for a minotaur you should know what you want from him."
"That's a fair point. But I didn't know I was looking for a minotaur. I still don't know if I'm looking for a minotaur. You might not be who I'm looking for." His eyes narrowed as he pointed to the pen. "That makes me think I am, though. You got that from Wings, right? It looks like one of his and it's just the kind of thing he'd do."
Bruce's eyes narrowed and he scraped a hoof across the grass. "What do you want."
"I want to find the being, whatever, whoever, they are, that knows histories from the Musaeum. If that's you, I'm looking for you. If it's not you, maybe you could point me in their direction?" He waved his hand around vaguely. "It's a big forest and they could be anywhere."
Bruce stared at him, and not in a friendly way, while his blood chilled. Bucky would never give his existence away. Would Steve? Bruce had never asked him not to.
No. The answer came easily, but it wasn't trust. Logically, he couldn’t have or whoever this was would have known what he was looking for.
Whoever he was, he was apparently allergic to silence.
"See, Wings showed up at the library with what he claimed was the true history of Icarus. Said it was the one from the Musaeum at Alexandria. Anyone else, I would have called bullshit. Uh, no offence."
Bruce snorted, amused despite himself. "None taken."
"Right. Anyway, it was Wings, and you just kind of have to believe him. You know? It's annoying, but there you go. So if he shows up and says hey, this is the actual history they've got at Alexandria, you believe him and you add it to the library. But you wonder where he got it." Whoever he was rolled his eyes. "Of course he refuses to say, just clams up and stares at me like I asked him to drown a kitten."
Bruce's heart did something complicated, knowing Steve had protected him.
"But, see, he and that triton of his keep coming out here, and I figured they have to be doing it for a reason, so I put two and two together and came up with you. Possibly you. Is it you?"
There was so much excited hope in those last three words, Bruce found himself asking, "Who are you?"
He gaped. "Who am I… Who am I?"
Bruce nodded and folded his arms, careful of long length of fragile pen in his hand.
"Who am I. Okay, that's not a question I ever expected to be asked." He seemed weirdly pleased, grinning as he said, "Tony Stark at your service. Not literally at your service, you understand, but it's a thing people say."
Bruce…blinked. "Tony Stark."
He nodded, still grinning.
"We studied your weapons at the Musaeum."
His grin slowly faded. "I bet you did. Couldn't figure out how to make them, could you?"
He'd understood the shape of them, had the feeling if he'd pressed a little harder the truth of them would have become clear, but the lands were better without Stark's weapons. "No."
"Good."
"I agree."
Stark gave a sharp nod. "I don't do that anymore."
"No, instead you founded an entire city."
"Not just me."
"You're the one people talk about."
"I learned a long time ago you can't control what people say about you." He waved a dismissive hand. "But look, since you are who I'm looking for, maybe you can help me. See, I've been trying to get the Masters—and seriously, Masters? They can't come up with something a little less… A little less?—at Alexandria to agree to a trade, or a deal, or anything, to get a copy of at least some of what they have into our library but they won't even sit down to talk about it. I figured it was because they have a stick up their asses about The City, but if they let you study there..."
He trailed off in the face of Bruce's level stare and winced. "Again, no offence."
He said nothing, but the old anger was rising, because they hadn't, they'd exiled him, and this Stark, who'd founded an entire city to feed his ego after he'd give up the fame weapons had brought, was stomping all over things he could never understand.
"Moving on. Alexandria's it, they're everything, and just because they survived the breaking doesn’t mean they're going to survive whatever comes next. All it would take is a flood, a fire, an earthquake and," he snapped his fingers, "it's all gone, just like that. There needs to be copies everywhere, but until we figure out how to fit an entire library in your pocket, I'll settle for one. In The City. Where I can keep it safe. And if they let someone who's not one hundred percent ordinary human study there, if they let a minotaur study there, then their problem can't be with what The City is. it's got to be something else. I've just got to figure it out."
The quill crumpled in his hand. His shoulders curled as he lowered his head and crossed the grass between them, hooves digging deep into the grass. "They didn't." It rumbled out low, dangerous, and his ears were flat to his head.
Stark didn't move. Bruce didn't know if he was stupid or arrogant or oblivious to how easily Bruce could kill him, but he didn't move. All he did was tilt his head so he could look him in the eye. "They didn't what?"
"They didn't let a minotaur study there. You think they'd take someone like this," he raised his arms, "as an apprentice? No." He spat the word. "I looked just like you. Seven years I studied there. For seven years it was my home. It was everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed of." The words were tumbling out fast, fuelled not just by anger but by the need to make sure Stark understood who he was trying to make deals with. "When I changed, my own Master refused to speak for me. I'd been his apprentice for seven years, he knew me, he knew my mind, he knew everything I could do. I showed him I was still me, that I could still do everything I could before, and he turned his back on me."
He touched the metal caps that covered his sawn-off horns. "I thought if I showed them I didn't want to be dangerous they'd let me stay, so I cut off my own horns." He had to swallow hard, eyes on the grass. "They didn't care. They banished me. If I hadn't found a ship willing to take me, I think they would have had me killed. So no, don't ever think they let a minotaur study there. Not for one minute. Not for one second."
He was breathing hard, but his anger had drained away, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
The touch on his arm shocked them open.
There was compassion on Stark's face, sympathy in his voice, a light like fury in the back of his eyes. "I'm sorry..." He stopped. "What's your name?"
He debated not telling him, then decided after everything he'd just blurted out it would be pointless. "Bruce."
"Bruce. That's…" He shook his head. "No, If I tried to pretend I understood, it'd be a lie, but I damn sure know it shouldn't have happened." For the first time his words weren't tumbling over themselves like they were trying to win a race. "No one should have done that to you. No one should have made you feel like you had to, to cut off a piece of yourself."
The words, the touch on his arm, utterly fearless, blew through him like a peaceful breeze. He nodded.
Stark nodded back, and when he pulled his hand away, it was slow, like he was making a point.
Bruce wasn't even slightly surprised when Stark grimaced, almost apologetically, and said, "Can I ask though—"
"Some of us change," he said before Stark finished the question. "It's been this way since before the breaking." He tossed his head. "It means we come from one of the bloodlines that were touched by the gods."
"Fucking gods." He said it the way someone would complain about deer getting into the garden, about vermin getting into the food. "It always comes back to the fucking gods. I don't know whether they left because of the breaking or the breaking happened because they left, but we're better off without them."
Bruce stared at him.
"What?"
"You think the breaking happened because the gods left?"
"I don't know. How do you test something like that? Everyone assumes it's the other way around, but either way fits what we know about them."
He thought about it, measuring it against the histories, then nodded. "You're right."
"I usually am." He took a deep breath. "Bruce. Come to The City."
"No."
"No? Just like that, no?"
"Do I need more than that?"
Stark looked flummoxed. A tickle of humour made Bruce flick his ears. He wondered how often people said no to him.
"No," Stark finally said. "No, I guess not? But imagine how much nicer it would be living there." It was wheedling. "And there's the library. You could add everything you know to it."
The amusement disappeared like it had fallen into a well. "I see. You want the bits of the Musaeum I have in my head. You'll tolerate a minotaur in your city for long enough to drain everything he knows and then I get to enjoy a repeat of what happened three years ago." He stepped back, reclaiming the distance between them. "No thanks."
Stark didn't reply, and even their short acquaintance had been enough to learn silence from him was unusual. It was enough to make Bruce fidget. Eventually Stark gazed up at the sky, which was starting to show the first streaks of approaching dusk. "Do you know why it's called The City?"
"No."
"Because it's simple. It describes exactly what it is. It's a city. And a city is a place where people can find safety and home and protection, a place they can live and work, find friendship and raise a family. The City. Anything else would have brought something else to the table." He glanced at Bruce. "I did suggest Starkia, but it got shot down."
"I'm not surprised."
Stark gave him a half-smile and went back to staring at the sky. "Do you know why we founded The City?"
"Ego?"
Stark laughed. "You're not the first to guess that, but if I'd been going for ego I would have fought harder for Starkia."
"Then why?" he asked, intrigued despite himself.
"Because the gods were assholes of the highest order and they fucked around in people's lives. Maybe they couldn’t have stopped the breaking, maybe they were the ones who caused it in the first place. Whatever the truth, they left. Wherever they are now, they left us alone to clean up the mess. So in our own small way that's what we're doing."
"You're trying to clean up the mess the gods left behind? Are you sure you didn't found The City from pure ego? Because that sounds pretty egotistical to me."
Stark's slow smile was strange. "Except there's facts you're not factoring in. When I said the gods fucked around in people's lives? I meant it literally. There's a bunch of us who are the result of that. We can do things other people can't and we're going to live a long time. I could have kept making weapons, and what a great little legacy of the gods that would have made me. Walking right in great great grandaddy's footsteps. Or I could so something good. We, me and the other Founders, could do something good. So we did."
"You're saying you're…"
"Yeah."
"Divine blood."
Stark shrugged.
"All of you."
"If you mean the Founders? Yes. If you mean everyone in The City? No. But anyone who comes in peace is welcome in The City. Anyone. That includes minotaurs. I don't want you to come to The City because I want to use you, Bruce. I want you to come to The City because that's what it's for." He scratched his throat as he looked away. "And…"
"And?" he asked suspiciously.
"It'd be nice to have someone around who was smart enough to understand what I'm talking about. At least some of the time."
The laughter took him completely by surprise, tumbling out of him, and he snorted out, "Ego!" pointing at Stark.
"Truth," he retorted, which only made him laugh harder.
When he'd caught his breath, he studied the man in front of him who bore his scrutiny in silence for about thirty seconds before it got too much for him.
"There might be another thing. If you wanted it. Maybe."
"What's that?"
"Pepper. She's one of the Founders, she has the gift for people. For bodies." Stark's jaw moved like he was biting down on something unpleasant, then he nodded. "She might be able to change you back to what you were before this."
The possibility rose up in front of him for one glorious moment, then he tossed his head. "No. This is me. This is who I am. If that's not good enough for someone then they're not good enough for me."
Stark looked ridiculously pleased. He held out his hand. "Bruce. Come and see my city. I promise you won't regret it."
Bruce looked down at the crumpled quill in his hand. The shaft was still straight, strong and unbroken, and it gleamed in the fading sun.
He lifted his head. "Your city?"
"The City, whatever, you know what I mean."
With a small snort of amusement, ignoring the pounding of his heart, Bruce took his hand.