Fanfic / The Wanderer By Tickle 2 Kill

The Wanderer is an Alternate Universe Marvel Cinematic Universe fanfiction series published on Archive of Our Own and written by Tickle2Kill. It began updating in April 2017, and is ongoing. The series currently consists of two installments- World So Cold, and World With No Conscience.

The premise of the series is based on a What If?- what if, at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, the Tesseract hit Steve instead of Schmidt, and it zapped him away... into Jotunheim?

The first entry in the series, World So Cold, follows Steve's adventures as he learns to live in Jotunheim, a realm of eternal blizzards and giants with war flowing through their veins, a world the giants have been trapped in for centuries and which Steve has a feeling he won't be leaving anytime soon.

In the second entry, World With No Conscience, Steve finds himself back on Earth with a mission to locate the princes of Asgard, who have been somehow hidden from Heimdall's sight, as he learns to navigate an Earth that has changed dramatically with Schmidt's survival.

Overall, the series is an adventure epic, with plenty of intrigue, battles, daring deeds, matters of life and death, and world-saving. The premise of the series began as a literalist take on the "Winter Soldier Steve" AU scenario, and has spun off into a highly unique entry in the world of MCU fanfiction.

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This story contains examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: Darcy Lewis is an agent of SHIELD, who joined after the incident in New Mexico with Thor. Her cover is that one of a waitress.
• All for Nothing: Steve feels this when he learns of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that he sacrified so much only for the US to become He Who Fights Monsters.
• Alternate Universe: The point of divergence is at the climax of Captain America: The First Avenger, where Steve succeeds in grabbing the Tesseract and is send away to Jotunheim.
  • Another one is that Loki succeeds in destroying Jotunheim and is banished to Earth for it.
  • The events of Thor occurred in the year 2000 and because of this of the many of the characters, such as Jane and Darcy, are aged-up as otherwise they would be college freshmen rather than full-fledged scientists.
  • The events of the sequel occur in the year 2004.
• Animal Motifs: Starting when he receives his One-Hit Kill wolf-fang gauntlet, Steve starts taking on wolf motifs. He wears wolf furs in Jotunheim, he makes a wolf-skull helm for one of his godsons, and when going undercover at a masquerade ball, he requests a mask that looks like a wolf skull.
• Apocalypse How: Class X; the story opens with Loki having destroyed all of Jotunheim after finding out that he's not only adopted, but also a frost giant.
• Artifact of Doom: The Tesseract, currently in possession of Tony Stark and the source of Earth's futuristic technology.
• Back from the Dead: At the end of the first act of World So Cold, Steve engages the king of the storm giants in open combat and gets killed when the king takes his axe to the side of Steve's head during a moment of distraction. His soul goes to Helheim, the Nine Realms' version of the afterlife, and he bargains his way back to life by promising to kill someone for Hela in return. In exchange, the next time he dies, he has to stay dead for real.
• Bad Present: With Schmidt's survival, HYDRA has grown even stronger and now runs the entire world from the shadows. People, even children, disappear into Zola's labs for being homeless, criminals, orphans, sedition, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This world's version of the Avengers is even controlled by HYDRA and is populated with characters who are HYDRA-aligned or HYDRA-adjacent in canon, and HYDRA's trying to make more Winter Soldiers. Yep.
• Braids of Barbarism: Steve never gets to cut his hair or shave the whole time he's on Jotunheim, so his hair gets long enough to braid Viking-style, which he grows accustomed to, alongside having a full beard. When he goes to Earth, he trims his beard to a respectable length and cuts the sides of his head short, but trims the rest to shoulder-length so he can put a couple small braids in it, producing something resembling a Viking version of a grown-out undercut. Everyone else calls it a mohawk.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Thor, in a very similar fashion to Bucky. Tony, too, though his is less severe.
• Brought Down to Normal: Thor and Loki are stripped of their powers when they're banished to Earth, though the latter seems to retain some form of Super-Strength.
• Canon Welding: The fic fuses elements of MCU, particularly about Steve, HYDRA and SHIELD's origins but also fusing elements from Ultimate Marvel, especially about the Chitauri.
• Character Title: The overall series name, The Wanderer, is the translation of Steve's Jotunn-given name- Stigandr.
• Crazy-Prepared: SHIELD has a protocol to deal with people claiming to be Steve Rogers after at least twenty fakes appeared in the fifties and a pretender nearly the Director. This protocol serves to prove Steve's identity.
• Crossover: Darcy's Secret Identity is Max Black from 2 Broke Girls
• Clarke's Third Law: Subverted. Asgardian devices and Jotunn healing practises are explicitly called magic, and spellcasting is a reality.
• Cyberpunk: This fic's version of 2004 definitely has the aesthetic. Stark Industries' AES70 tiny, ultra-efficient battery has revolutionized the entire world and led to strides in computing and networking that are only just being reached in 2020, as well as making flying cars the norm. World governments are secretly run by HYDRA from the shadows, and minor crimes, sedition, being orphaned, homelessness, and simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time can be punished with a trip to Zola's labs as a test subject until death. SHIELD has to operate from the shadows, and there are tiny rebel groups out the wazoo doing their best to fight back, knowing the best thing they have to look forward to if there's even one misstep is a bullet from their own government. Oh, and Steve arrives on Earth during the winter, and the weather tends to be awful.
• The Cynic: Loki, though his time with Skye is slowly changing that.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Jotunheim sharpened Steve and made him more bloodthirsty, but what really cements it and turns him into a cynic is the destruction of Jotunheim, and subsequently his second home and family, and his imprisonment on Asgard. He's deeply suspicious of Asgard and how they've handled the destruction of Jotunheim, an attitude that serves him well when he's sent to Earth.
• Day of the Jackboot: HYDRA took over the Earth.
• Death of a Child: When Jotunheim was destroyed, ostensibly, everyone inside it was destroyed, too, including all of the jotun children he rescued and the two infant princes Steve made himself godfather of.
• Death World: Played with regarding Jotunheim, as while it is harsh world, it's possible to survive there if you're a Super-Soldier.
• Deep Cover Agent: Howard Stark worked for his whole life to fight back against HYDRA. When he realized he wasn't going to be able to see their fall in his lifetime, he arranged for his son Tony to be groomed from childhood to infiltrate them and destroy them from the inside. It's also later revealed that the Red Captain, AKA Bucky Barnes, is one as well, having defected years ago after SHIELD captured him and removed his Winter Soldier programming, and maintaining a ruse that he's still loyal to HYDRA.
• Despair Event Horizon: Steve goes through this in the first fic and while he comes to embrace his Family of Choice, he still mourns for Earth.
• Deal with the Devil: Steve takes one with Hela after he's killed by King Brimer. In exchange for her bringing him back to life, he has to trade her someone else's soul in return to keep the books balanced, i.e. kill someone, along with serving as her emissary of sorts.
• Endless Winter: Jotunheim is near-constantly battered by blizzards, and the temperature never rises above freezing. It's the perfect place for frost giants.
• Fallen Princess: Loki becomes a male example when he's stripped of his magic after destroying Jotunheim and cast down to Midgard. On Earth, he's a nobody and after a few years of not having any means or way to look respectable or prove his claims that he was a prince, everyone thinks he's just a Crazy Homeless Person with delusions of grandeur. Then he gets shown kindness and realizes that his life is his own and that he's just wasted the last few years being a dick.
• Family of Choice: After a daring rescue or two, Steve winds up getting adopted into Adalbjorg's family. Her daughter Brynja calls him her brother, and when he has to come up with a surname, he chooses "Birgirsson", declaring himself a son of Adalbjorg's late husband.
• Fauxreigner: Steve's Earthen undercover name is Stigandr Birgirsson. Between that, and the fact that he's a big pale blond guy who dresses and grooms himself like a viking, everyone who's not in the know just assumes he's Scandinavian. Steve doesn't bother to correct them.
• Final Solution: Loki exterminates all Giants and destroys their homeworld.
• Fish out of Water: Steve not only hasn't been on Earth in sixty years, but spent that time getting himself accustomed to an entirely different world. He goes around looking like a Viking mercenary, not particularly caring if this makes him stick out, and is in general disgusted and horrified with what happened to Earth in his absence.
• Foregone Conclusion: The series opens with Steve imprisoned on Asgard, and mourning the loss of Jotunheim and his family.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Nedra, though subverted in that she becomes The High Queen when she marries Laufey.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Thanks to his time in Jotunheim, where there are no textiles other than animal-based ones, Steve comes to prefer furs and leather, including leather gloves, leather pants that he can tuck into his leather boots, and fur-lined leather overcoats. People's reaction to this is, "Really?"
• I Know Your True Name: Steve's rescuer tricks him into a magical contract whose existence he was not informed of, let alone knew the terms of, by asking him for his name. By speaking his own name, he gives his name away to her and loses the ability to speak it, and is bound to her in servitude and forced to do anything she says. When he's imprisoned in Asgard, he's careful with both of his names until he can ascertain that they won't try anything funny with them.
• Innocently Insensitive: Early in World With No Conscience, Steve offers to help Clint purchase his apartment building from the Russian mafia guy who currently owns it, stating that he'd rather not get "jipped" giving that guy any of his money. Clint smoothly tells Steve to remove that word from his vocabulary. Even in a terrible HYDRA-controlled dystopia, the general public still has standards of etiquette, and that includes avoiding racial slurs against the Roma people, a people that the Nazi-adjacent HYDRA probably doesn't like much.
• La Résistance: The Rising Tide and SHIELD.
• Legacy Character: The position of Captain America. Bucky is the second holder of the title, called the Red Captain due to his red outfit.
• Loss of Identity: Almost as soon as he wakes up in Jotunheim, Steve is tricked into giving away his name, which enters him into a magical contract of servitude that also makes it harder for him to recall details about his past on Earth. His contract-holder renames him Stigandr (Icelandic for "wanderer"). When he tries to protest and claims he already has a name, he can only produce "Stigandr". Even after he's released from the contract and has his old name and memories back, he still goes by Stigandr on Jotunheim, and he winds up making Stigandr Birgirsson his official alias on Earth.
• Microts: The closest equivalent to a year in Jotunheim is called a cycle. One cycle in Jotunheim is approximately the length of five Earthen years.
• Mythology Gag: As the fic is ultimately a take on the "Winter Soldier Steve" AU scenario but with several fundamentals altered, the author manages to fit in some call-backs to both the canon MCU Winter Soldier story and the original AU scenario. There's even an identity porn-laden "who the hell is Steve" moment.
• One-Hit Kill: When Steve comes back from the dead, he's given a gauntlet with a wolf fang attached to it, which will kill anything he stabs it into, including giants. The Asgardians confiscate it when they take him prisoner, and he doesn't get to take it with him to Earth.
• Our Giants Are Different: Beyond the Frost Giants, there are also the Storm Giants, ruled by king Brimer and later his widow Nedra.
• Parting-Words Regret: Eiríkr blamed Steve for the death of their family members in their failed attempt to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters from Odin's Vault, and Steve was too angry to seek reconciliation. They wouldn't have a chance due to Loki destroying Jotunheim.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: The jotnar all wear furs and leather, on account of those being the only textiles on Jotunheim. When Steve is rescued, his Captain America suit is shredded in a wolf attack, and so he's given more of the same and comes to prefer the furs and leather over time. On Earth, even when offered other clothes, he'll choose leather pants, boots, and a fur-lined overcoat whenever he can. Kate Bishop takes one look at his getup and likens him to a Viking mercenary.
• The Quincy Punk: When he returns to Earth, Steve is wearing leather pants, and has a beard and hairstyle resembling a mohawk. However Steve lacks the anarchism and nihilism of this trope, only sharing its looks.
• Red Baron: After Steve uses his nifty wolf fang gauntlet to kill King Brimer of the storm giants, the frost giants give him the epithet Kingslayer. The jotnar are big on names, so this is a big deal- it gets him mistrusted, and people start genuinely being afraid that he'll kill any king.
• Rule of Symbolism: The state of Peggy's picture in Steve's compass represents his feelings about finding his way home. It gets wet the moment he arrives in Jotunheim and shortly before he has his name and memories taken from him. The water damage makes the ink run and fade and her picture harder to see over time, and it finally gets dislodged and blown away by a gust of wind when Steve accepts Jotunheim as his home.
• Secret Identity: The Revengers are HYDRA's version of the Avengers, and as in canon, they don't maintain secret identities, save for the Red Captain, who wears a mask over the lower half of his face any time he's in public, and has never revealed anything as the Red Captain about his life outside of his job.
• Slash Fic: The main pairing in the second fic is Steve/Tony.
• Took a Level in Badass: Steve was pretty badass to begin with, but fifty-five years on Jotunheim turns him into a hell of a warrior. He learns to fight with a sword and knives and takes down giants big enough to crush him underfoot, he sharpens those skills sparring against the Warriors Three during his five years in Asgard, and he learns diplomacy and subterfuge in both places. Which is good, because he's going to need all the help he can get in order to take down HYDRA on Midgard.
• Tricked-Out Gloves: Steve gets a fanged gauntlet which is a One-Hit Kill powerhouse and capable of killing gods.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Kommandos, whose name is based on the Howling Commandos, are a group of HYDRA soldiers that are wildly seen as a positive force for world peace as they fight terrorists and aid civilians during natural disasters.
• What If?: This series combines the What If? scenario of the premise with another popular scenario- what if Steve became the Winter Soldier? The series puts a unique spin on the "WS!Steve" scenario by making the "Winter" part of his name literal, through his connection to the frost giants, and replacing the Manchurian Agent-style code words, brainwashing, and forced military service for an enemy with Steve being undercover on Earth. And as for Bucky, he's the HYDRA version of Captain America, called the Red Captain, and his superhero costume is the Winter Soldier's tac gear, creepy muzzle-mask included.
• Would Hurt a Child: Children as young as preteens have been rounded up for Zola's labs never to be seen again. Skye's partner's son was rounded up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the two have been searching for him ever since.