SHIELD Founders Fandom gets a magnum opus

[newredshoes]

septembriseur has been alluding to this fic for months, and if you've enjoyed her amazing, chilling looks at the early days of SHIELD before, you're going to go weak-kneed over this latest. It's an intensely researched, long-view look at Howard Stark, and what kind of brilliant young man gets involved in the Manhattan Project and sucked into the Cold War as a way of running from Captain America and the war years. It's also a hard look at his other original sin, the supposed betrayal of Anton Vanko that drives Iron Man 2.

The characterizations are subtle and complex and messily, so vulnerably human. The Easter egg moments will absolutely give you a shock when you almost glide over them. This is absolutely a Peggy who builds an organization that thrives and yet has to be torn down; this is a Peggy who lives a life too, which I found myself so grateful for as I read. Howard Stark makes so much sense when you look at him laid out like this, and even if your heart will be a bit broken, this fic will pay you back for it tenfold. Read this fic; we've been waiting for it.

Prince of the Apple Towns by kvikindi (72K)
Howard Stark: his history told. As if it were that simple.

He's startled by the hand that settles on his shoulder: a heavy comfort, warm and gentle. Erskine's face suggests he's laughing at Howard a little bit, but it's not unsympathetic, that expression. "Fear not," Erskine says. "Your, how do you say? Fuck-ups. Are very much minor, so far. At any rate, this is what the work is for, yes? We break things, and then we put them back together."

Erskine doesn't, really. He works with living bodies. You can't do that with living bodies; you can't just put them back together again. But Howard appreciates the words, anyways.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, yes. Back to work."