#starkaddict

I have always taken the approach of Hestia and Hades being sort of parental figures to the rest of the stomach siblings. They are the oldest, they’ve always been around, so while they personally don’t see themselves as Mom or Dad to their siblings, they do have a general amount of authority over them, and they are deferred to as authority figures, especially in the early days when the others are finding their footing and discovering their sense of self outside their father’s belly.

Poseidon is emotionally volatile and irrational. He lacks remorse and doesn’t feel guilt. Strangers don’t matter to him. On the other hand, Hestia is empathic, she is kind, loving. She adores people. So when Poseidon gets angry or destructive, Hades becomes the default person the others seek out. With Demeter, Hera and Zeus, the first thought is “where’s Hestia” then “where’s Hades”. For Poseidon it’s always, “where’s Hades” then “where’s Hestia”. So it’s not really a boy vs girl thing. Hestia can calm down Poseidon, but her approach always starts off gently and supportive, which is helpful with the other three when they’re angry because their emotions have a sense of logic to them.

It's not helpful with Poseidon because his emotions don’t always have one and ping pong so rapidly that the source of his rage may change by the time she gets there. Calming him down takes a lot of time for her. She’s much better once he’s settled. So Hades takes over for the whole walking through floodwaters, grabbing your little brother around the neck and choking him until he stops doing what he’s doing.

Where Poseidon is emotionally volatile, I think of Hades as being much more detached from emotion. Part of it is being god of the dead, in that the dead don’t feel, and part of it is that he’s just very soberminded. He does, of course, have feelings, but he approaches his feelings rationally in a way that Poseidon can’t.

However, he, like Poseidon, does lack empathy. I think he has a much higher capability for it, and he does experience remorse, but ultimately everything dies – people, plants, even gods. So Poseidon’s destruction is more of an “ugh, this is gonna be so much work” rather than “oh my stars, the people”. He’s expecting them to come to him one way or another. When Poseidon’s rage doesn’t affect people and is more destructive on the landscape, it doesn’t bother him because he lives underground. His home remains unaffected.

So Hades finds it easy to deal with Poseidon even if it’s a pain in the ass, and as a result, his words have much more hold on Poseidon’s behaviour than Hestia’s or the others. If Hades says, “Don’t do that”, he’s much more likely to listen. It’s like Poseidon is the reactive dog and Hades is the owner holding the leash.

Another thing I’m really keen on is that Poseidon has  abandonment issues. Think of the ocean: heavy, drowning, crushing, sticks to you as you surface, drags and sinks you so easily. He’s clingy, needy, physically affectionate. He is always on top of one of them. While I don’t think of Hades as a very touchy person, I think he’s so used to Poseidon’s behaviour that he doesn’t even really register Poseidon’s weight when it settles on him anymore. It’s just how it’s always been, why would it be anything different? Hades, of course, will shrug him off and push him onto someone else when it’s overstimulating or Poseidon won’t shut up about sharks, but otherwise it’s just. Yeah, whatever.

With that in mind, I used to think of Story A as a movie when I was first developing it, and I would pretend to do a behind-the-scenes thing and talk about the wardrobe and how the clothing choices informed the characters. One of the things I wanted to pull focus on, sort of a running joke through the story, was that while Poseidon had his own bedroom in the house, it went unused because he would always end up sleeping with one of his other siblings. He couldn’t sleep alone and refused to do it. The other running joke was that he didn’t dress himself. Whoever he slept with would put him in clothes.

Naturally these clothes would always match their own style and aesthetic, so warm, fall colours with very comfortable homey kind of clothes for Hestia; dark clothes for Hades; spring-summer clothing, natural fibers, breathable, things you can work and get dirty in for Demeter; very classy kind of chic clothes with pastels and a lot of blues for Hera; and then somewhat formal business-ish kind of attire, like button-ups, cufflinks, dark pants and such for Zeus. This was made to represent a) the fluidity and adaptability of the ocean, and b) his need to be included. He can think for himself, he often does, especially when he acts on his impulses, but intrinsically he wants his siblings to love and adore him. He wants them to stay with him. He wants to fit in, he wants people to like him, and if he has to wear what they’ve chosen for him to get that, then yeah, fine, let’s do it.

On that sense of mimicry, we lean into Story B, where the stomach siblings would frequently dream of the world outside of their father’s stomach, and the purpose they would eventually serve as gods. The girls would speak of these very warm beautiful things full of life and comfort, and Poseidon copies them. He doesn’t talk about the darker thoughts, the vicious part of the ocean because they don’t bring it up and Hades is very quiet about his dreams, so Poseidon does not want to be the odd one out. He’s already the angry one who screams too much and has to be wrestled into submission by Hades or forced into calm by Hestia’s flames surrounding him.

So, no. He doesn’t talk about the darkness at the deepest depths of the ocean, doesn’t talk about chilling cold, the terrifying monsters that lay beneath, the crushing pressure, or how he dreams so much of drowning them all and keeping them pinned and immobile at the deepest depths so they can never ever leave him. He keeps silent. Meanwhile, on Hades’ side of things, he knows that his dreams are different from the others. They don’t scare him, but he knows they would upset the others, or at least Hestia and Demeter – Poseidon unable to care for strangers and Hera being similarly emotionally detached from strangers as Hades is. His dreams are dreary and sad, full of darkness and rot. So he keeps quiet about it.

Which means that once they are finally thrown up and able to explore their domains, Hades’ powers come as a shock (and concern) the others. Poseidon, I think, becomes somewhat jealous. A key factor I have always wanted to emphasize in Hades (and in Nico and Bianca when I write PJO-verse) is that he is not ashamed of his powers or his purpose. Being god of the dead, being god of the underworld – he enjoys it and always has.

Yes, there are undesirable aspects of it, such as his siblings discomfort and mistrust in Story B, but that’s literally the only issue he has with it, and it’s not even really his issue. It’s theirs. He’s logical and understands that his status as god of the underworld has a purpose in the world and if it didn’t, he wouldn’t be in charge of it. He’d be something else. So he’s always been very settled in his role even before he fully knew what his role would be.

But because he never copped up to it in order to spare his siblings’ feelings, Poseidon feels irritated that Hades adapts the dark side of things so easily. Especially since Poseidon’s relationship to darkness is cloaked in viciousness and ferocity, in possession and desperate need. Hades isn’t like that. There are no differences in him because his domain is one settled thing, whereas Poseidon’s is evershifting.

It's because of this jealousy that Poseidon agrees that they should kill (or imprison) Hades at the end of the war in Story B.

But outside that story or the other one, I think Poseidon goes in and out on his jealousy through their childhood, just as part of his emotional volatility. Sometimes he finds it admirable, and other times it drives him up the wall. These times can happen within quick succession of each other, but Hades handles it in stride. Poseidon’s sudden bitterness isn’t new and Hades is too comfortable with himself and who he is to be bothered by Poseidon insulting him, or trying to get under his skin as he might with Zeus or the others.

Going back to Poseidon’s abandonment issues, Hestia loses a lot of his affection after the war. My general rule of the thumb is Zeus defeats their dad, any remaining titans or supporters of Kronos who haven’t already been dealt with concede, the kids take some time to themselves for a few days then Hades disappears to the underground, Zeus and Hera depart for Olympus and the other three leave to travel the world. Demeter splits off to teach people agriculture, leaving Hestia and Poseidon alone.

Hestia who is kind and empathic and Poseidon who has spent the last few years fistfighting uncles and suddenly can’t do that anymore. And he can’t just. Stop being emotionally volatile, he doesn’t know how and Hestia’s advice doesn’t work because she’s never dealt with turbulent emotions and eventually the guilt of bringing him around people he might decide to start fighting out of boredom becomes too much so she just disappears in the middle of the night. He wakes up. Alone. Screams her name but she doesn’t come. Eventually departs for the ocean and agrees to take over for Oceanus as king because at least this way he can’t be left behind. And anyone who tries will die by his hand, and no one wants that, so, yeah, they’ll never leave him. And he will be loved forever.

This just means that by the time Zeus and Hera have cleaned up Olympus and established the rule of gods, and have invited the family back as Olympians, he ignores Hestia and deviates to Hades’ side. He doesn’t get over it for a long time and even then it still bothers him. Later the opening Hestia created as figure of authority that Poseidon is more willing to listen to is filled by Amphitrite, his wife, who he loves more than anything.

I headcanon her to be asexual and sex-repulsed. She purely does it for procreation and, eventually, confesses to him that she despises it but only went through it for the kids and because she assumed he wouldn’t care and would force her anyway, as he does with other people. So for her, he stops doing that because there’s nothing worse to him than the idea his wife believes he’d hurt her. And when she admits this to him, he ends up going to Hades to talk about it because he knows that he’s a bad person. That he’s violent and cruel sometimes and that he hurts people. It’s never bothered him until now though. So what does he do? How does he be a good person so she’ll trust him? He can’t have her not trust him.

Hades walks him through it. Amphitrite doesn’t mind all the terrible things, after all she is also the ocean, she knows best what he feels, understands his tumultuousness better than anyone else. It’s just this one thing that causes stress. He doesn’t have to erase an entire part of himself, just pull back on this one thing. And he does. It’s hard and he’ll bitch about it because it’s just easier to make someone do what you want, but he does it because he loves his wife more than anything, and Hades told him that he could do it, and he believes Hades. Because Hades is his older brother and Hades took care of him and Hades has spoken to so many souls who have gone through so many things and most importantly, Hades would never lie to him.

Another thing that’s important when I view their relationship is they’re both chthonic to an extent. I think it’s in the Mycenaean Age that Poseidon was correlated as a chthonic god as well. I remember I had this joke that if Hades had to choose any of his siblings to marry he would pick Poseidon, but only because Poseidon was tall which would make it easier to kiss him and unlike Hera, who is also tall, he would be comfortable in the underworld. Hera would hate it and Hades would not want to live on that mountain, and there’s no way either of them are commuting to their jobs every day. So, damn, guess Poseidon’s the only choice. But, yeah, even outside that joke Poseidon and Hades are both comfortable in the dark, cold and creepy. So when Poseidon excitedly shows his family an anglerfish after exploring the bottom of the ocean and everyone else is “ewwwwwwww. what is that thing”, Hades is like “neat, can I cut it open and see how much of it is made of cartilage?”

I’ve always thought of Hades as being the balance between Poseidon’s chaotic nature and Zeus’s orderly ways. Death is also inherently chaotic, ya know? It throws life into an upset, it happens suddenly in various different ways. But the underworld does have structure, it does have clear lines and rules in its function. And it’s through this has Poseidon uses Hades. Because Hades is a workaholic and Poseidon is not. He does not enjoy being king, he does not appreciate the responsibility that comes with it.

Luckily Amphitrite is perfectly fine to handle a lot of the boring and day-to-day stuff of running a kingdom, which allows Poseidon to focus more on managing his army, dealing with sea monsters and being a general nuisance. But when he has to sit down and manage his papers, he always ends up calling Hades to do it for him. And Hades is a workaholic whose wife, children, and devious employees frequently lock him out of his office so he’ll take a break. Which means he tends to jump on the chance. Besides, it gives him some variety. So he’ll sit at Poseidon’s desk and crunch numbers and review requests and Poseidon will swim back and forth like the hyperactive ADHD merman he is, yapping on and on about sharks while Hades hums and nods along.

In the reverse of this, Poseidon’s active nature also helps Hades relax. Despite the “happy to sit behind a desk and work until he dies” thing, I think Hades is also a very active person. The difference is that Poseidon needs to be moving and Hades needs to be stimulated. He can sit still if he has something to do but once he starts getting bored, he’ll do anything, which, lol, okay side note but when I was first conceptualizing the gods as characters I used to have this joke that they all had crushes on Hestia and Hades, especially Poseidon, who, obviously, is very open about his affections.At some point Poseidon discovers that Hades has kissed all their siblings except him, he gets very upset about it and won’t stop whining until someone screams at Hades to please just kiss him and make him stop talking (Hades is very used to Poseidon’s yapping, he can tune it out so easily, other people don’t have that ability though). So he gives Poseidon a kiss and then, to make sure there’s no more complaints, gives everyone a kiss on the head so they’re all equal.

The context of the other kisses is that he and Hestia were trying it out to see what it was like, him and Demeter were posing as a couple to get information on their father’s army, Zeus was drunk and mistook him for Hera in front of Hera, so Hades kisses her to make it even between the two of them. The other joke is that Hades has zero interest in being intimate with Poseidon, mostly because he thinks it will make Poseidon’s clinginess worse than it already is, which it absolutely will, but he knows that if he’s bored enough and Poseidon asks him, he will say yes just so he’ll be doing something. Whether he finally caves and hooks up with his horny little brother is up to you, but either way he tops and Poseidon gets weird about it, lol.

But, ha, going back to Poseidon being able to help Hades relax, the water is nice when it's calm, you know. And Hades like to learn things, it’s part of his job as god of the dead, taking in all the history of the souls who’ve passed, using it to judge them, using it to give advice to other people or predict trends in mortal lives and make preparations for any sudden influx. So he doesn’t mind lying still in the sand while Poseidon points at the fish above them, and tells him everything about them. There’s a settling because the earth is great, but Hades is built for underground and it's under the earth where the dead lay, but the ocean is filled with death – shipwrecks, animals, people. Whale falls nourish a portion of the deepest depths. The sand is made of bones, it comes from rocks and the dead.

With that in mind, I think Poseidon likes to mess with Hermes and Thanatos when they come to collect souls from shipwrecks or drownings, so Hades generally takes over because Poseidon can’t bother him no matter how hard he tries. And Poseidon will usually give up pretty quickly and just follows him around like a little guppy.

I think between his ability to relate to Hades on a deeper level with the chthonic stuff that the others don’t vibe with, as well as Hestia abandoning him, there comes a part of Poseidon that is very obsessive over Hades. Once he’s king and especially once he’s married, he has less time to be as aggravating about it, but the obsession will always linger. He might not defer to Hades as readily as he used to, especially when Amphitrite’s word is much more holy, but Hades will always be someone he regards in high esteem (unless he’s angry. Then fuck that guy).

When I first started shipping Nico and Poseidon, I had Nico ask him once “are you only with me because you can’t be with my dad” and Poseidon is just “I’m with you because I like you, the fact that you remind me of your dad is a bonus”.

They both struggle with the concept that they are loved. I’ve always thought of Hades as someone who gives love easily, but has trouble accepting it back. Whenever one of his employees tell him they love him, whether platonically and/or romantically, he either says, “No, thank you” or “Okay” followed by him bolting in the opposite direction and not communicating with them for a while because he can handle emotions, but he doesn’t really know how to deal with them when they’re directed at him, especially when they’re affectionate.

With Persephone, she confesses on the surface during a lunch date and he shoves her into the lake and runs away. She chases him obviously and makes him accept it. It’s funny because it’s kind of like he’s so used to Poseidon’s volatility that people with more level-headed and straightforward emotions are hard to process. Especially since Poseidon’s emotions were evershifting, so the guarantee that you are loved is not as stable as it was. And then of course Demeter recoils from him because her nature and his don’t align which is painful and tells him that love is stable, and Zeus is paranoid about who he is so he might care for Hades in a very complicated way but he doesn’t love him. Hestia loves everyone and Hera is similar to Hades in her emotional detachment from people, so love is an awkward sentiment for her.

Comparatively, Poseidon does know that he is loved, but he craves a constant reminder of it which becomes bothersome and tiring over time. He needs to know he’s wanted and there will never be enough proof to satiate him. Luckily, his desire to be loved is simplified down to a small collective of people he genuinely cares for. However, out of that group, Amphitrite is really the only person he would never hurt. So he would attack Hades if need be, and Hades, so used to fighting him to get him to calm down, will defend. But Hades would never attack him for no reason. Even with reason, I think Hades cares for his family too much to start throwing hands.

Post-war is a little different as they become somewhat estranged from each other over time and because they all have domains they need to take care of. Under the right circumstance, he might start a fight but before then, he’d contentedly lower himself to his knees and accept his death by their hand if it would make him happy. In Story B, he points out how he doesn’t have anyone else, it’s always just been them, and he’d rather die by their hands than run away and be alone forever. Shortly after he’s introduced to Osiris and the other Egyptian gods, and they remind him that he shouldn’t entertain their fears by hiding himself from them. He is a part of the natural world. Whether he’s there or not, people will die and the dead will roam the earth, searching for home. He can provide shelter to thousands by making five people unhappy, or make five people happy and know that thousands will forever suffer until someone takes his place. Because someone will always take his place.

I think, as well, in Hades being very rational about himself as a person, incapable of experiencing shame over who he is even as other people revile it, Poseidon can garner some help from that. Because yes, he’s remorseless and doesn’t care about people, but he doesn’t always want to be. Just because he’s accepted that he’s this way and finds joy in it, doesn’t mean he always likes that this who he is. Who would, you know? It’s a very troubling life to live, especially when you do care about people, or at least want the capacity to care. And Hades, I’ve always thought of, is someone who is very introspective. So he can soothe Poseidon’s’ worries that maybe there’s something more wrong with him than there should be. Explains to him that he is the ocean. That’s how he is, it’s what he represents, he’s supposed to be vicious and cruel, destroying lives and violating people. But he’s also supposed to be calm and steady, basking in the warmth of the sun. Yes, he can be horrible sometimes, but he can also be loving, the sweet lap of tides against people’s feet. He is not mortal and he cannot beholden himself to mortal ideals, nor can he beholden himself to the behaviours of other gods. He represents something entirely separate from them. That’s fine. He shouldn’t be distressed by it. Just learn to adjust his tides to the change of time.

So, haha, in summation I think they’re closer as brothers than either of them are with Zeus. Poseidon is definitely a lot more intense about his relationship with Hades because, well, he’s intense about a lot things, where Hades views him more from the simple position of “yeah, that’s my brother”.

Hades is really Poseidon’s last link to their family as well – you know, Hades is a very chill person, and he’s fairly understanding. He gets why his relationship with Demeter changed after they starts tapping into their domains more and he understands why it went through further recoil following his marriage to Persephone. He understands that Zeus is paranoid and has a lot of trust issues and doesn’t fault him on that. He gets that Hestia and Hera, while they care about him, are devoted more to the surface than they are to him, Hera especially being Zeus’s wife, and if it came down to it, that’s likely the side they’d choose. But despite these complexities, he’s very relaxed with them because these things don’t bother him. To him, it’s both just the way it is and not his problem.

However with Poseidon, it’s very much Hestia abandoned him, he does not mesh well Zeus coming from the view of order vs chaos, Demeter does not trust him (and rightly so), and Hera knows how to shatter his ego into a million pieces with just a few words, which he hates. Also sometimes she gets really intense and it’s scary.

While he can socialize and interact with his siblings on a very chill or professional godly level, there is a lot happening beneath the surface and they’re all very aware of it. In the end, Hades is really the last grip he has to their siblings and, in some ways, the surface itself. If it became an Olympian vs Underworld thing, he would absolutely support Hades, but in the same breath he’d probably get very stressed out if Hades didn’t show enough appreciation for that, you know.

This was one of the earlier keystone scenes from this story.

By his count, he had been in the interrogation room for about seven hours before he heard the tumblers turn in the lock, accompanied by the little murmur from the observation room as the watchers changed – Phillips, Dugan, and Morita, from the sound of it. He raised his head from his folded arms as the door opened, still a little groggy from sleep, then sat up as Peggy came in.

Steve shut his eyes as she leaned over him to unlock his handcuffs, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume; she had still worn the same one the last time he had seen her in 2015, before she had moved back to England. He felt her look down at him, the brief susurration of the air at the movement, and her hair brushed the side of his face as she finished unlocking the handcuffs. She could, he suspected, hear the sudden unsteadiness in his breath.

At one point there was actually a Steve/Peggy kiss here, initiated by Peggy; Peggy leaning over Steve to undo his handcuffs, Steve smelling her perfume, and Peggy kissing him before Steve pulls away was the keystone scene. The kiss ultimately never got written (rather than written and then cut) largely less because I didn't think it worked in the scene, but as some lingering Queen's Gambit trauma. I'm really anxious about anything that can get potentially read as cheating because the Obi-Wan/Padme scenes in Gambit have gotten a lot of flak about that for years (and continue to get it), so the Steve/Peggy kiss here was one of the victims. I hesitated on the Steve/Howard kiss for similar reasons, though that one ultimately made it through, partially because there had been so much build-up to it and partially because I figured that if it caught flak it would be more about the fact it was two guys than Steve cheating on Natasha. (Which obviously he's not.) And that's pretty much exactly what the response was!

I think this is the only time in the fic that there was a planned Steve/Peggy kiss (aside from the initial attempted kiss in the reunion), but I didn't want there to be any confusion that this was going to be a love triangle story. Peggy thinks it's a love triangle, Natasha is really anxious that it might be; Steve made his decision.

To his relief, she didn’t comment on it, just put the handcuff key away and went around to the other side of the table. Steve opened his eyes to pull the handcuffs off and let them fall to the table, rubbing at his sore wrists, then looked up as Peggy slid a strip of Typex printout across the table to him.

Typex machines were the British cypher machines, the UK equivalent of the German Enigma. They print in long strips of paper.

“Room 17 broke the code – today’s at least, they’re still working on yesterday’s.”

PROCEED TO LONDON RDV TASK FORCE SPARROWHAWK MISSION TAKE CAPTAIN STEVEN G ROGERS ALIVE AT ALL COSTS RPT AT ALL COSTS X

I don't think the Task Force Sparrowhawk names come up again.

Steve blinked, read it twice, and then looked up at Peggy. “Who sent it?”

“We don’t know. Do you?”

He shook his head, but his mind caught on that X. “No. It was in English?”

“It was. Once it was decrypted, we didn’t need to translate it.”

The Germans transmitted in German, the Japanese in Japanese, the Soviets in Russian, and so on. Natasha would know if the Red Room – or its predecessor – would use English or Russian when communicating with their agents on English-speaking soil. There were other options, he supposed, especially with the end of the war in sight and the Allies already starting to look ahead to what would come next.

I did a lot of research on WWII and Cold War spycraft, especially what was going on near the tail end of the war; that said, that Leviathan transmits in English comes from Agent Carter.

He put the strip of paper down and said, “So am I off the hook?”

“Well, we don’t believe you sent this message,” Peggy said, “given that you’re entirely capable of taking yourself out of headquarters and wherever you want to go from there. I think everyone in the SSR is well aware of that; you haven’t been gone that long.”

One thing that I tried to get across in this fic is that the SSR has a different view of Steve and his capabilities than almost anyone up in the present day does. They don't have the mythologization of Captain America that exists in the 2010s, because they've watched Steve go into the field for the first time up to the last, which is a period of slightly less than a year and a half. Their standard for Steve is not Captain America, it's Captain Steve Rogers, whereas even Fury (which we can see in The Avengers and CATWS) actually quite struggles with what to do with Steve. The SSR knows what to do with him and knows how good he is...in this specific context. However, Steve has not been in this specific context for six years now, and his 2018 context is completely different from his 1945 context. He's got FOUR TIMES as much experience in the 21st century than he did in WWII, and he's mostly doing extremely different stuff.

“Thanks,” Steve said dryly. “I think.”

For an instant the corner of her mouth lifted slightly in the ghost of a smile, but it was gone so quickly that if Steve hadn’t been watching her he wouldn’t have known it was there. Then Peggy folded her hands on top of the files in front of her and said, “You’re under suspicion of being a double agent, Captain.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” Steve said. “I’m not a double. If I was, I’d have come in with a story that’s actually believable.”

Steve's so tired of this but he knows that they're going to continue to tread this ground until everyone's absolutely certain, and even then there are still going to be people who will never be absolutely certain.

“I believe that argument has been made on your behalf by several people,” Peggy observed, and Steve smiled thinly.

“Howard.”

Howard Stark is extremely aware that there are many more believable ways that Steve could have shown up if he was a double agent, but he's also crucially the only one of the SSR's command staff that was actually there to see Steve turn up, and that's really affecting his perception of Steve's return, though Peggy writes it at least partially off as a result of Howard being in love with Steve -- well, Peggy doesn't think Howard's in love with Steve, Peggy thinks that Howard wants to notch Steve on his bedpost and she thinks it's frankly a little silly.

“He’s one of them.” A muscle in her jaw worked before she said, “But we all know you’re holding something back and not just whatever you say is going to change the future. Do you want to tell me the truth, Steve?”

The other thing is that the people at the SSR know Steve very well, which Steve's...actually not very used to anymore. Steve has kind of gotten to the point where he can lean on perceptions of Captain America, which he could not do in WWII outside of very specific contexts.

“I’ve told the truth,” Steve said.

Steve's repeated "I've told the truth" is a tiny little nod to Elizabeth Wein's novel Code Name Verity, which has been on my audiobook repeat the whole time I've been writing this fic.

“When you’re lying to me, at least give us both the dignity of admitting that that’s what you’re doing.”

“I’ve told the truth,” Steve repeated, and that almost was the truth, since with one exception he had been talking around the things he didn’t want to say instead of outright lying about them. That one exception was Natasha.

That's kind of a big one and everyone knows it, but Peggy's mad about it.

“A truth you can’t prove and we can’t verify, since we have nothing to go of off except your word.”

“My word used to be good enough for you.”

Steve is also honestly struggling with not being able to trust or be trusted by the SSR; it's not actually a position he expected to be in.

“Yes, it used to be,” Peggy said. “That was before the Valkyrie. You were missing in action, believed killed, for four weeks before you turned up here. You and I both know that that’s more than enough time for Hydra – or any other player of the Great Game – to do any number of horrible things. Psychological conditioning, memory manipulation –”

Steve has REALLY not been gone all that long from the SSR's perspective! It is absolutely reasonable that he could have bailed out of the Valkyrie and taken four weeks to get back to the Allied lines; that sort of thing happened pretty frequently in WWII.

Except for Steve, it hasn't been four weeks, it's been six years -- or technically, eighty-three.

One thing I had to think about a lot was what else Hydra could have been up to beyond what we see in CATFA, which are Zola's (implied) super soldier experiments (implied because we don't actually know in CATFA that's what he's doing -- that's only revealed in CATWS) and Schmidt's Tesseract-powered weapons. I had the idea that there were a bunch of satellite facilities that were doing Hydra mad science stuff that the SSR only really started to uncover after Schmidt and Zola were taken care of and they could switch gears from stopping them to figuring out what they were up to. And this is stuff that Steve does not necessarily know that the SSR was doing, though he can guess.

“Brainwashing, you mean,” Steve said.

Her eyebrows went up. “Sorry?”

He tried to remember if he had heard the term before 2012, but the first memory he had was of Bruce explaining the concept after the Battle of New York in between debating with Tony about whether what Loki had done to Clint and Dr. Selvig qualified. He’d had a lot of conversations about it after Bucky, first with Sam and Natasha and later with T’Challa and Shuri – “Same thing. I don’t think the word exists yet. It’s, uh – it’s Chinese originally, something that happened during the Korean War. Which hasn’t…happened yet.”

Actually generally shocking how many terms in common use (especially for this particular genre of spy story) did not exist in WWII and were actually Cold War(ish) inventions. Brainwashing is the big one! There are a couple that I didn't catch before I realized that I had to look up every single thing. ("Mole" is the big one, "operator" is another one.) Steve and Natasha using those terms is fine, but Peggy (or Howard or Phillips etc.) wouldn't know them yet. Not that 99.9% of readers realize that, but it makes me tetchy.

“Brainwashing,” Peggy repeated, though her lips also framed the words Korean War. “Well, that’s certainly…evocative.”

Whole boatload of stuff happened between 1945 and 2018. And "brainwashing" IS a very evocative word if you actually break it down.

Steve shrugged in response.

“Well, are you?” Peggy said. “Brainwashed?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you about it, would I?” Steve said. “But no, I’m not.” He touched the sheet of Typex paper again, then said, “Do you really think that anyone who could do this would waste a super soldier on espionage? Even me? Especially me?”

Though ironically Department X's descendant does waste a super soldier on espionage by sticking the Red Guardian into the Ohio operation, which I have theorized was because Dreykov wanted him out of reach of both the Russian government and Hydra in early 1992, when when Alexei, Melina, Natasha, and Yelena would have gone to Ohio. Howard Stark is assassinated Dec. 17, 1991, Hydra starts their super soldier experiments in Siberia soon afterwards, the USSR dissolves Dec. 26, 1991. If Dreykov is yanking the Red Room's resources away from the Russian state, then he's going to want the picture of Soviet propaganda, the only Soviet super soldier, out of the way too and he's not going to want Alexei in a position to protest. If he's in America then Alexei won't realize what's happening and make a fuss, and presumably Alexei does at that point still have public image weight to throw around. When Dreykov meets him in Cuba he (Alexei) doesn't seem to realize that it may not be there anymore.

In 1945 Captain America just didn’t have the cultural cachet that seventy years of myth-making had built up. It had taken him more time than he cared to admit to realize that even in SHIELD there were plenty of people who thought that the USO’s version of Captain America was more or less accurate; he had had to gently break the news to more than one fanboy that while he had been in Europe with the SSR, the USO had still had an actor – a real actor – playing Captain America onstage and in the pictures, and that was the guy wearing the cowl in most of the trading cards produced after 1943, though the posters and comics had kept Steve’s face. Phil Coulson’s trading cards had been remarkable for being a complete set of the only run that had actually featured Steve.

SHIELD's attitude towards Steve in The Avengers is really interesting, because it's pretty clear that Fury doesn't actually know what to do with him aside from point him at a target (Loki) and push go, which is simply not how Steve works. Even in CATWS he still has a tendency to do that.

So it features pretty significantly in an unposted chapter of Morning, here are the two most relevant sections. (Farbauti's a volva but was not at Urdarbrunnr when Hela did her slaughter, and isn't aware that it was Hela who did it.)

The giantess didn’t look at him. “Twenty-four centuries ago the vǫlur were slaughtered at Urðarbrunnr.  I wasn’t there with my sisters that day, but I know what prophecy it was they sang into being.  It did not come to Asgard, I think, for many centuries afterward, nor was the whole of it brought to Valaskjalf for the ears of Odin One-eye.” Frigga hesitated before she shook her head slightly. “What prophecy?” Loki said. “What – the prophecy?” “Odin’s sons, battle-born,” Farbauti quoted softly. “There’s more, but that’s the part you and Odin cared about, isn’t it?  That he might have his matched pair of perfect princes.  Never mind that you might never hear the rest of it, because the vǫlur that still trusted Asgard brought those stanzas to you in time, but those who would never trust Asgard again brought the rest to me.” No single vǫlva ever got the whole of a prophecy, Loki knew.  Individuals got bits and pieces, but it took many vǫlur to piece together the entirety of one.  Since the massacre at Urðarbrunnr he didn’t know if more than a handful had been completed; most of the known prophecies dated from before the slaughter. “They are my sons,” Frigga said, her voice hard. “Yes,” Farbauti said, “but they could have been mine.  Both of them could have been mine, your blood-son and his twin.”

and then a little later, after they argue for a while and some other stuff is discussed.

Farbauti nodded, then crossed back to the brazier with the kettle and poured herself another cup of spiced wine.  As she spooned honey into it, she said, “When the vǫlur see the future, it isn’t set.  We see possible futures – certain things that will happen, because they’re part of the pattern laid out in the great tapestry the Norns make of our wyrd, but there are many ways that those threads can be woven.  And those threads themselves are always being spun.  Yes, our own choices make up our ørlǫg along with our natures, but so do the choices of all those who come before us.  What was possible when the vǫlur speak the great patterns of the Norns into being is not always possible a century later, let alone ten.  The possibilities narrow as the cloth is worked and the thread of our ørlǫg is spun.” She set her hip against the table and drank deep from her cup, then quoted softly, “Odin’s sons, battle-born, battle-worn – that’s the version you know, isn’t it?” Loki nodded shortly.  “Everyone says Thor and I were born at the beginning and end of the Battle of Jotunheim.” “I can’t speak for your brother,” Farbauti said, “though I don’t know that there’s any reason to lie about that –” “There isn’t,” Frigga said. “Thor was born when the Bifrost brought the last of the einherjar to Jotunheim.” Farbauti smiled, thin. “Your other son took his first breath as the first of my people died.” Loki felt the muscle in his jaw jump again, but glanced upwards at his mother anyway.  He tried to make his voice light as he said, “So Thor’s still older than me.” Frigga hesitated for a brief instant, then said, “Sixteen minutes.  I scried it to be certain.”  She leaned down and pressed her lips briefly to the crown of his head, making Farbauti’s brows knit a little – a somewhat disconcerting effect on her Jotun features. Loki let his breath out slowly, suddenly dizzy with relief.  “So we did come into this world together,” he said.  He had been afraid to ask before, to find one more part of his reality crumbling around him; having it back… “Yes,” Farbauti said.  When they both looked up at her, she shrugged. “It’s their wyrd.  Odin’s sons, battle-born, battle-worn,” she quoted, the rhythm of the familiar words a little different than an Asgardian would have used.  What she said next was entirely unfamiliar.  “Or Laufey’s sons, battle-won, bone-born.” Loki heard the sound he had made only after it passed his lips, a soft grunt like he had punched in the gut.  You didn’t have to be a vǫlva to interpret that. His mother’s grip was so tight on his shoulders that he suspected he would find bruises there later. Farbauti made a gesture to toss the matter aside. “It’s done.  What might be is now only what could have been, and ultimately what never was.  That path was closed to all of us at least a century before your birth.  Laufey never worked up the courage to challenge Asgard on its own ground, just proxy wars.”  She smiled a little, idle.  “Or I suppose he might have taken more than Odin’s eye that day, though I doubt it.  Regardless –”  She shrugged.  “It’s done.” “Yes,” Frigga said softly. “It’s done.”

The Asgardians never knew the other version of the prophecy. That is actually a reference to a What If comic called What If Thor Was Raised by Frost Giants, where Laufey does kill Odin and take Thor to raise him himself.

Part of the reason the prophecy is in Morning is to set up the idea that there are things that are going to happen, though they're conceptualized in different ways depending who says it -- obviously the Asgardians and the Jotuns think of fate very differently than (my version of) the TVA, since Mobius gives a long explanation earlier in Morning. But those things are going to happen aren't always going to happen in the same way or in predictable ways, so the prophecy sets up that Loki and Thor were always going to be raised together as twins, but not necessarily in the context that they were. And again, part of that is just to put the Asgardians and company into a non-human and very mythical context, that they accept is governed by other powers.