Summary: Palladium poisoning, Norse gods, and a ghost story all twist together, and Steve Rogers knew far too much about all of it from the first time he opened his eyes in the 21st century. It leaves Tony scrambling for answers even as he helps save the world. A forbidden relationship ended tragically in 1944, a plethora of evidence but none that makes sense, a journal of impossible things. The only common denominator: Anthony Starosta, a dead man who shares his face.

In a world where Tony Stark stuck to the cue cards and Captain America remembers the time traveler he loves, what can change?

(Prequel/sequel to Seeing Through the Eyes of Icarus.)

Edit Note 13/5/2016: Just correcting my misspelling of Yinsen's name. It's bothered me for weeks. But here's a new chapter for you all!

Disclaimer: I own nothing under copyright. I also don't own the cover image.

Prologue: Once Upon a Time in Afghanistan

"You are, and always have been, my dream."

― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

When it comes down to it, Tony Stark's life has always been defined by Captain America. First it was being told the stories of a brave, kind and true man in the few times he got along with his father. Then his own research and readings of the comics saddled him with being called a geeky fanboy, which he didn't really mind. It was true. And so it went, through the years, until he reached high school.

That was when he sneaked into his dad's storage room and went through the old prototypes and plans. Things that hadn't seen the light of electricity, never mind day, for years. Fascinated, Tony went through all the files from the war.

In the middle of one, sandwiched between the pages of the report on some mechanical arm, he found a picture. In it, an obscenely handsome man wearing a military dress uniform smiled brightly at something outside the frame. His happiness almost made him glow. The picture was in black and white, but Tony was able to fill in the details: hair probably golden blonde, blue eyes. When he saw a round shield at the man's feet, his eyes went wide: it was Captain America's shield. This was Captain America outside the uniform. On the back, his father's neat script read, "Captain Steve Rogers, May 1944."

His eyes absorbed the picture, memorizing every curve and line of the man who didn't appear to realize that he was on camera. When it came time to put everything back, Tony hesitated. Instead of replacing the picture, he tucked it into a breast pocket.

The next day he made a frame for it. The only thing special about this frame was its durability; it was made of the toughest materials he could get his hands on that wouldn't damage the delicate paper or be obvious in his jacket. He kept the picture close to his heart after that, never without it.

In eleventh grade the frame showed its mettle. Idiot Elliot and his gang were picking on him as usual, but this time his jacket was open; the picture flew out. When it landed at Weasel Wesley's feet, he sneered, "Who's the old man? Your boyfriend?" As if just realizing what he said, he added with a certain amount of wariness, "You a fag now?"

Tony snorted through his bloody nose. "Give that back," he told the other boy calmly. He got a kick to the ribs for it.

"Oh, Stark really likes it. Come on boys, I think we've found what we were looking for," Idiot Elliot said with a laugh.

Panic allowed Tony to get up and tackle Weasel Wesley, trying to get his picture back. Who knew what they would do to it? He was punched in the side of the head and when he came to, he was in the nurse's office with Rhodes, one of the day kids, at his bedside. Turns out he had been the one to find Tony and carry him in. That was when the two first became friends.

A plan was hatched to get the picture back, and it worked like a charm. Nothing had been able to penetrate the frame, the edges were just a little scratched and blackened. After that he kept it in a hidden compartment of his bag.

It wasn't in time to keep copies of the picture from circulating around, with the implication that Tony was fucking one of his dad's old war buddies. When he didn't deny it (hell, if he could he totally would) the girls started asking for fashion advice and most of the guys avoided him like the plague. Which actually worked out for him.

Luckily, Howard never found out about that incident. He did find out about his son's sexual preferences later that year when he caught Tony with a lacrosse player and then one of the cheerleaders, but it was quickly dropped. Not like the old man could say anything.

Around college, his feelings toward the subject of the photo changed. There had always been hero worship and admiration, and there still was. But feelings creeped in. Sure, he had flings and relationships (most of which ended badly) but none of them were what he was looking for, something was missing. It wasn't like a photo could do the trick either, but everything he knew about the Captain just sort of ingrained itself into that image.

Subtly and sinisterly, his heart had conspired against him and not for the first time (or the last), he hated that piece of flesh in his chest. He had fallen in love with a dead man without even realizing it.

To keep up appearances he kept doing what he did best: breaking hearts and showing off. Every one night stand left him feeling a little more broken on the inside. That was where the alcohol came in.

Then his parents died in a car crash that just didn't feel right, and suddenly he was the owner of a multi-billion dollar company. Well, technically. While he was still in college, Uncle Obie took care of things and he took full advantage of that. Go big or go home, and all that.

Years whiled by, and Tony gained a reputation. Not one his father would have been proud of (or maybe he would have, Tony had seen the list of 'Stark specials' the jeweler made) but it got him on the news and magazine covers anyways. Bad attention was better than no attention.

The company only got bigger. Propelled by Tony's ruthless public persona and cutthroat politics, Stark Industries became the biggest weapons manufacturer in the world. And the most profitable, but he didn't like boasting about that. (Which is a blatant lie.)

With the demonstration of the Jericho missile, everything went wrong. Tony was hit with one of his own weapons and sure that he was going to die. Somewhere in the back of his mind as he lay bleeding out under the desert sun, he wondered if maybe he would finally meet Cap.

A chuckle bubbled up his throat. It tasted distinctly bloody. The Merchant of Death, going to heaven or wherever people like Captain America went? Inconceivable.

Tony passed out after that.

When he woke up in a cave, he felt distinctly cheated. Then he realized that there was a huge fucking hole in his chest and a goddamned car battery attached. Things got a little hazy after that.

Never would he tell anyone about the days that followed. The beatings, the hunger and thirst, the waterboarding. That last one terrified him; he could hear the battery his life depended on sparking every time he was dunked, and could do nothing more than hope it would keep working.

Sometimes, he hoped it would stop. That would be the end of the torture and captivity. Maybe he would get to meet his idol, even briefly. A reward for not giving into these clowns' demands would be nice.

Then Yinsen, the doctor who had been forced to save him, shamed him into living. "This is your legacy," the old man told him harshly, gesturing to the tools and weapons all around them, "You are the Merchant of Death. Do you want that to be all that you are known for?" When that had no effect, he pulled something from under his hard sleeping mat. "Is that how you want him to remember you?" It was the photo of Captain America.

Tension that Tony hadn't known was in his chest eased. He snatched the frame from Yensin's hand and held it protectively to himself, right below where the wires were connected. "I thought I lost this," he said softly, raking a hand over the back.

The frame had stood up even to Jericho. It was more battered than ever, chipped and scratched to hell, but intact. There were small gouges in the back from pieces of metal, a few of which were still in there.

"They were going to burn it," Yinsen replied.

The mere idea made Tony angry. He held the precious picture tighter to him. It was worth too much for that to be allowed, even discounting its historical value.

Something in Yinsen's eyes softened as he watched the other man. "Is this what you would have him remember you as, the Merchant of Death?" he asked.

No matter that it was impossible, that Cap would never know him regardless of what he was, something in Tony rebelled at the thought. He was so much more than that. There was so much more that he could offer the world, and he'd be damned if he didn't try to be the best man he could. Maybe then he could face death with dignity.

Instead of going quietly into the night, Tony and Yinsen started building. It wasn't the missile the Ten Rings demanded, though. No, Tony had pulled an idea out of his ass that might save them: a suit of armor. Power armor, one could call it.

The photo got brought up not a week after their crazy scheme was hatched. They were taking the evening off of work to keep from going mad, playing cards and improvised board games. It's not like they had access to Monopoly.

"Who is he? The man in the picture," Yinsen asked, gesturing to where the frame leaned on Tony's poor excuse for a pillow.

With a smile that could very well be called sappy, Tony looked over at it. He had long ago memorized everything about the man immortalized on the paper, but somehow it still made his heart beat a little faster. "Captain Steve Rogers," he answered. In a whisper he confided, "Captain America."

Bemused, Yinsen looked at the picture again. "Yes, I wondered where I had seen that shield," he mused with a little smile. "I meant, who is he to you?" There was mischief in his question, but he honestly wanted to know.

"Nothing, really. You know the Captain America story: he died before I was even thought of," Tony answered evasively. That wasn't something he wanted to admit to anyone, not just yet.

Yinsen accepted the answer with a nod. "It is a strange and wonderful thing, to be able to fall in love with a man you've never met," he commented sagely.

There was nothing Tony could say to that. For once in his life, he didn't feel right lying.

The silence was accepted for the confirmation that it really was, and Yinsen went on to ask about Tony's family. "You have nothing and everything," he said with a pitying smile when he was told.

If there was one thing Tony hated, it was pity. "What about you? Got a family?" he asked in return.

"Yes. My wife and children. I will see them again when I leave here," Yinsen answered calmly.

When Yinsen died, Tony felt like someone kicked him in the gut with a football cleat. This may have been the closest thing he had to family, and it was gone. The Ten Rings would pay.

Getting back to the States was a dream come true. Sometimes he would wake up and think it had all been a nightmare, that Afghanistan never happened. Then he would regain awareness of his body and feel the arc reactor pressing against his heart and lungs. It was as real as he was.

The first thing Tony did besides eat a cheeseburger was stop the weapons manufacturing. In that cave he had made a promise. To himself, to Yinsen, to Cap, he didn't know, but he wasn't about to break it no matter who he meant it for. No more weapons. No more.

Of course, no one understood. Privately he had expected that. It was a huge departure from his usual personality, from what everyone knew of him. But he meant every second of it.

The only weapon that he would ever again make was a way to turn himself into one. As fast as he could, Tony hammered out another suit. He was lucky he hadn't died in the first one. This one, he would be able to use for more than fifteen minutes. This one, he would use to save the world and not just himself.

Eventually he succeeded. The icing was a problem, but of course he found a way around that. He was Tony Stark, he could do anything.

Anything but see betrayal right in front of his face, apparently. It took Obie ripping his mechanical heart out with a smile for him to realize everything. That attack in Afghanistan wasn't luck. Those weapons weren't stolen, they were sold on the black market. And Obie was responsible for all of it.

When Tony was safe again, his old reactor from the cave in his chest, the panic died down and he made another promise. No one would ever do that to him again. They would never betray him like that and leave him to die. He wouldn't let them.

Even Pepper said that he became cold after that. Calculating, paranoid, distant. It was the end to any kind of relationship they might have had.

But that was okay. Pepper was safer this way. And if Tony was honest, it never would have worked out anyway. He was too emotionally unavailable, even before Stane's (Obie's) betrayal.

In another bid to protect himself, and those he was closest to, Tony read off those stupid cue cards that SHIELD prepared for him. Lies were told and questions avoided, and Everhart's smirking face ground into his corneas until he wanted to shout the truth. But he didn't.

As far as the world was concerned, Iron Man was someone else. He was a faceless entity that served as billionaire genius asshole Tony Stark's bodyguard. The one night stands stopped so that they didn't see the arc reactor and Pepper was under the impression that he really had hired someone.

Everything was okay for a while. Things went back to (almost) normal. No longer limited to finding new ways of destroying, designs went from idea to life faster than they could be marketed. Tony's friendships with Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy solidified. He was almost content.

Then some kind of poisoning crept up on Tony and it wasn't long before he realized that it was his arc reactor doing it. The very thing keeping him alive was killing him. Irony was a bitch.

In the middle of his search for a new element to run the arc reactor off of, the pirate-spy-thing that had invaded his house after the battle contacted him. "Listen, Stark, I need a favor," the man said tiredly.

While usually Tony would have made a smart remark about being a little busy and flipped off the line, he got curious. "Doth my ears deceive me?" he asked with an overdramatic gasp.

"We found Captain America and he needs a place to stay," Fury said.

The world seemed to stop for a minute.

"Yeah, and I found the fountain of youth and it needs a rocketship," Tony snarked, "Don't play that game with me." He went to turn the call off. There were better things to do, like find a way to not die.

"No joke, Stark," Fury replied calmly.

Tony's finger hovered over the 'end call' button for a moment. Maybe this was garbage, or maybe it was worth listening to. "You have thirty seconds before I get back to work," he said instead, resting against his work table with crossed arms.

"Russian oil drillers found a plane crashed, they called us. When we got there, we were able to identify it as the Valkyrie, the super-bomber Cap went down in. He was still inside, frozen solid," Fury explained. For a few seconds he hesitated, as if uncertain of whether he should say what was on the tip of his tongue.

Curious, Tony decided to help him out. "Why should I give house space to a corpse? That's what morgues are for." Okay, so he sassed him. Big difference.

"He's still alive." The words were spoken deliberately, with more weight than Fury had ever applied to anything in Tony's presence.

For once in his life, Tony knew what being shocked stupid felt like. "You can't be serious," he said.

Fury smiled grimly. "As a heart attack. Now are you going to give him a room or not?"

Just for show, Tony took a moment to think. If this was actually Cap, it was a no-brainer. "How do I know this is the real thing?" he questioned. It would be just like SHIELD to send a spy in disguised as Captain fucking America.

In response, video feed from what looked like a polar expedition was pulled up. There was a hunk of ice and people in arctic gear waving heat lamps over it in a dark, entirely white room. A torso partially stuck out of the block of ice, blonde and very blue in the face; a white star was embroidered on blue on his broad chest. Wires led from his exposed neck to a heart monitor, which beeped maybe twice in the two minutes that Tony watched.

More than anything, he looked at the man's face. The video was dark and grainy, but this looked like the same man in his photo. Something about the corrugated brow and narrow lips spoke to him. "Okay then," Tony allowed, "It may be Captain America." It probably was, if he was honest with himself.

"Dog tags read Steven G Rogers of Brooklyn, New York. Catholic. Right ID number," Fury agreed.

Catholic? Somehow, Tony had never expected that. "I'll think on it, get back to you later. Kinda busy right now," Tony answered with a flippant wave of his hand. Damn right, he would think on it.

The line shut off and Tony was left to think- stew- in peace. He wanted to whoop and break something at the same time, so he slid down his worktable straight to the floor. Ignoring his concerned bots, he put his head in his hands and wondered if hallucinations were a symptom of the palladium poisoning.

A sharp jab from You that was probably meant to be affectionate refuted that. Nope, it was real. He had really been told that Captain America, the man he resented and idealized in equal measure, was alive and may be staying with him in the near future.

The world somehow managed to be more insane than he was.

Before having any kind of nervous breakdown, or temper tantrum, he had to make sure that it really was Cap. If so, he could get home and then have his meltdown. If not, everything was okay and he was just dying. No biggie.

"No time like the present," Tony muttered and heaved himself up. He called for JARVIS to put on the suit and stood still for it to be placed on his body, all the while wondering what the hell he was doing. Using the suit sped up the poisoning.

It was still his best option. A plane wasn't fast enough and wouldn't be able to land where he needed to.

"JARVIS, hack SHIELD again. Look for where they claim to have Captain America," Tony ordered and took off. He relished every second spent in the air; flight was one of the few freedoms he had. And that wasn't even free right now.

The directions projected onto his HUD led directly to Greenland, just as Fury said. Southern Greenland, near Paamiut. "I always wanted to find out why they called it Greenland," Tony mused to himself.

There was no reply. JARVIS knew him too well for that.

Instead, Tony was left to think the whole flight, whenever he wasn't dodging planes or helicopters. It was a good and bad thing at once.

While he loved what he knew of Cap, he couldn't help resenting the man too. If he hadn't crashed the bomber where no one could find, maybe his dad would have been happy. Maybe things would have been better. Tony conspicuously ignored the concept that he may not exist then.

Instead, his father had become a bitter drunkard. He had fallen in love with a man who couldn't love him back, and didn't even have a body to bury when he lost Cap to the cruel Atlantic. It had consumed him.

It was easy to blame Captain America for that, but Tony knew it wasn't his fault. Not really.

When he landed, it was with even more mixed emotions than when he took off. Sneaking onto the base did nothing to distract him, it was easy. Tony didn't encounter anyone inside. There wasn't even a trace of noise to tell him that it was occupied.

"Getting a little creepy," he muttered to himself as he followed JARVIS's directions through the base. Reaching a weatherproofed door, he shone a light on it and typed out the sequence that the fingerprints showed him.

If it weren't for the suit, he would have frozen. There was no heat, but that only made sense: things that have been on ice for a long time need to thaw slowly and evenly, or else damage might occur.

What made no sense was that no one was around. Shouldn't they all be waving heat lamps around still? Cap was less than half defrosted.

It really was him. There was no need for further confirmation, Tony knew that face as well as he knew his own. Even bright blue with cold and extremely slow blood flow, he was able to recognize Captain America. Dear lord, how did a man look so good even half dead? (Of course, the answer was science and he knew it.)

Unable to resist, he put a gauntleted hand to that cold cheek. The sensors told him that Cap was barely any warmer than ice, with minimal blood flow and one heart beat per minute. Anyone else would be dead, but the blips on the heart monitor confirmed that this man was alive.

The last thing he expected was for Cap's eyes to open. They were the same blue as his face and half-lucid as they stared up at Tony.

If poison were sentient, this case would be having a field day. Tony's heart thudded so hard and fast that he was sure he just cut a few hours off his life as he took his hand from the other man's face. Was this too stalker-ish? "Heya Cap," he said, and then got the urge to smack himself. That was what he was leading with?

Cap's smile was sudden, weak and blinding. "Tony… I'm home," he said faintly. As quickly as they had opened, his eyes closed and he seemed to fall unconscious again.

Suddenly the room was full of researchers just as mystified as he was. Ignoring the protests that he shouldn't be there, and what was he doing there anyways, Tony tramped out through the base. He couldn't get away fast enough.

While his initial question was answered (yes, this was definitely Captain America), more questions had appeared. How did Cap know who he was? More likely, who was the Tony he thought he was talking to? What had he meant when he said he was home?

When he was flying over West Virginia, a possibility struck Tony so hard that he nearly crashed into a mountainside. Maybe this Tony he thought he was talking to was dead and he thought he had died too. It made sense. It was chilling that he would smile about the possibility.

"So I'm thinking red walls, a white bed, and blue textiles," Tony commented randomly.

"That is a terrible idea, sir," JARVIS replied bluntly.

Tony chuckled and dictated his real plans for what was the guest bedroom. It was just too fun messing with his computerized butler sometimes. Even with the full acknowledgement that he couldn't be surprised when JARVIS eventually went full Skynet on him.

By the time he got back to Malibu, painting supplies and furniture and everything else he would need to prepare the spare bedroom were ordered. It would all get delivered in the morning.

Like hell was Captain America going to stay in some generic guest room under his roof.