Avast!
Avast!
Summary: It was a Pirate!AU. Then it kinda sorta slipped.
Pairing: Steve/Tony implied.
Warnings: This idea came to me in that space between your alarm first going off and the moment you absolutely have to get out of bed, so this may well be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever written.
Disclaimer: Yadda yadda witty comment, I don’t own any of the characters, I don’t make any money, etc.
James Barnes, Jim to his friends, had been Cabin Boy aboard The Avenger for nearly two months now, and in that time he had never seen Captain Rogers smile. The Dread Pirate Rogers was one of the most feared pirates in the seven seas, well known for his lightening raids on coastal towns with his brave and loyal pirate crew. Some said that he had made a deal with the devil in order to command his boat, others said he had cut out his heart for the love of a woman and whoever held it controlled the Captain, but the story that Jim was most inclined to believe was that he was an ex-Navy man, accused of a crime he hadn’t committed, who had escaped and set out to find the man who set him up, and avenge the deaths of the men under his command who hadn’t been so lucky.
Jim paused in his chore of swabbing the deck to think about the time since he had joined the crew of The Avenger. He had run away to sea for excitement and adventure, but mostly it seemed to involve cleaning things and coiling ropes.
When he saw Clint, the best lookout on the ship, and the man who had taken him under his wing when he joined the crew, the only man who had really made him feel welcome, he complained about the dull days.
Clint had only grinned and slapped him on the back.
“Ah but just you wait till Cap gets sniff o’ the First Officer. Then we’ll be in for some action,” he said, with all the sagacity of a lad of nineteen who had been on the sea since he was twelve.
“The First Officer? What did he do?” asked Jim, hoping for a story of betrayal and revenge like the ones his grandpa told him back home.
“Do? He went missing. Just disappeared one day when he was s’posed to be fetchin’ supplies. No one saw him go, he vanished, like a genie. And Cap, he ain’t cracked a smile since the moment he left.”
“Maybe he ran away?”
“Nah, he’d never’ave left the Cap’n. They’re closer’n man and wife. I swear…”
“What rubbish you feeding the boy, Barton?”
They were interrupted at that moment by Doc Blake, the ship’s surgeon, a wiry man who walked with a limp ever since he had to sew up a cutlass wound in his own leg.
“Nothin’ Doc. Just tellin’ Jimmy here about First Officer Stark and how he disappeared all spooky and peculiar.”
“Don’t talk rot. He was kidnapped by one of the Captain’s enemies, you mark my words. Don’t you have a watch now? Git!”
“Yessir,” said Barton, throwing an insult to salutes and grinning, before shinning up the rigging faster than you could say Jack Robinson.
“Don’t you listen to anything that young jackanapes says,” growled the Doctor. “If he had half the brains he was born with, he’d be dangerous. Now, get along, the Captain wants to see you.”
Jim gulped nervously. Captain Rogers had barely said two words to him the whole time he’d been aboard ship. He scurried off to the Captain’s cabin.
It was the first time he’d been inside, and he was amazed at the size of it. There was a chart-covered desk that was bigger than the space where his hammock hung, and a bed that looked big enough to fit two people in.
“Ah, Jim, lad, there you are,” said Captain Rogers, looking up from the piece of paper he was studying.
Jim snapped to attention, hoping the Captain hadn’t noticed him staring around the room.
“At ease, son, I’m not going to eat you. How are you enjoying life at sea? Everything you were hoping it would be?”
Jim wondered what to say. Two months he’d been aboard ship, and he still didn’t feel quite like part of the crew. A grey
feeling hung over the ship, and Jim didn’t know why. A feeling that something had stopped and everyone was held until it started again. Torn between honesty and the realisation that several days in the middle of the ocean was not the best
time to begin voicing dissenting opinions, Jim took the middle path.
“Well, sir,” he said, a little nervously, “I thought there’d be more… action. Less… waiting.”
“Hmm…” said Captain Rogers, going back to studying the piece of paper in his hand.
It was then that Jim noticed that spread across the desk were not sea charts as he had assumed, but maps of a land with strange names he did not recognise.
“Can you ride?” the Captain asked, suddenly.
“Ride?” asked Jim, taken aback. “A horse?”
“Yes, a horse, boy, what did you think I meant? Can you ride?”
“Since I was five.”
“Good. Good.” Captain Rogers started making notes on the map in front of him. “And don’t worry, lad, soon you’ll get all the action you ever dreamed of.”
Jim stood there for a minute or two longer, but when the Captain only continued to make notes, he quietly slipped out of the cabin, wondering what on earth the man was planning.
He was startled out of his thoughts by the harsh shriek of Redwing, the parrot. He looked up; if Redwing was about, then Sam, the ship’s armourer, couldn’t be far behind.
“Sam,” Jim said, running up to the man, “do you know what Cap’s planning?”
“Aye, I think I have an inkling,” he replied. “But when he’s good n ready, the Cap’n will lay it out for us. Keep ready. Something’s in the wind.”
***
Three days later, Clint shouted down from his perch in the crow’s nest “Land Ho! Thirty miles off the starboard bow. Should make dock by nightfall.”
“Good spot, Hawkeye,” shouted the Captain, who had been strolling the deck, conversing intently with Sam. “I knew I kept you on this ship for a reason.”
He had the closest thing to a smile Jim had seen him with since he joined the crew, although a grimace of determination might be a better description.
“Crew! Assemble! We have work to do before we rest tonight.”
Captain Rogers gathered his men and told them of his plan.
***
Dawn the next morning saw the crew of The Avenger mounted on the oddest assortment of equines ever seen. Captain Rogers had bought or hired near every beast that could charitably be called horse in the town where they had docked. Jim couldn’t quite believe what the Captain had planned. For a start they had left The Avenger in dock, and for seconds they were about to head inland in search of a castle that some said was mere legend. It was action and adventure alright, but not quite the kind he had envisaged all those months ago. But it was better than coiling rope.
They had left the ship under the care of Captain Fury, a salty old seadog with an eye patch and a wooden leg, and Jim very much doubted it would be there when they got back. However, there were whispers among the crew that Fury owed Captain Rogers a favour from way back in the war, and the Captain trusted him, so all Jim could do was hope for the best.
Captain Rogers rode to the front of the crew on his white charger, and addressed the assembled men.
“Gentlemen. We have ahead of us a difficult journey. The going may be tough. It will be dangerous. Any man who wishes to leave now may do so with no fear.” He paused. No one moved. “Thank you. Your loyalty this day will be remembered. Come. Let us depart. We have far to travel before sundown.”
He turned and spurred his horse along the road, the morning sun glinting off of his blond hair. Jim urged his piebald pony forward with the other men, prepared to meet any danger.
***
It was a hard journey, a two week trek into country that only became more barren and inhospitable with every mile they travelled. On the morning of the fifteenth day, Clint came back from scouting ahead with a grin plastered all over his face.
“Cap, I see it! Round the next bend, in the distance, a huge castle with five towers and high walls. We’ve found it. We’ve found Baron Von Doom’s castle!”
Captain Rogers spurred his horse onwards, the motley crew of ex-pirates following behind.
They rounded the corner and stopped at the sight that greeted them. A castle, dark and forbidding, with dark clouds swirling around the tops of the high towers. This was what they had come all this way to find.
***
Captain Rogers went over the plan one more time. “At first light tomorrow, we attack. The morning light weakens Doom, he is at his most vulnerable. Sam, you’re with me. Everyone else, you distract the guards long enough for us to get into the castle, and keep them busy until we emerge. Then, head back for this clearing, find your horse and go. We meet up at the town ten miles west of the border and get to the ship as soon as may be. Doom is powerful, yes, but he has no power beyond the borders of his country. If we can reach it before he catches up with us, we’ll be safe.”
***
Jim crept up to the castle walls with the other pirates. They tensed, waiting, then at the Captain’s signal, they threw grapples over the wall and swarmed up them. Nothing had prepared Jim for what awaited on the other side of the wall. Fifty, one hundred knights in armour, armed with swords, maces and halberds. They turned, as one, to look at the intruders, and began to walk towards them, the only sound the clanking of metal upon metal. Captain Rogers drew his cutlass and swung it at the neck of the nearest knight. It’s head was severed in one blow, and it fell over, cogs and gears spilling all over the floor.
“See!” he yelled, triumphantly, “they are merely clockwork! Easily defeated!”
With a roar, the crew leapt to, drawing weapons and fighting the metal men with the fierceness that had won them a reputation on three separate continents.
In the madness, Captain Rogers and Sam slipped away to the entrance of the tall central tower.
For all that the knights were machines, they fought like dervishes, without tiring and without end. But they were no match for the crew of The Avenger, who took them down with military precision. But the machines kept coming. As fast as they destroyed them, new ones took their place, wave upon wave of them.
Just as Jim thought he could swing his sword no more, Sam’s voice cut through the sound of battle.
“Retreat, retreat, quickly, back over the wall!”
Jim looked up in time to see Sam emerge from the tower, followed by a man he almost didn’t recognise as the Captian, so much did the ear splitting grin covering his face transform it. Behind him, holding his hand, was a woman, in a flowing pink gown, a large pink conical hat on her head, a pink veil covering her face. They had come all this way, just to rescue a princess? And, Jim decided as they got closer, she was the ugliest princess he had ever seen. He had only caught a glimpse as her veil whipped about as she ran, but she looked like she had a worse beard than his grandma!
“Run lad!” shouted Doc Blake, pushing him towards the wall and running incredibly sure for a man with a limp. It was
almost as if battle had magically transformed him.
Jim had little time to think then as he climbed back over the wall and ran for the clearing. As he reached the ground there came a great shout of anger from the depths of the castle, and lightning flashed from the clouds perpetually surrounding the towers. It spurred the men back to their camp even faster than before
Jim jumped onto his pony and set off, looking over his shoulder in time to see the Princess swing herself into the saddle behind the Captain, her hat having been lost in the pell mell dash for the horses. It was then that Jim realised with a shock that she was no princess, that she was, in fact, a man, slight in build, with a neatly trimmed beard and a scholarly face.
“Come on, lad,” Captain Rogers shouted, speeding past, “move yourself!”
Even now, with magical storms brewing behind them and the ever present danger of more mechanical soldiers, the smile that Jim had observed earlier was still threatening to split his face in two.
***
Not until they had crossed the borders of Latveria did they slow down and pause to catch a breath. Jim had managed to keep pace with Captain Rogers, all the time wondering who on earth the man who rode with him was.
It wasn’t until they made camp on fringe of the town where they had agreed to meet, that it occurred to Jim that there was no way that his little pony could have kept up with the Captain’s charger, even carrying the weight of two, and so the man must have slowed down to allow him to keep up. Jim began to see why the crew of The Avenger followed their Captain so loyally.
Captain Rogers greeted each man as he arrived, relaxing a little more every time someone returned safely. The camp was soon set up, and Logan, the ship’s cook, began to make dinner. The man in the dress had disappeared into the Captain’s tent, and arrived just as the food was ready, this time dressed in a dark red shirt, with black trousers and boots, a cutlass by his side and a feathered hat perched upon his head.
The crew seated around the fire cheered as he emerged and sat down next to Captain Rogers.
Clint raised his mug of ale. “To First Officer Stark, the prettiest princess I ever did see!”
The pirates whooped and cheered, and even the Captain laughed, slinging an arm around the First Officer’s shoulders and raising his glass.
Jim watched the crew laugh and joke, celebrating the return of one of their own. So this was the famous first officer, whose loss had supposedly depressed the Captain’s spirits so. Jim wondered how on earth he had ended up in that castle, dressed in that ridiculous dress. As if reading his mind, Sam leant forward, Redwing perched on his shoulder, and asked,
“So, Tony, why did Baron Von Doom kidnap you and lock you in his tower?”
First Officer Stark shrugged, “Apparently, he needed a princess born when the planets aligned in order to complete some arcane ritual to summon demons or some such. Unfortunately for him, no princesses were born at the right time, and even more unfortunately for me, I was, and the Baron got hold of the idea that if he treated me like a princess I would suffice. Hence the stupid dress and locking me in the highest room of the tallest tower with only a spinning wheel and a magic mirror that thought it was a wit for company. I have never been so glad to see your ugly mug!”
The crew laughed, Jim joining in, realising for the first time how the Captian’s mood had affected all of the crew.
He looked at the Captain, who seemed a full ten years younger, and at that moment decided that he would follow where he lead for the rest of his life.
He crept closer to the fire, a feeling of belonging settling into his bones for the first time in a long time.
“And who’s this lad?” asked the first officer, noticing his movement. “I don’t recall seeing his face before today.”
“James. James Barnes,” said Jim, suddenly nervous as every crew member turned to look at him. “Everyone calls me Jim. I’ve been Cabin Boy aboard The Avenger for these two months past.”
A shadow passed behind Stark’s eyes at the reminder of how long he had been captive.
“You rode well earlier, boy. Tell me, how do you like being part of the best crew ever to sail the waves?”
“I like it just fine, sir.”
“And are you ready to follow your captain, wherever he may lead you, without hesitation or fear?”
“Always, sir.”
“And is not The Avenger the finest ship you ever beheld?”
“Never saw finer.”
“Just you wait till we get back to her, son. Be ready for whatever may come. Because I tell you, Jim lad, life as an
Avenger is never dull!”
***
Steve woke up and looked over to see Tony in bed beside him. Good, all was right with his world. He frowned, remembering.
“Tony,” he said, sitting up.
“Mrphleflug?” came the reply from the pillow.
“Don’t go away on business again. It makes me have really weird dreams.”
Summary: It was a Pirate!AU. Then it kinda sorta slipped.
Pairing: Steve/Tony implied.
Warnings: This idea came to me in that space between your alarm first going off and the moment you absolutely have to get out of bed, so this may well be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever written.
Disclaimer: Yadda yadda witty comment, I don’t own any of the characters, I don’t make any money, etc.
James Barnes, Jim to his friends, had been Cabin Boy aboard The Avenger for nearly two months now, and in that time he had never seen Captain Rogers smile. The Dread Pirate Rogers was one of the most feared pirates in the seven seas, well known for his lightening raids on coastal towns with his brave and loyal pirate crew. Some said that he had made a deal with the devil in order to command his boat, others said he had cut out his heart for the love of a woman and whoever held it controlled the Captain, but the story that Jim was most inclined to believe was that he was an ex-Navy man, accused of a crime he hadn’t committed, who had escaped and set out to find the man who set him up, and avenge the deaths of the men under his command who hadn’t been so lucky.
Jim paused in his chore of swabbing the deck to think about the time since he had joined the crew of The Avenger. He had run away to sea for excitement and adventure, but mostly it seemed to involve cleaning things and coiling ropes.
When he saw Clint, the best lookout on the ship, and the man who had taken him under his wing when he joined the crew, the only man who had really made him feel welcome, he complained about the dull days.
Clint had only grinned and slapped him on the back.
“Ah but just you wait till Cap gets sniff o’ the First Officer. Then we’ll be in for some action,” he said, with all the sagacity of a lad of nineteen who had been on the sea since he was twelve.
“The First Officer? What did he do?” asked Jim, hoping for a story of betrayal and revenge like the ones his grandpa told him back home.
“Do? He went missing. Just disappeared one day when he was s’posed to be fetchin’ supplies. No one saw him go, he vanished, like a genie. And Cap, he ain’t cracked a smile since the moment he left.”
“Maybe he ran away?”
“Nah, he’d never’ave left the Cap’n. They’re closer’n man and wife. I swear…”
“What rubbish you feeding the boy, Barton?”
They were interrupted at that moment by Doc Blake, the ship’s surgeon, a wiry man who walked with a limp ever since he had to sew up a cutlass wound in his own leg.
“Nothin’ Doc. Just tellin’ Jimmy here about First Officer Stark and how he disappeared all spooky and peculiar.”
“Don’t talk rot. He was kidnapped by one of the Captain’s enemies, you mark my words. Don’t you have a watch now? Git!”
“Yessir,” said Barton, throwing an insult to salutes and grinning, before shinning up the rigging faster than you could say Jack Robinson.
“Don’t you listen to anything that young jackanapes says,” growled the Doctor. “If he had half the brains he was born with, he’d be dangerous. Now, get along, the Captain wants to see you.”
Jim gulped nervously. Captain Rogers had barely said two words to him the whole time he’d been aboard ship. He scurried off to the Captain’s cabin.
It was the first time he’d been inside, and he was amazed at the size of it. There was a chart-covered desk that was bigger than the space where his hammock hung, and a bed that looked big enough to fit two people in.
“Ah, Jim, lad, there you are,” said Captain Rogers, looking up from the piece of paper he was studying.
Jim snapped to attention, hoping the Captain hadn’t noticed him staring around the room.
“At ease, son, I’m not going to eat you. How are you enjoying life at sea? Everything you were hoping it would be?”
Jim wondered what to say. Two months he’d been aboard ship, and he still didn’t feel quite like part of the crew. A grey
feeling hung over the ship, and Jim didn’t know why. A feeling that something had stopped and everyone was held until it started again. Torn between honesty and the realisation that several days in the middle of the ocean was not the best
time to begin voicing dissenting opinions, Jim took the middle path.
“Well, sir,” he said, a little nervously, “I thought there’d be more… action. Less… waiting.”
“Hmm…” said Captain Rogers, going back to studying the piece of paper in his hand.
It was then that Jim noticed that spread across the desk were not sea charts as he had assumed, but maps of a land with strange names he did not recognise.
“Can you ride?” the Captain asked, suddenly.
“Ride?” asked Jim, taken aback. “A horse?”
“Yes, a horse, boy, what did you think I meant? Can you ride?”
“Since I was five.”
“Good. Good.” Captain Rogers started making notes on the map in front of him. “And don’t worry, lad, soon you’ll get all the action you ever dreamed of.”
Jim stood there for a minute or two longer, but when the Captain only continued to make notes, he quietly slipped out of the cabin, wondering what on earth the man was planning.
He was startled out of his thoughts by the harsh shriek of Redwing, the parrot. He looked up; if Redwing was about, then Sam, the ship’s armourer, couldn’t be far behind.
“Sam,” Jim said, running up to the man, “do you know what Cap’s planning?”
“Aye, I think I have an inkling,” he replied. “But when he’s good n ready, the Cap’n will lay it out for us. Keep ready. Something’s in the wind.”
***
Three days later, Clint shouted down from his perch in the crow’s nest “Land Ho! Thirty miles off the starboard bow. Should make dock by nightfall.”
“Good spot, Hawkeye,” shouted the Captain, who had been strolling the deck, conversing intently with Sam. “I knew I kept you on this ship for a reason.”
He had the closest thing to a smile Jim had seen him with since he joined the crew, although a grimace of determination might be a better description.
“Crew! Assemble! We have work to do before we rest tonight.”
Captain Rogers gathered his men and told them of his plan.
***
Dawn the next morning saw the crew of The Avenger mounted on the oddest assortment of equines ever seen. Captain Rogers had bought or hired near every beast that could charitably be called horse in the town where they had docked. Jim couldn’t quite believe what the Captain had planned. For a start they had left The Avenger in dock, and for seconds they were about to head inland in search of a castle that some said was mere legend. It was action and adventure alright, but not quite the kind he had envisaged all those months ago. But it was better than coiling rope.
They had left the ship under the care of Captain Fury, a salty old seadog with an eye patch and a wooden leg, and Jim very much doubted it would be there when they got back. However, there were whispers among the crew that Fury owed Captain Rogers a favour from way back in the war, and the Captain trusted him, so all Jim could do was hope for the best.
Captain Rogers rode to the front of the crew on his white charger, and addressed the assembled men.
“Gentlemen. We have ahead of us a difficult journey. The going may be tough. It will be dangerous. Any man who wishes to leave now may do so with no fear.” He paused. No one moved. “Thank you. Your loyalty this day will be remembered. Come. Let us depart. We have far to travel before sundown.”
He turned and spurred his horse along the road, the morning sun glinting off of his blond hair. Jim urged his piebald pony forward with the other men, prepared to meet any danger.
***
It was a hard journey, a two week trek into country that only became more barren and inhospitable with every mile they travelled. On the morning of the fifteenth day, Clint came back from scouting ahead with a grin plastered all over his face.
“Cap, I see it! Round the next bend, in the distance, a huge castle with five towers and high walls. We’ve found it. We’ve found Baron Von Doom’s castle!”
Captain Rogers spurred his horse onwards, the motley crew of ex-pirates following behind.
They rounded the corner and stopped at the sight that greeted them. A castle, dark and forbidding, with dark clouds swirling around the tops of the high towers. This was what they had come all this way to find.
***
Captain Rogers went over the plan one more time. “At first light tomorrow, we attack. The morning light weakens Doom, he is at his most vulnerable. Sam, you’re with me. Everyone else, you distract the guards long enough for us to get into the castle, and keep them busy until we emerge. Then, head back for this clearing, find your horse and go. We meet up at the town ten miles west of the border and get to the ship as soon as may be. Doom is powerful, yes, but he has no power beyond the borders of his country. If we can reach it before he catches up with us, we’ll be safe.”
***
Jim crept up to the castle walls with the other pirates. They tensed, waiting, then at the Captain’s signal, they threw grapples over the wall and swarmed up them. Nothing had prepared Jim for what awaited on the other side of the wall. Fifty, one hundred knights in armour, armed with swords, maces and halberds. They turned, as one, to look at the intruders, and began to walk towards them, the only sound the clanking of metal upon metal. Captain Rogers drew his cutlass and swung it at the neck of the nearest knight. It’s head was severed in one blow, and it fell over, cogs and gears spilling all over the floor.
“See!” he yelled, triumphantly, “they are merely clockwork! Easily defeated!”
With a roar, the crew leapt to, drawing weapons and fighting the metal men with the fierceness that had won them a reputation on three separate continents.
In the madness, Captain Rogers and Sam slipped away to the entrance of the tall central tower.
For all that the knights were machines, they fought like dervishes, without tiring and without end. But they were no match for the crew of The Avenger, who took them down with military precision. But the machines kept coming. As fast as they destroyed them, new ones took their place, wave upon wave of them.
Just as Jim thought he could swing his sword no more, Sam’s voice cut through the sound of battle.
“Retreat, retreat, quickly, back over the wall!”
Jim looked up in time to see Sam emerge from the tower, followed by a man he almost didn’t recognise as the Captian, so much did the ear splitting grin covering his face transform it. Behind him, holding his hand, was a woman, in a flowing pink gown, a large pink conical hat on her head, a pink veil covering her face. They had come all this way, just to rescue a princess? And, Jim decided as they got closer, she was the ugliest princess he had ever seen. He had only caught a glimpse as her veil whipped about as she ran, but she looked like she had a worse beard than his grandma!
“Run lad!” shouted Doc Blake, pushing him towards the wall and running incredibly sure for a man with a limp. It was
almost as if battle had magically transformed him.
Jim had little time to think then as he climbed back over the wall and ran for the clearing. As he reached the ground there came a great shout of anger from the depths of the castle, and lightning flashed from the clouds perpetually surrounding the towers. It spurred the men back to their camp even faster than before
Jim jumped onto his pony and set off, looking over his shoulder in time to see the Princess swing herself into the saddle behind the Captain, her hat having been lost in the pell mell dash for the horses. It was then that Jim realised with a shock that she was no princess, that she was, in fact, a man, slight in build, with a neatly trimmed beard and a scholarly face.
“Come on, lad,” Captain Rogers shouted, speeding past, “move yourself!”
Even now, with magical storms brewing behind them and the ever present danger of more mechanical soldiers, the smile that Jim had observed earlier was still threatening to split his face in two.
***
Not until they had crossed the borders of Latveria did they slow down and pause to catch a breath. Jim had managed to keep pace with Captain Rogers, all the time wondering who on earth the man who rode with him was.
It wasn’t until they made camp on fringe of the town where they had agreed to meet, that it occurred to Jim that there was no way that his little pony could have kept up with the Captain’s charger, even carrying the weight of two, and so the man must have slowed down to allow him to keep up. Jim began to see why the crew of The Avenger followed their Captain so loyally.
Captain Rogers greeted each man as he arrived, relaxing a little more every time someone returned safely. The camp was soon set up, and Logan, the ship’s cook, began to make dinner. The man in the dress had disappeared into the Captain’s tent, and arrived just as the food was ready, this time dressed in a dark red shirt, with black trousers and boots, a cutlass by his side and a feathered hat perched upon his head.
The crew seated around the fire cheered as he emerged and sat down next to Captain Rogers.
Clint raised his mug of ale. “To First Officer Stark, the prettiest princess I ever did see!”
The pirates whooped and cheered, and even the Captain laughed, slinging an arm around the First Officer’s shoulders and raising his glass.
Jim watched the crew laugh and joke, celebrating the return of one of their own. So this was the famous first officer, whose loss had supposedly depressed the Captain’s spirits so. Jim wondered how on earth he had ended up in that castle, dressed in that ridiculous dress. As if reading his mind, Sam leant forward, Redwing perched on his shoulder, and asked,
“So, Tony, why did Baron Von Doom kidnap you and lock you in his tower?”
First Officer Stark shrugged, “Apparently, he needed a princess born when the planets aligned in order to complete some arcane ritual to summon demons or some such. Unfortunately for him, no princesses were born at the right time, and even more unfortunately for me, I was, and the Baron got hold of the idea that if he treated me like a princess I would suffice. Hence the stupid dress and locking me in the highest room of the tallest tower with only a spinning wheel and a magic mirror that thought it was a wit for company. I have never been so glad to see your ugly mug!”
The crew laughed, Jim joining in, realising for the first time how the Captian’s mood had affected all of the crew.
He looked at the Captain, who seemed a full ten years younger, and at that moment decided that he would follow where he lead for the rest of his life.
He crept closer to the fire, a feeling of belonging settling into his bones for the first time in a long time.
“And who’s this lad?” asked the first officer, noticing his movement. “I don’t recall seeing his face before today.”
“James. James Barnes,” said Jim, suddenly nervous as every crew member turned to look at him. “Everyone calls me Jim. I’ve been Cabin Boy aboard The Avenger for these two months past.”
A shadow passed behind Stark’s eyes at the reminder of how long he had been captive.
“You rode well earlier, boy. Tell me, how do you like being part of the best crew ever to sail the waves?”
“I like it just fine, sir.”
“And are you ready to follow your captain, wherever he may lead you, without hesitation or fear?”
“Always, sir.”
“And is not The Avenger the finest ship you ever beheld?”
“Never saw finer.”
“Just you wait till we get back to her, son. Be ready for whatever may come. Because I tell you, Jim lad, life as an
Avenger is never dull!”
***
Steve woke up and looked over to see Tony in bed beside him. Good, all was right with his world. He frowned, remembering.
“Tony,” he said, sitting up.
“Mrphleflug?” came the reply from the pillow.
“Don’t go away on business again. It makes me have really weird dreams.”