#moonrise legacy meets mcu

[sunderedazem]

“you don’t have to tell me. but if you do decide you want to, i’ll be here.”

For Steve and Corrain

:D you have chosen the Best Bois from the MCU/Moonrise legacy monstrosity! <3 (yay!!)

(Set during Age of Ultron)

It was...quiet. Somehow.

The porch was empty aside from himself and the crickets singing softly among the trees and tall grasses framing Clint's farmhouse, and yet the silence was deafening. Even in the midst of the soft rush of reeds in the breeze, the distant cooing of an owl, or the gentle windchimes tinkling overhead- the silence was oppressive, pinning him down. Breathing felt faraway and dim, the whisper of his own heartbeat muffled. It wasn't normal, this heavy, choking silence in his head and yet it remained in place, too heavy for even him to lift alone.

He shifted, leaning against one of the sections of railing that Clint hadn't taken apart yet. It was sturdy, groaning only a little under the weight of his grip. Absently, he traced a thumb over the chips in the white paint, trying to ground himself.

Nat was shaken badly by whatever the Maximoff girl had showed her. Very badly. He didn't know what fear could have possibly broken the Black Widow's composure like that, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he didn't want to find out. And then there was Tony, and the catastrophe that had resulted from being shown his worst fears, whatever they were. Steve had to fight back a shiver, the world still oddly muffled around him, the ground and worn wooden floorboards a dizzying drop away from him now. Neither of his teammates had wanted to share their waking nightmares, but...clearly they had both been awful. Terrifying on a scale the rest of them couldn't imagine.

And maybe he'd understood that without them needing to say anything. Felt it, somehow, like the hollow ring of his shield against Thor's Mjolnir, except...echoing and cold and prickling down his spine like the ice of the Arctic. Fear not his own, clawing at his chest.

Sending him farther and farther from the creaking porch now miles below him.

Then there was a flicker of warm rain at his back, and suddenly the puppet strings attached to his limbs were reeling in, the earth rushing closer as he fell back into himself, dazed. Suddenly the noise was loud again, ambient sound enough to keep him present - and he whipped around, heart in his throat. And the tickle of warm rain, gentle and dry against the back of his neck - it smiled kindly at him. He knew this feeling, didn't he?

He blinked at the familiar silhouette before him as Corrain stepped quietly into the porchlight, humming softly to himself, his long white braid draped casually over one shoulder. His muted eyes were fixed on Steve's face, the soft grey-blue gaze searching. He had eyes like a summer thunderstorm, Steve thought absently, again.

"You've been out here for a while," the alien man said after a moment's pause, cocking his head to one side and gazing placidly up to meet Steve's racing-heart stare. "Everything all right, Steve?"

There was another set of chirps from the crickets in the reeds, a little, encouraging song to tamp down the instinctive urge to put the shield up - to hide Steve Rogers behind Captain America. But he swallowed it, trying to take a steadying breath the way Corrain had showed him, back before SHIELD's disintegration and Hydra's fall. The smaller man had never been anything but patient with him before - he deserved more than to be shrugged off. Besides - if what he'd said about his senses of empathetic perception was all true, then he'd already know the answer to his own question. And lying had never really been Steve's style - as Nat said, he was terrible at it.

"...I don't know."

The non-answer didn't appear to faze Corrain in the slightest. Instead, he just crept closer, until he was standing at Steve's shoulder, the top of his head barely level with Steve's chin. Vaguely, Steve wondered if they'd have been the same height, should he never have touched Dr. Erskine's serum.

"You don't have to talk about it." The alien man's - Zakuulan, he was Zakuulan, a human from a distant planet on the other side of the universe - tone was steady, still impossibly kind, as if he was trying to calm a spooked animal. "But if you decide you want to - and I think you should - I'm here. And your team is here. We'll listen."

The team? It took a moment for the concept to shape itself inside his head, of Natasha and Bruce, Clint and Thor and- and Tony, all somehow listening, withholding judgement as he laid bare the old, throbbing wound of loss. Three, almost four years had passed since he'd woken up from his long slumber frozen in the arctic, and yet- the ache hadn't faded. Bucky's capture and breaking at HYDRA's hands still haunted him, and even Peggy barely recognized him now and he dreaded the day he would finally lose her too. He'd had almost four years to get used to the idea and yet...

"...I didn't see anything frightening," he said finally, the words thick in his mouth. "Not the way the others did. I...No, it's not worth sharing, really."

Corrain frowned at that, and without warning his hand came up, smacking the back of Steve's head with a surprising amount of force from someone so petite.

"Ow? Corrain, what the-"

"You tell me that whatever has you disassociating out here for thirty minutes straight 'isn't worth sharing' again and I'll outright deck your dumb ass," Corrain said flatly. Steve blinked once- twice-

"Thirty minutes?"

"Well, Natasha and Tony both went on for at least an hour, if you're trying to needlessly compare your own troubles to other people again." The grey storm of that gaze was piercing now, searing holes in his face. Steve tried his best to meet it, but could only manage for a minute.

"Look. If you don't want to share- I'm not forcing you," Corrain said, flipping his braid back over his shoulder. His voice had lost the sudden brusque edge, returning to its previous warmth. "If you're not ready to talk, that's okay. But- I think you'd feel better if you stopped stewing in it. And I think your team is probably one of the only groups of people on this planet that could have even a prayer of understanding what you're dealing with. And vice versa."

For a moment, Steve let the idea settle in his head. And then, incredulously, he turned to the short man at his side, watching as the faint smile lines on Corrain's face deepened, his mouth curling.

"You want us to all talk about what Wanda made us see, don't you?" he accused - but he couldn't bring himself to put any bite behind the words, and Corrain's smile only grew.

"Not quite, considering she didn't hit all of you," Corrain chirped out, and that odd summer-rain warmth pattered lightly across Steve's back again, like an embedded giggle in the sudden curl of comfort he felt wrapping around his shoulders. "But similar enough - and yes. You can only understand each other more by listening to what you all fear most, and it can only help you in the long run. And I think what you all fear... those fears may explain more about how you all act than you think."

"Even if mine's not- not a fear, precisely?"

The porchlight flickered then, briefly casting the smile on the Zakuulan man's face into long shadows, and by the time the light clattered back to life the grin was gone. Only a soft, tired compassion remained.

"I know," Corrain said softly. "Grieving men don't fear death - they mourn that it didn't take them too. And you haven't been scared since I met you. That's the problem."

Silence sprinkled with the windchime's tinkling music fell. Steve tried not to think about how quickly, how accurately he'd been seen through, held his tongue even in the face of that placid acknowledgement. After all- what could he say to that? He was terrible at lying.

Corrain turned, gesturing back at the warm light of the screen door behind him, and then reached back, clasping a warm hand around Steve's shoulder.

"Come on, Steve." Thunderstorm eyes flickered back towards the house, unbearably calm in the face of what had just been laid bare between them. "You don't have to say anything, but I think if you wanted to, if you found the strength to trust them enough to be vulnerable...you'd find they'd listen, and they'd understand."