under rivers
It was hard to sleep in a new place in general, but something about sleeping in rural Europe made Steve’s heart keep fluttering. His eyes cracked open without his permission and revealed their cozy little B&B room, veiled in blues and whites.
Turning over and burying himself into Buck’s hair didn’t help as much as it usually did; partly because Buck still had that messy, now disastrous, braid in, but also because he was very preoccupied with spreading himself across every inch of Sam’s chest that he could reach.
How Sam didn’t suffocate like that, Steve would never know. He’d asked once and Sam had just shrugged and said it reminded him of wearing all his gear back in the old days. Those vests were heavy, Steve knew. Heavier than anything he and Buck had worn on the continent next to this island.
He sat up and watched the other two breath for a minute. Then leaned over the edge of the bed to find his boots.
It was cold outside. Early, dark, and threatening to rain.
The B&B had a deck right outside its doors that fed out into a tiny courtyard with a garden on the side and a set of clotheslines hovering over it.
The rock and grit under his boots crunched wetly as he walked past those swinging lines to what looked like a trailhead that caught up just on the side of the hill the building was set up against to keep it safe from the wind.
He stared down that trail bracketed by thick-growing brambles and nettle on all sides.
“Never at night, and never alone,” he heard Ma’s voice murmur, echoing somewhere in his head.
She’d told him this about taking shortcuts home from the docks. She’d told him this to keep his scrawny, delicate frame away from the alleys between pubs and their raucous singing and shouting. She hadn’t said it about any forests. There were no forests in Brooklyn.
Still, he wasn’t stupid.
He gave the forest two fingers for calling to him in his fragile state, then took the sandy-looking path that swooped cleanly around the bramble tunnel.
The path went up and up to a kissing gate. Steve hadn’t seen one for years. He almost laughed. He stepped up into it, swung the wooden gate into place, and hopped down onto the other side.
He made a note that it was about fifteen minutes away from the B&B. He didn’t want to go too far or else Buck would snap awake and sound the alarm.
It was strange. The more time Buck spent upstate with his elder, the more he seemed to just know where Steve was. He never asked anymore.
He asked Sam where he was all the fucking time. That paranoia hadn’t lessened in even the slightest. But for Steve, it was always a ‘hey, how was Stark?’ or a ‘hey, I texted you I already got milk, no need to go to the store.’
It wasn’t bad, just…new.
Steve was afraid to ask the Sister if she knew anything about it, but he didn’t know any other elder-like fae. Thor was still mad that he’d given the Sister his name, so he certainly wasn’t an option. Lately, he’d been squinting harshly at Bucky any time they were in the same area, and Banner had started to catch onto it.
Dangerous waters, those.
Bruce was a great guy. Bless him, he was game to believe just about anything these days. But Steve thought that the fae might finally do it for him. Might finally make him crack.
Scary.
Okay, no more thinking about Hulks. Only cliffs. Let’s get to the top of the cliff, have a couple breaths, then go back down and try to sleep before 3.
There we go, Rogers. Good thinking. Almost healthy, even.
The path beyond the kissing gate led to a grassy little shoulder that looked out at the ocean before it curved back around towards a set of stone steps carved into the side of the rock. These wandered up to an even smaller path up the side of the towering white flecked cliff above. Steve caught himself staring up at its summit for several long moments. He shook himself out of the trance and shivered.
He wasn’t positive, but he thought that there was something way up there, perched on top of that cliff. Something that glowed.
No, thank you.
He turned back out to the sea and breathed in. The wind buffeted him and slid effortlessly through the holes of the sweater he’d pulled on before leaving. The ocean groaned and hissed in the distance.
He shivered again and snapped his face over his shoulder.
No one was there. Just the dark, rustling nettle.
But he wasn’t falling this shit. Nice try, slugger.
“I ain’t your guy,” he told the nettle firmly.
It didn’t move. Steve didn’t miss that. Especially as the wind sunk sharp fingers into the skin of his arms. Especially as the nettle and grass all around that single patch rattled and bustled.
“I’m here for a friend,” Steve told the nettle.
“Friend of a hound,” whispery voices hissed out from the green.
Steve couldn’t hear the sea anymore. His heart had gone slow.
“Come closer,” the voices rustled.
Steve held his breath.
“There is a corpse here,” the voices hissed.
Oh hell no.
Nuh-uh.
Steve had heard this motherfucking story.
“I’m sick,” he said. “This body isn’t mine. I’m just borrowing it. I’m too ill to make the journey you need.”
The whispering carried on but didn’t make itself into words.
“I’m leaving,” Steve told them with the hair on the back of his neck nearly standing all the way up on its own. “I’m sorry. Maybe the next person can do it for you.”
The whispering died off into quiet and the nettles started swaying and buffeting with the wind again. Steve shuddered, then hurried back towards the kissing gate, careful not to look back over his shoulder. Once he was on the other side, he took a second to say a quick prayer for the next sorry soul that followed his steps up that hill.
He snuck back into the B&B and creaked up the stairs as quietly as he could, but even with those precautions taken, Buck woke up as the door opened.
“Stevie?” he slurred.
“Go back to sleep,” Steve told him closing the door softly so as not to wake Sam.
“Where’d you go?”
“Just for a walk.”
Buck’s hair slid down over his shoulder as he pushed himself up. His face tightened.
“Don’t,” he said seriously. “Don’t do that again. Not here. Not without me.”
Yeah.
Yeah, Steve got it now.
“I won’t,” he promised.
“Shit’s dangerous, Steve.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“Did you get hurt?”
No. But not for lack of trying.
“Come here, bub,” Buck said, holding out a hand. “You must be freezin’.”
He was. But he thought that that probably wasn’t why he couldn’t stop shivering.
Sleep came easier this time.
He woke up to Sam and Bucky’s murmuring.
“—burnt?” Sam asked.
“It’s the cold iron,” Bucky said softly. “It wards away fae.”
“Does it ward you away?” Sam asked.
“No. I’m not malevolent.”
“You sure?”
“Stuff it, Wilson.”
Steve rolled over and winced at the light pouring in front the windows. He heard a chuff of laughter.
“Morning Cinderella,” Buck said, holding a steaming mug of coffee up his way in greeting. “Good news! Your prince followed you home from the ball.”
Say what?
“There’s scorch marks on the porch,” Sam said seriously.
Oh, shit.
“They musta really liked you to try to put foot on ground guarded by iron,” Bucky said, sipping at his mug.
“Steve,” Sam said sternly. “We’ve talked about the night-wandering.”
The shame was more embarrassing than heated.
“I know, I’m sorry. Just couldn’t sleep,” he said. He untangled himself from the quilt and sheets and crossed his legs. It was cold as hell in the room. He could nearly see his breath.
“S’alright,” Buck said. “They followed you down, but they didn’t get you. Did you talk to them?”
Steve didn’t know what was the right answer here.
Buck read his silence like a book and huffed.
“They wanted me to carry a corpse,” Steve said.
Bucky scoffed. Sam balked.
“A corpse?” he repeated.
“What’d you tell ‘em?” Buck asked.
Steve shrugged.
“Told ‘em I was too ill,” he said.
“Atta boy, Stevie.”
“Wait. I’m sorry, let’s go back to the corpse,” Sam said. Buck grinned at him.
“You really want to know?” he asked. Sam stared at him flatly. “Come on, Sammy. Say it. Do you really want to know? You want to hear the story?”
Sam glared.
He’d told Steve many a time over the last few weeks that while he loved nothing more than a good urban legend, all the mystic nonsense that went into the stories Buck and folks like him told was a bit melodramatic for his tastes. He just wanted the story, goddamnit.
“I’m not saying it,” he maintained.
Buck pouted. Steve rolled his eyes.
“There was this asshole named Tadhg O’Kane,” he explained before Buck could jump in with a snotty ‘then you don’t get to know.’ “Who was a real piece of work—dishonored his father: sin of all sins. Anyways, one night, he’s out being an asshole and he gets caught by a band of fairies. They give him the task of burying a corpse in a real specific place. If he doesn’t, he’ll lose his soul. They tell him that if he can’t bury it in this one place, he has to travel on until he finds somewhere else to bury it. So he schleps the thing on his back all night, goin’ here and there, literally raisin’ the dead and gettin’ tossed out of churches by ‘em, until he gets to the right final resting place for this dead guy. And after he buries him there, he’s free and scared stiff, so he changes his ways for the better and so on and so on.”
Sam’s face said that this was a shit story. Steve didn’t really know what to tell him. They couldn’t all be winners.
“Y’all need Jesus,” Sam decided.
“No, Jesus is part of the problem,” Steve said. “That’s how we got St. Patrick chasin’ all the snakes out of Ireland.”
Sam took a long, skeptical sip of coffee so he didn’t have to respond to that.
Buck cackled.
“Fuckin’ love it here,” he said. “The drama. The creativity. The rampant appropriation. Man, what’d I’d give to meet St. Patty.”
“We got places to be,” Sam announced, setting his mug down on the window sill. “Nelson texted. He said his mom’s making breakfast and doesn’t trust our host to feed us properly.”
Nelson’s family home was the kind of artistically messy that made Steve want paint. It was in chaos when they got there after about a mile’s walk. Bucky obviously missed the days of living in a house full of busy people with short tempers.
“We need a load of kids,” Buck told Steve and Sam as they waited through the racket inside for someone to answer their knock at the door.
“—what do you mean he’s not dead?” someone—Nelson’s sister—demanded over her shoulder as she opened the door. “Well, if he’s not dead, I’m gonna kill him myself—oh, hello! Come in, come in. Mam! Captain America and his young men are here!”
Buck loved being called a young man. He was just about radiant.
Sam needed to be reminded that this was a term of endearment, not flagrant flattery.
Mrs. Nelson—Anna, she said to call her—paused in threatening Nelson and his challenging eyebrows at the edge of the stove to greet them. She was a very good hugger, this little lady.
She also had eyes in the back of her head.
“Don’t you even think about it,” she snapped at Nelson who recoiled and lowered what Steve now saw to be a beanie. “I’m braidin’ it and that’s final, son. You can’t be going to the sea representin’ this family with no braids.”
“Ma,” Nelson moaned. “Nobody goes to sea with braids anymore—nobody’s done it for a centuries.”
“Candace, you watch my bacon.”
“MA.”
“Anna, he don’t want the braids,” a bald man sitting at the table said firmly.
Nelson threw a hand his way as though he was presenting the final piece of evidence in court. Anna applied her hands to her hips in challenge.
A law degree clearly held no special weight in this particular court.
“Where’s Matthew?” Anna demanded.
“You can’t ask him ‘bout my hair,” Nelson said.
“I can. I shall. And he will agree with me, just you wait. Where is the boy? Did you bring him?”
“No, I threw him into the sea on the way over.”
“KAREN.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—”
“Franklin.”
“Oh my god, Foggy!”
Steve couldn’t help but smile. It had been ages since he’d seen any family dynamics like this. He hid his smile behind a hand and accidentally caught the bald man at the table’s eye. He smiled back and his eyes crinkled all around their edges like a halo.
Murdock had not slept. He was pale and rattling. He kept forgetting what people were asking him halfway through their questions and, rather than ask for repetition, he just agreed with what they were saying.
Nelson was furious with him.
But selkie braids, Steve had to say, were beautiful. They were wrapped around each other and pinned into a low-sitting crown shape, then bedecked with flowers of all kinds and colors.
Sam told Nelson what he was the best Rapunzel in all the land. Nelson was too pissed to do anything by sneer at him.
Anna had brushed the fuck out of his hair. His nearly white hair, not the straw stuff that they usually saw him with. It was much longer and looked silkier, shinier, and Anna gave him the pretense of choice by asking him which flowers he wanted put in it. He said he didn’t care, they were just going to fall out anyways. You know. Like the braids.
She told him that they better not have any help.
Over breakfast, it was explained why the braid-ritual had been necessary.
They were going out to the lighthouse. The furthest point out into the sea. And then they were going for a swim for as far as it took to meet the great Manannán mac Lir.
A god of the sea.
Steve couldn’t say he wasn’t a little nervous upon receiving this information. Least of all because that water was going to be fucking cold.
No, he was nervous because Murdock seemed to be holding every one of his breaths for three counts at a time while pressing his lips against the side of his hand.
He did not want to do this. He was scared out of his mind. Steve felt for him. He nearly could feel his heart pounding across the table.
Murdock was blind. Combat skill be damned, jumping into the sea to face a god and tell them that yeah, he’d thrown the gift they’d given him right in their faces and he’d been wrong about that sounded like a nightmare. Just the first part had to be terrifying for a guy without sight. Sure, he’d have Nelson with him from the sounds of it, but the sea was unpredictable. If they got separated, the chances of him finding his way back were slim.
Had Sister Margaret known that this was what her kid would have to do?
If she had, why hadn’t she told him?
Or maybe the fear and the risk was the whole point?
“Matty,” Anna said suddenly. “You alright, love?”
No.
He was not.
He left them all abruptly to go puke in the bathroom.
The table winced.
“Foggy, you’ll protect him, right?” Candace asked quietly. “Do you want me to go with you guys? I can run home and grab my suit. It’s no trouble.”
Nelson stared after Murdock with tight lips. He caught the eye of Page with her fingers pressed carefully into her cheek.
“No. It’s okay. We’ve got this,” he said.
He sounded like he believed it, too.
“Is Grace meeting you all?” Anna asked him seriously.
Sam lifted an eyebrow and looked at Buck, then Steve.
“Yeah, she said she’ll be there.”
“And Jack?”
“Um,” Nelson said.
His father, whose name was Edward, it turned out, hummed.
“Jack’ll probably try to stop them,” he observed.
Steve felt out of the loop.
“Sorry, who’s Grace?” he asked.
The left half of the table looked back at him.
“Sister Maggie,” Nelson said. “People here call her Grace. It’s her middle name. Jack is her husband.”
Oh.
Right.
So Murdock’s father?
“That’s the one,” Anna said. “Lovely man. I’m sure you’ll meet him.”
Sam cleared his throat.
“You think he’ll try to interfere with this, er, mission?”
It was strange to use that kind of language in casual clothes, with non-Avengers people. But the selkie folk seemed okay with it.
“Jack’s very protective,” Anna said. “If he thinks Matty’s in distress, he’ll probably call for a time-out.”
Huh.
Sounded like a reasonable kind of guy.
“’Course it won’t matter, not with Grace,” Anna said, taking a dismissive sip of tea.
Or maybe not?
Murdock refused to eat anything once he came back from the bathroom. He was nearly white. He was so pale that Steve could actually see the light freckles that dotted his face. Anna tried to get him to take some food with him, but he made a gesture that was on the verge of a gag and she made him drink a cup of a nearly florescent green tea instead.
“What’s this?” Karen asked him when Anna had gone away with Nelson for something in another room.
“No idea,” Murdock sighed.
“Looks funny.”
“Tastes worse, here, try it,” Murdock said.
Page did. Page gagged.
This seemed to improve Murdock’s mood a little.
“Throw it out,” she hissed. “Here, give it to me. Quick, before they get back.”
Page was the real MVP of that trio. Buck seemed to like her more with each passing second.
They left the Nelson’s home for the sea. They didn’t go through town, though, and they didn’t pick up Peter or May Parker.
“No witches,” Nelson said over his shoulder as they hiked down the street and then up a hill towards what seemed to be a long stone cottage. It had dry stone walls up to about elbow height and a much more extensive, if water-logged, garden than his, Sam, and Buck’s B&B’s.
“Not good for sea gods. Bad snacks,” Karen said sagely.
Nelson flattened his eyebrows at her.
“No?” she asked. “Which part, the bad or the snacks?”
“They’re forest people,” Nelson said firmly.
“So is that an answer or a correction?” Page needled.
“Forest people,” Nelson repeated to her. “We’re going to a sea god. You decide.”
“We’re bringing a moor fae,” Karen said, waving a hand back at Buck. “Why’s he allowed to come?”
“He’s not getting in the water.”
“No?”
Buck shook his head. Steve was surprised. Sam was too.
“Not coming?” Sam asked him.
“I ain’t fucking with no sea god,” Bucky said. “I’ve got a new lease on life and I intend to keep on living it.”
Huh.
Good to know, then?
The stone cottage was a church. Sister Margaret emerged from the gardens after a while looking agitated and tearing off her habit.
Steve looked away immediately.
He couldn’t help it. It just felt wrong.
“What’s your mum done to your hair?” Sister Margaret asked Nelson without missing a beat.
“Exactly what you think,” Nelson said stiffly.
Steve peeked back and saw Sister Margaret frowning and cocking her head. She looked at her own son and, with her own hair loose in thick, dark brown waves, Steve could suddenly see the resemblance there.
“Do you want braids, Matty?” she asked him.
“I want to drown,” Red informed her.
She sniffed.
“Wish imminently granted,” she said. “Pray and so it shall be.”
Murdock’s jaw twitched.
“Thanks, Mum,” he said.
“You should have had Anna do Karen’s,” Sister Margaret added casually in Nelson’s direction. She had a duffle bag on her hip, Steve noticed. It was navy blue and old. “Then we really could have looked like we were coming from the 17th century.”
Nelson thought she was hilarious.
The path they were on led past the church and wound around the edges of several cliffs. The drop off of them was significant and the water down there was a deep, menacing, and almost artificial-looking blue. Somehow, there seemed to be steps chipped into the sides of the cliff faces despite these natural warning signs. Page asked Nelson who made them and he had no idea what she was talking about.
As far as he could remember, they’d always been there. They hadn’t been made. Sister Margaret agreed.
She actually remembered there being more of them.
Murdock said nothing about the steps. He held his white stick in one hand and wrapped the other’s fingers around Nelson’s elbow. Up as high as they were, it was windy and the grasses shook and rattled against each other. The shushing of the ocean was barely audible over it all.
The selkies gave no sign of stopping, even when the lighthouse came into sight.
It was old and white—bleached by the wind and sun and water. It seemed almost unconnected to the island, actually. It took some more turns before Steve could make out the sliver of land that connected it to the cove between all the rocks down below.
Murdock stopped walking around then and turned his face out towards the ocean.
“Is this the old home?” he asked his mother.
“Very close,” Sister Margaret said. “Fairy thorn first.”
“Do people live there now?” Murdock asked, and Steve realized he was referring to the lighthouse.
“Did you?” Sam asked him.
There was a pause.
Murdock turned his face away.
“Yes,” he said. “With my father.”
“No one lives there now,” Nelson said next to him. “A lab tried to set up shop, but we didn’t let them stay.”
Steve wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but his brain supplied the image of a load of seals beaching themselves and flopping their way up all those stairs to bay obnoxiously into clean room.
He tried to picture how Stark and Banner would cope with this scenario.
It was entertaining as fuck.
There was a tree, gnarled and leaning from the wind, set off by itself on a couple of yards in front the edge of the cliff immediately behind the lighthouse.nIt was blooming in pinks even though it was far too early in the spring for it. It barely moved in the wind and the petals that fell from it landed only in its shadow.
Steve’s shoulders shuddered and Page stopped walking with the selkies.
“What’s that?” she asked hesitantly, staying back by Steve. Sam came up next to them and didn’t go any further either. Steve could see tension in the muscles around his neck where they peeked out of his collar.
The others paused and looked back at the three of them.
It was as though a line had been drawn between their two groups.
“A fairy thorn,” Bucky said.
Steve thought he kind of remembered hearing about these. There was a wooden bowl set at the base of this one. It was filled to the brim with water and a couple of floating leaves.
“I don’t like it,” Page said quietly.
“You’re not supposed to,” Buck told her. “They’re not for humans.”
Murdock breathed sharply. Nelson jerked his way and touched his shoulder with a frown. Murdock didn’t seem to feel him; he clutched at his ribs, fingers digging into his jacket.
Nelson frowned hard and deferred to Sister Margaret.
“It didn’t use to hurt him,” he said.
“It isn’t hurting him now,” Sister Margaret said firmly.
“Sister—” Nelson started to argue.
“It’s not this,” Sister Margaret said in a tone that said that that was the end of this discussion. “Matthew, pull yourself together, son. There is still far to go.”
Murdock didn’t lift his head or drop his shoulders. Steve wanted to pull him back. Everything about him said that he was overwhelmed and possibly going to vomit.
“Woah now,” Sam interrupted smoothly. “Anxiety is a real thing with physical effects here. Why don’t we take a moment to regroup?”
Sister Margaret studied him.
“No,” Murdock gritted out behind her. “She’s right. I’m—this—I think it’s something else. Let’s just go on. The sooner it’s over the better.”
Murdock was a tough cookie, both as Daredevil and as just himself, Steve would give him that. He forced himself to breathe. He forced himself to loosen up and let go of his ribs.
Nelson brushed their cheeks together and he told him that he fine. Just a little shaky.
“This isn’t a gunshot wound, Matty,” Nelson said. “You’re allowed to tell me about this one.”
“I’m fine,” Murdock repeated, then paused. “This is where we met.”
Page perked up.
“Here?” she asked.
Murdock lifted a shoulder.
“Kind of,” he said. “Foggy was here. And I was down there.”
They all looked over to where the cliff dropped off.
Nelson laughed.
“We should have just met in the middle,” he said.
Murdock smirked.
“More fun to shout,” he said. “And anyways, someone didn’t want me socializing with the locals.”
Sister Margaret ignored him.
“Someone also called me and Cand a ‘racket,’” Nelson added onto that.
Sister Margaret gave him a look that Steve knew well from his school days. It said, ‘have you finished yet?’
Steve wanted to warn Nelson of the ramifications of this expression. He clearly didn’t know how to fear it.
“The two of you were a racket and nothing but trouble waiting to happen,” Sister Margaret finally declared. “And now, neither of you is going to be a racket because you need to channel that into being trouble. Matt, you first.”
Murdock jerked back.
“Why me first?” he demanded. “Do Foggy first.”
“Excuse me?” Nelson snapped. “You approved these braids.”
“I’ll go first,” Bucky said over them irritably. “Ya fuckin’ children. Christ.”
He tossed his hair over his shoulder and strode forward right up to the wood bowl at the base of the tree. Sister Margaret followed him and waited as he knelt down so that she could reach his head. She dipped her hand into the wood bowl and produced from its bottom a tin cup.
“Your offering,” she said.
Bucky put a hand in his pocket and brought out the amulet that Nelson had given him weeks ago. He dropped it in the tin cup and it clanged against the bottom of it.
Sister Margaret had him lean forward and when she poured the water over his head, no stone fell out of the cup.
“Your offering has been received,” she told him.
Buck lifted his face and shook his head violently, sending water in all directions. Sam swore at him for the spray. Buck beamed at him innocently.
“I’ll do you, Sister,” he said.
Sister Margaret offered a little bunch of flowers—blue ones. Hydrangeas. Steve hadn’t seen any on the way up or in the village. Where had she gotten them?
They sunk, into the cup somehow.
Bucky poured water over her head and they were gone.
She did not spray them all like an asshole. She combed the water into her hair and turned expectantly towards the other two.
“Children,” she said.
Murdock grimaced.
“Alright fine,” Nelson said. “I’ll go.”
Nelson’s offering was something that glinted gold. He was careful not to dislodge all the flora in his hair when he came back up from the dousing.
Sister Margaret handed him the tin cup for Murdock.
Murdock knelt down and said a prayer.
He pressed the flat tops of his knuckles to his forehead and then carefully pulled a ribbon out of his shirt pocket. It was white and didn’t look especially expensive, but if he’d picked it specifically for this occasion, it must have had some kind of meaning to it. He held it out to Nelson and Nelson brought the cup to it and then brought it up to swallow the ribbon.
“Here’s to hoping,” he told Murdock. “Scream if it burns, okay?”
Murdock laughed nervously.
Nelson tipped the cup over his head.