Moving would be a poor idea in this weather. Maybe it would've been worth the risk if the Captain was more injured, enough to keep him pliable and easier to control what he does until HYDRA backup arrives. But he's already healed the worst of the bleach damage; what remains is just cosmetic, and so it isn't worth the risk going out there. The Winter Soldier shakes his head, his lips pressed into a thin line as he files away the option of going back into the unforgiving cold and the snow under "unlikely". At least until he can try again with the other asset and establish a line of communication with the nearest HYDRA cell.
"Poor," the Winter Soldier opts for being truthful. After failing to incapacitate his partner, he'll need to work on buying enough of that trust back so he can get another opening. If it means being upfront about his weaknesses, then so be it. "It'll lower my effectiveness once we leave if it's left non-functional."
He can operate without it if needed. There had been plenty of exercises with it detached, both against the Captain and against select trainees fast-tracked to rise in the ranks. Some of them had found that no matter their skill level, their background - they couldn't last even a minute when he was one-handed and they thought he wouldn't kill because of their background, their contacts, the fact they were too prideful to surrender. The Captain, though. He'd always lasted. Always knew to go for his weak spot, use the missing limb to his advantage in any exercises, and he knew how to disable him using pain, location, and bone breaks on the flesh side. There had always been an immediacy about his approach. The Winter Soldier remembers respecting that, even if most of the actual details were only faint impressions of pain and smell and sound. Glancing at his partner, the Soldier studies him and he has to assume that part hasn't change. The injections may not have worked...but his sense of tactics, of taking advantage of a perceived weakness? Those are still fresh and he can't assume those will degrade too.
The Winter Soldier touches his damaged arm. It's non-functional from the elbow joint down to the wrist, where most of the damage was done. His face feels tender, as if he'd run headfirst into a tinder block, and there's no doubt some swelling from the Captain smashing his face into the floor as hard as he did. There's a vague memory that he hadn't settled for hitting him just the once. He'd done in multiple times, to be thorough. To be exact. Good to know that some instincts haven't degraded like his mental conditioning has.
It's a small comfort.
"You need to decide what to do about my arm," the Winter Soldier plunks that into his partner's lap. While he has his SOP to carry out, for now the Captain still has higher rank...and he must know that if he really wants the two of them to walk out of here, he can't have his partner crippled. It's weighing the odds, the pros and cons. How far he's willing to go to drag someone with him in this. "Either it needs to be repaired or you can leave me here."
The snow will die down, eventually. Probably can make his way out, contact the nearest cell. Take his chances dodging the SSR. Not ideal scenarios. But there's a choice, and now it's laid out in front of Rogers to choose how much he wants to risk for this unspoken, impossible mission of his. Things won't be the same between them. They can't be; not when the Winter Soldier has that new order brimming to the surface, feeling like it's somehow pulling at his nerve endings and his very bones and skin. Not when the Captain is acting like he'll go AWOL. Not when he speaks as if this invisible mission of his supersedes HYDRA itself.
The Captain looks at the Soldier for a long moment, at the way he touches the arm, at the damage he himself inflicted. He can remember, vividly, the feel of the metal giving under his grip, the sound it made, the way he felt dealing out the damage. It didn’t feel good. It felt like a mission he didn’t want to complete, a mission that made him sick to his stomach, despite the fact that he knew it had to be done. And when the Winter Soldier points out, bluntly, that he’s going to have to make a decision - he’s right.
So the Captain makes the call, because that’s what he does. He has been honed and trained to evaluate every single situation, take in all the information, and make the right call. “I’ll repair it,” he says, just as bluntly, just as confidently and with no room for argument. He isn’t a tech, of course, doesn’t possess the specialized skills for significant repairs. But he’s well versed in the arm’s workings and on the most basic ways to repair it, the best workarounds and solutions for the field, because he’s got to be. HYDRA had planned for every contingency (or, at least, so they thought): for the Captain’s time in the chair to wear off, and for the Soldier’s arm to become damaged. Of course, HYDRA always planned to ensure their super soldiers were accompanied by handlers, and that’s no longer true, but that never meant they didn’t give their most valuable assets the tools and skills they needed to keep each other going.
It’s… good, knowing he can do something about the arm. Of course, he’s the one who damaged it in the first place, but he can still undo it. He can make the Solider functional again, give him what he needs to survive, and even though the Captain knows it’s a gamble against his own survival, he doesn’t hesitate to make that call.
“I’ll repair your arm,” he repeats, not because he doesn’t think it was understood, but because now he’s using it as a jumping-off point, now it’s the basis of their new plan. “And then we’re going to lay out all the intel we have on the SSR, and what we heard there. I want to know more about Rogers and Barnes.” And this time, he won’t let the Soldier shy away from the names, from what he might know. They’re going to go digging, and it might not be pleasant, but it’s going to yield results. He’s sure of it.
In fact… he considers for only a moment before he decides that they can do both at once, really. He can repair the arm and they can talk at the same time. He glances out the windows, at the grey skies and the blowing snow, and makes a third call: “We can afford a fire,” he decides, because the lodge has a nice big fireplace and plenty that will burn and any smoke will be blown away quickly, lost in the gale still raging outside. He’s cold and stiff, his shoulder aching fiercely, and the Soldier can’t be feeling much better, with a damaged arm. They could both do to warm up, and there’s no reason to stay in these less-than-optimal conditions, with the storm blowing enough to dissipate any sign of their presence. “Help me gather kindling.” They sure make a pair, each with a damaged arm, but between the two of them, they can start a fire easily enough, and sit down by it so the Captain can pull out the repair kit he keeps in his belt and get to work on the Soldier’s arm. And then they can talk about Rogers and Barnes.
Good. The Winter Soldier would prefer it if the Captain just turned himself over and came quietly, but fixing his damaged arm is something he'll take without complaint. Another possible weapon against his partner, a higher chance that he might be able to take in the other asset without incapacitating him permanently. He nods, as satisfied as he can feel with this small victory.
It's something.
The Winter Soldier falls into place as the Captain makes for the door. The arm repair will come next, when he's back inside, when he can't ambush the other asset out in the snow. He doesn't try to jump the Captain as they venture outside, the biting cold against lancing across their exposed skin and he takes point again, part of out muscle memory, part because he's aware that even his partner, with that new, alien mission buzzing around in his mind like a corruption, wants him where he can see him. He's lost the white mask that usually muzzles his lower face, his lips numbing as he ducks his head and presses out into the snow. Visibility is low, a swirling mass of white smearing against shapes of buildings, of a garage and bowing bushes and trees. It's not as bad as the first night. He presses on, spreading out with the Captain to search near the forest's edge. Some of the kindling is too wet and will need to be tried. Others have recently fallen, the Winter Soldier holding as much as he can with one working arm until the Captain calls it for the day.
They return back inside, snow drifting across the foyer's floor before the door's tugged shut and locked. It's enough for a fire for a few hours, at least, and the Winter Soldier finds himself tasked with getting it started as his partner spreads out the repair kit: small, compact, but with everything needed to get his arm in working order.
The Winter Soldier sits down by the fire, close enough to get some of the heat warming his body. Far enough, though, that he can't possibly kick the sparking logs at the Captain. The time for that was yesterday. If he wants another crack at his partner, it'll be later, when he's good and ready and sure that this time he won't hesitate. Until then, he cooperates.
He's dragged over one of the end tables closer to the sofa, pulling it closer so he can grip his left arm by its chrome wrist and set it down on top with a dull clang. The arm's heavy when he isn't controlling it: a normal man would've had trouble lifting it. His fingers remain curled in mechanical rigor mortis as he glances over at the Captain. His face by now looks almost as good as new, unfortunately. The other asset's skin is reddened from snow exposure but his eyes are more alert and focused and whatever advantage he might've had from the corneal damage is gone.
"You said you wanted to talk," the Winter Soldier does everything he can to show that he's cooperating. Behaving. Displaying the obedience that he normally wouldn't have to fake. His gut wants to keep following his Captain even though his mind knows better. Knows that HYDRA must come first even before the man. His chin lifts as he glances at the fire, his face cast half in amber as he looks into the sparks and tries to steel himself for what will be...unpleasant. Very unpleasant.
For all that they have an (uneasy) truce, they’re both on edge. The Captain’s body language is tense, but every move is still controlled, deliberate, powerful. His mind is in turmoil, but he refuses to let his guard down, even as the Winter Soldier passes by every chance he gets to possibly take control of the situation. In the Captain’s mind, he wants it to be a measure of trust - but in his gut, he knows it’s not. They both know the Soldier’s chances of winning a fight against him, with the two of them in the states they’re in. Neither is at his best, but the Captain has always had the advantage, and he’s regained most of it; the Winter Soldier has lost the majority of his, with the arm nonfunctional. So it’s an uneasy truce, and it feels uncomfortable and foreign and like a wound the Captain keeps worrying open instead of letting it close. It’s a metaphorical thorn in his side much worse than the real bullet in his shoulder.
Once the fire is crackling, and the Winter Soldier has his arm laid out on the table, the Captain lowers himself gracefully, soundlessly to the sofa despite his bone-weariness - fatigue is not tolerated, and neither is showing it - and puts his bare hands to the chilled metal, assessing with his fingers as well as his eyes before he even picks up the first tool.
“Yes,” he confirms, his eyes on his work without lifting at the sound of the Soldier’s voice. He picks up the first instrument and begins working, testing the seams of each meal plate to find where they’re most badly bent, and where access to the arm’s inner workings will be easiest to gain. “I want to talk about what you know. What you remember. About Rogers and Barnes.”
He pauses, just for a few breaths. He knows - they both know - that the chair is more effective on the Soldier. It always has been; it’s why the Captain needs the injections, needs his partner, needs his handlers when missions go on too long. It’s why there are so many failsafes in place, except all of them have failed spectacularly, to this point. Well - almost all of them. The Soldier might have ostensibly failed, but he’s down, not out. They both know it.
“Start with the base,” he suggests. “With what you heard. How they reacted to you.” Even if the Solider won’t gain recall of a past mission, at least he’ll be able to fulfill that order. The Captain even offers up his own tidbit, as if laying out an olive branch. “When they called me Rogers… they really believed I was him. Whoever he was. They weren’t trying to make me believe it. They believed it.” He knows, based on all of his observations - pupil size, breathing rates, vocal tones and eye movements - that what he’s saying is true. “I’m not sure even their intelligence is bad enough to try to convince me I’m one of my past covers.” The SSR is weak, but not stupid. Which means, they don’t think Rogers was his cover. They think it was his. His everything. His life.
They're close, again, the two of them in a way that should feel comfortable, better now that it's just them in the field without the handlers watching their every move. Before he thought it was just battle assessment. Now he knows that they were looking for weaknesses in the mental suppression, any moment HYDRA isn't the first thought in their minds. Now he looks back on what he remembers - what he can even remember, because most are fragments - and he'll realize that the eyes had usually been on the Captain. Him, he'd been more or less safe. Reliable. Now he knows why.
He studies his partner. The Captain takes his time looking at the damage to the cybernetics, almost as thorough as his own team of techs, inspecting each plate.
"The base," the Winter Soldier says, that small hint of distaste again in his voice, flat to everyone else but the man who knows him most. "They started with asking the usual. Name; age; rank. They had a list of names they were asking: people we sanctioned over the years, I think."
A few struck a primal cord. Recognition, even if he couldn't point out a face from a lineup. Maybe the kill had stood out, been more difficult and engaging. Maybe it had been something more deep cover and maybe he'd had to fraternize to get closer to the target. Others were just blanks, the memory suppression keeping it away from him in case he was tortured. His lips purse as he thinks back, tries to ignore how almost pleasant the sedative felt - no howling nothing like cryo, no fear or nausea or wondering if he'll see the Captain again or if this is it. He just was. It's an unacceptable weakness he'll report back to his new handlers once this is over...assuming he makes it back to at all. There's still time for the Captain to change his mind and finish what he really should've started.
The Winter Soldier goes on, his monotone more pronounced than usual, almost as if he's retreating behind it and raising a shield. "They were handling me with kid gloves. Incorrect dosage. Thought I heard them call me Barnes, but I'd have to verify back with command if that's my name or an old alias."
Does it matter? They botched the mission, maybe not as badly as their handlers did, but they're making it worse by discussing this. By thinking of themselves outside of HYDRA.
"I don't remember Rogers or Barnes," and maybe the Winter Soldier betrays himself with a little shrug, his eyes darting to the fire sparks popping off the wood as they crack and resettle. The golden glow cast in the room pulls at him, seems to tug at some old memory he can't identify the when. Something about this position seems familiar, right down to the gentle hands on his arm, although it had been cleaning a wound of dirt, wrapping gauze on skin that wasn't there... "They said I served with you. That we used to fight for America." His mouth twitches. "Easy for them to say without proof. I'd want confirmation before I believe the SSR. They got lucky, but they're desperate. They don't have soldiers like us in the field and I suspect they'd want us instead of making their own."
“Maybe they had us,” the Captain suggests, because while he can sort of
maybe reconcile the idea that maybe he had a name and a life once, he’s
still unable to really, truly, get a grasp on free will just yet. So he
takes what he knows - what he’s heard and what he can feel, deep in his gut
- and fits it into his strange, cobbled-together picture of the world,
based on chairs and drugs and handlers and nothing but endless missions,
and comes up with that. And, on the heels of it, “Maybe they lost us to
HYDRA,” he muses, brain ticking over the possibilities as a picture starts
to maybe slot into place, all the while keeping his eyes on the Soldier’s
arm, his hands moving as the tools test and repair each interlocking
section before moving on to the next. He knows he’s hard to control - even
without whatever’s going on in his head, trying to break free, he knows.
His handlers have told him, time and again, it’s been coded into his very
being, how hard he is to control, and how hard HYDRA has worked to bring
him to this point. Maybe the SSR never could. Maybe, in letting him have a
name, more freedom, something, he became too hard to control, and they lost
him. HYDRA had picked up the pieces, and perfected them, and -
He feels the tiniest pang of longing for the order HYDRA has always brought
to his life. The last little bit of his programming is holding on tooth and
nail, making him miss the simplicity of the chair, the drugs. They’re
frightening and abhorrent, yes. But they also bring peace and order and
they keep him working with the Soldier.
He must have been working with the Soldier for even longer than he’s known,
if they used to fight for America together. He knows, beyond anything else,
that he doesn’t want to lose that.
He moves on down the Soldier’s arm, bypassing the crumpled outer plates for
now - he’ll have to fix those later, but the intricate inner workings must
come first, and piece by piece, the Soldier's motility returns. Regardless
of what might have happened with the SSR in the past, “Of course they want
us,” he agrees. Why make something when you can steal it and bend it to
your will? The Captain has no doubt now that’s what HYDRA must have done,
and they did it well. He also has no doubt that if the SSR figures
it out, they could potentially do the same.
He isn’t sure, all of a sudden, how he feels about the fact that he might
have changed hands, switched sides, countless times before - all depending
on who held the switch. Who held the better drugs, the best chair.
“We’re just pawns,” he finally says, almost coming to a realization. He
knew this already - of course they’re pawns, they’re tools that can be
moved around the board to serve whatever purpose is needed. He’d never
questioned that, and it’s true now, but the question of allegiance had
never come to the fore. Now it’s here, staring him in the face. “We could
have switched sides before.”
Finally, he glances up at the Soldier. He wants to know what his partner
feels about that.
The theory seems to bring the Winter Soldier up short.
The thing is, he never considered life before HYDRA. Why would he? All he needed to continue operations was a team of handlers, the reassurance that HYDRA was 1) still on target for its goal and 2) the Captain was still on the field. Everything else was...irrelevant. The expression on his face turns into more of a frown than that neutral, mask-like state it usually takes when he's on board with how things are panning out. His good hand tightens into a fist before he forces it to relax.
"It's...possible," and from the sound of it, not one the Winter Soldier wants to agree with. His own mental conditioning demands full loyalty to HYDRA: he'd been easier to break than the Captain and that means that those loyalties are burned in deeper, a cancer inside his body and mind keeping him operating instead of breaking down with the reality of what's been done to the both of them. "But they weren't strong enough to keep us. That should say enough."
A pause, then, as his eyes, blue and cold, travel down to inspect the other asset's work.
"I don't think it should make a difference," the Winter Soldier says, thin-lipped, not realizing he's displaying those small, tell-tale signs he's on edge. Only the Captain could pick them out, used to the slightest deviations from his status quo. "HYDRA wants to correct the world, steer it on the best course. The SSR doesn't seem like they want to play ball."
Which is enough for the Soldier, with his simplified mental conditioning. It should be that simple.
Glancing back up at his partner's face shows it isn't that simple.
He stares back at the Captain's face, studies how the firelight flickers and paints fresh lines in it. He can't pinpoint the other man's exact age. There's a timeless quality there helped along with a good dose of cryo. Before this, he couldn't have even said if they started the super soldier program at the same time. It wouldn't have mattered, really. It shouldn't have mattered. Suddenly it seems to. Now he wonders if they'd served together. If they were from the same batch. All thoughts that will swirl around, confused, banging up against walls that hadn't anticipated those questions. His lips purse.
The Winter Soldier's the first to break eye contact, giving himself a moment of glancing at the table, then at the windows covered by thick, dusty curtains, to wait for his trusted programming to kick in and correct whatever doubts he might have. Whatever "instabilities" might be trying to worm in, invasive, unwanted. He tells himself it's unwanted, almost convinces himself those thoughts are his.
The ghost of a frown, the slight downturn of lips on the Soldier's face… it strikes at something deep in the Captain. It's… familiar. It's comforting. He can't say why, but it is, even when the expression isn't necessarily a pleasant one.
He can't argue with the Soldier's assessment of the situation. Even if the SSR had them, they don't anymore, and that implies weakness. They should shy away from weakness, stand beside the strongest - and HYDRA is the strongest. But there's something in the Captain that catches at that, that keeps getting hung up on the SSR and their thankless plight. They are desperate and scattered and humane - not nearly as ruthless as HYDRA - and that is why they will lose.
Or, something inside him whispers, at the edges of his mind, is that why they will win?
When their eye contact breaks, the Captain sits back and lets the Soldier assess his repairs so far; whereas someone else might have made a gesture, a little go ahead, he just pulls back his hands and knows the other will understand what he means. The Soldier is most definitely on edge, uncomfortable, and something in the Captain hates making him this way… and yet he can't stop pushing for it, too. Can't stop pushing for that discomfort, for him to think, rather than accept.
"The SSR wants something different," he concedes, after a moment. That much is true. "They steer, but - they don't correct." Even as he says it, something flickers behind his eyes. Something about the words, those words exactly. He and the Soldier have both been through countless corrections. Most, he can't remember, except for the way they make him react, like Pavlov's dog, snapping to the appropriate response, be it fear - never show fear - or force, at the right prompting. HYDRA corrects. Their world requires many corrections, because there is no room for imperfection. Imperfection is weak. Cogs that think too much for themselves are weak.
But imperfections don't have to be flaws. Differences can make something stronger. That thought worms its way up through the Captain's gut unwarranted, and he leans in close again, to catch the Soldier's eye. "What if there were no more corrections," he says, and even now, as HYDRA's control is slipping, his voice is quiet, almost a whisper, as though the room is bugged and they'll hear him. Punish him. Correct him. "What if we were…"
He doesn't know the word he wants to use. Equals? Trusted? People?
He picks up the next tool, unconsciously biting at one corner of his lip, a tic that should never appear on an asset's face. It feels like pushing a bruise, thinking about it too much. It hurts, but he can't stop. He has to see how far he can go. "What if HYDRA's way isn't the only way. Why are we beholden to them?"
The Winter Soldier's looking tense again despite the fact that he isn't bleeding, he doesn't have broken bones and he isn't convulsing in the Chair. Even so, his face looks drawn, his jaw tightening, and he leans forward now, almost as if he'd like nothing more than to take whatever subversive thought has infected his partner and beat its skull in. If only it was that easy. But something in him wants to pause, to listen. To drag his feet instead of reaching out and forcing the Captain's head into the fire, like he would've with any other compromised asset.
"Because HYDRA will correct the world," he replies, and his voice is small, tight, even as his eyes burn blue at the Captain. How could he question this? It's the order of things. HYDRA has the will to do what no one else has the stomach or drive for - isn't that much obvious? "Those corrections allow us to help others."
He stares back at the Captain, unwilling to show how unnerved he is (is that the word?) at this new, alien conviction of his. The Captain almost doesn't look human to him. The skin around his eyes is sill seared red from the bleach and he blinks too much. But something about him looks too symmetrical, the blue in his eyes suddenly overly saturated. Piercing. It almost feels like he can see right to his core and the primary objective of deal with a rogue Asset that's spread through the Winter Soldier like the plague.
"Doing anything less would be selfish. We're helping people in the long run," he says. He'll insist on it. For all the brainwashing, all the torture through traditional pain, chemicals, and the Chair, and that's the most effective line that HYDRA has used. That they're looking at the great picture. Sacrificing themselves for future generations. They might not enjoy the fruits of a peaceful, orderly world, but billions will. Small price to pay. They can rest once that's carried out. Put like that, the Winter Soldier can only struggle to follow his partner's thought process. Is he saying that they should....that they should come first?
"I know we're helping people," the Captain says quietly, quickly, his voice insistent - almost irritated - as he sets the next tool to the Soldier's arm. It's true - helping people is important, it's vital, it's the only mission. It's not about being selfish, he thinks furiously, but, "What if this isn't the best way? What if they don't want it? What if we don't want it?"
His brow furrows, and his foot actually starts tapping a little impatiently, before he seems to catch himself and falls back into stillness. When he continues speaking, it's with his eyes on the delicate work repairing the Soldier's arm, his voice soft but clear, piercing the soft roar of the winter storm.
"If we can't see the long run, then we don't know," he says. "We only have what we're told, and our handlers are fallible. They can be wrong." They both know that, learned that firsthand hours ago. Their handlers aren't perfect. Their handlers are dead. And with them is the Captain's conviction in them, slowly - maybe not-so-slowly - being eaten away by underlying programming that scares as much as it excites him.
He looks up at the other Asset now, hands pulling away, face twisted into something that's almost entreating. "What if we're wrong, to stay? We can't - I can't - "
He makes a noise of dissatisfaction, skin crawling and heart racing and he sets the tools down with far more care than the way he pushes himself up a moment later, not willing to harm the Soldier with this excess energy running through him, but feeling the need to suddenly be on his feet, to be doing something, but the storm is still raging outside and his partner is still an unnerving wall of blank conviction here inside with him. "I don't know what to do," he says, and there's the tiniest bit of fear, of frustration, in his tone - so tiny that only the other Asset would recognize it at all, but to him, it must be like a blaring siren, flashing lights. "I don't know what's right. I think this protocol," the one that's trying to break free - that is breaking free - "is doing this to me. I don't even know if I like it."
The Asset hunkers down, imagining his programming closing in around him like armor. It should hold.
He isn't sure how old he is, just how long he's been in operation. At least years judging by the change in handler faces and the car shapes and he assumes that can be easily stretched out into decades with cryofreeze. HYDRA's goal is too great for the individual. For this we. The skin around his eyes tightens as he squints, just a hair, and he might as well be openly glaring at the Captain for all their shared history together.
"It shouldn't be up to you - or me - to like it. And even if those were in our mission parameters, I don't understand why you seem to - to accept this. There's no we."
The Asset's voice comes out low and raspy, just like it always does; the voice of a man who doesn't do much talking because there's no need. Because he'd already screamed out any undesirable tendencies in the suppression chair, it's arc humming away like a drone. Now he almost catches himself wishing it was here. At the very least it could've remove the edge of this other side of the Captain he's seeing. He leans forward, even though his arm is still shot, even though there's still plenty of work to do and he knows he should keep his partner's trust. Giving in too easily, nodding along to everything he says? That would send up more red flags in front of the other asset. With the bleach attempt still fresh in their minds, he has to minimize anything that would let the other man suspect he was different. That he was faking it until real help came.
Limit the red flags. He needs to react how he normally would, which is digging in his heels. Believe in HYDRA. HYDRA is everything. One day, maybe in his extended lifetime, he might even see HYDRA share its gifts with the world.
Strangely, it...hurts to think the Captain might not be there to see it too.
"Someone should inspect this new protocol," he says. "Determine if it's from HYDRA or the SSR."
Not that he expects the SSR to have had enough time to do it right. But he'd been unconscious for how long and he doesn't know how long the Captain was alone with them. It's a valid concern. The Captain, after all, had been operating perfectly until their capture. No sense leaving that leaf un-turned.
His stares at his partner, eyes seeming to dully seek his face. Outside of combat, the Winter Soldier tends to have a glassy, drugged-out look, like he can't quite focus on the world: deceptive, though, because behind those flattened eyes, he's always observing. Picking out allies and escape routes and cover. It beats wallowing in the pain, reminding himself he came out of cryo alive. There's a hint of a spark in there, of awareness. No handler has seen it. The Captain, though. They're cut from similar cloth. He won't speak down to him, pretend he's a drooling idiot. Even when his eyes drifted to the floor and his mouth fell slack, he'd caught the Captain staring right at him, speaking right at him. Maybe he doesn't want to lose that.
...Maybe he hangs onto the idea of a second chance for his partner.
"Think about it. It's a waste to liquidate you if the SSR is responsible," the Asset adds quietly. HYDRA, of course, would want to know how the SSR managed. Surely they'd keep the Captain alive during processing. Maybe he'd have enough time to talk to the new handlers, drive in the point that the Winter Soldier and the Captain are worth the endless late nights of R&D.
"And if it's HYDRA?" the Captain says, so low and quiet it'd be impossible
for anyone but the other asset to hear. "If this protocol is something
HYDRA wants me to have - or used to want me to have?"
He can't begin to guess at HYDRA's true intentions. He knows what he's been
told, and he knows what he's been forced to believe, because he remembers
the chair, too - he remembers how it burns and it hurts until it's wiped
away everything, but he also remembers that there is something
before the calm that comes when the electric buzzing finally, finally shuts
off and he's left with only the sound of his breath rattling between his
teeth, clenched on the black rubber mouthguard between them. He knows there
is something there that the chair wipes away each time, even if it's still
squarely out of reach.
But what if it's this? What if it's this thing that's trying to uncoil
inside him, this conviction that all the procedures are wrong, that the
path might be right but the steps they're taking down it are sideways,
backwards, faltering when they could be something else. He looks at the
Soldier, and he sees in him something far more precious than any conviction
the chair could give him. He sees in the Soldier the things he wants, far
more than the purpose the chair tries to implant. He watches the other
asset's profile in the flickering firelight, and it comes on him suddenly,
absolutely, like being pulled under freezing water and opening your mouth
to get nothing but cold fluid, instead of precious air. "I don't want to
let anyone take this away from me," he says, voice still hoarse and quiet,
eyes bright - almost feverish - as he sinks down again in front of the
Soldier, eyes boring into his. "And I don't want to let anyone take
you away from me."
It's ridiculous. It's laughable, that he wants to... to own the
Soldier - is that right? He isn't sure, but he doesn't have any other way
to describe what it is he's feeling. He wants to take the Soldier by the
hand and disappear into the night, run away from HYDRA and the SSR and
anyone, anything, that would seek to choose their path for them. He wants
to find a new path, but his thoughts still mirror the Soldier's along one
key line: he doesn't want to do it alone. And the Soldier is the only one
he wants with him.
The Captain shakes his head, breaking eye contact as he makes a frustrated
sound and stands up abruptly, fists clenching. "You don't feel the same
way," he says gruffly, like he's deciding before the other asset can even
confirm or deny it. But he knows. He knows. "You still want to turn me in
for repairs and maintenance. Reconditioning."
It's not really an accusation, but it's not really not, either. He
blows out a breath and moves to sit back down like he'd said nothing at
all, picking up the next tool, attention back on the Soldier's damaged arm
like he's ending the conversation. But all the same, it hangs there, what
he'd said, in the heavy, pregnant space between them as he gets back to
work, frustration and tension in every line of him, agitation replacing
what once was trying to be calm.
"If it's HYDRA, then it must be right. Then maybe I must not be cleared for this, but it must be right."
The Winter Soldier frowns again as he processes this and maybe, just maybe, that would've been enough. But he watches his partner, sees the tightening of his jaw, and he knows, somehow, that this isn't over with. The the Captain has more to say, he will share it and because he shares his innermost thoughts, he makes this harder and harder by the second. His eyes, blue and so pale they're almost devoid of color, are locked on the micro-expressions of the other asset's face, still reddened from the bleach but for all intents and purposes, already healed. Truth is, he hasn't thought about what HYDRA used to want. What matters it the current orders, the current handlers. The current Command. For the first time in his operation, it suddenly occurs to him that they have a backlog of old, outdated orders and there's a human error there - maybe, just maybe, the handlers, the techs, have failed in their duties. Maybe they didn't clear the backlog. Maybe they didn't make sure they were properly wiped.
It's enough to make even the Winter Soldier pause. Re-evaluate.
What if this isn't a defect in the Captain? What if this is a tech problem? What if it could be fixed once those faulty, lazy techs are replaced?
His focus snaps back to the Captain as he kneels in front of him, as if he's surrendering. The Winter Soldier visibly goes stiff at the sight and the discomfort radiates out of him as in a cloud even as his worn, exhausted face schools into an expressionless mask.
Even when he gets back up, his words ring, wriggling in deep like shrapnel lodged in soft tissue. The Winter Soldier's lips part. No words come. He doesn't have them. HYDRA hasn't allowed his mind, his perspective, to broaden wide enough to be able to counter this. Something behind his eyes pales and flattens, glazes over as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do. There's no handler hissing orders in his ear. There's just the crackle-pop of the fire, the dim pulsing glow that washes against his outstretched arm and the Captain's strong jaw. Of course what he says is true. He doesn't feel that same way about him. He can't. How could he? His conditioning is still stable and he can still focus on the mission, on HYDRA's long-term goals. So why does this strange, ugly feeling curdle in his stomach and leave a bad taste in his mouth? Why does he wish that his partner didn't say any of that?
He's disappointingly silent at first, just like the Captain expected. No affirmations that no, he does feel the same way, that no, they really are together until the end of the line. His eyes drop to watch the the little steel pick slipping between the exposed titanium plates and he lingers on it more than he needs to.
"I'd want you to do the same for me. Reconditioning is the only way to ensure we operate together." The Winter Soldier frames this in a way he can understand. That he can accept. His chapped lips purse. The unused smile lines at the corners of his eyes are visible thanks to the shadows cast by the fireplace. "I'm failing to understand why this's so hard for you to accept, Captain."
There's an almost childish earnestness now, as if things really are that black and white. The poison of HYDRA's mental programming has always run stronger in the Winter Soldier than the Captain. Now it's even more evident. And now the Captain might even be able to see it for what it is - a leash, a collar, chains around the both of them and while his are weakening until he might even flex and snap the brittle metal, the Winter Soldier's still tied down, prostrated on his hands and knees like a worshiper who's spent so long looking at the floor that he doesn't dare look up if the chains go slack. Not after all this time, all these years.
Reconditioning is the only way to ensure we operate together. The
Captain frowns at the words, unhappy and agitated, even as his hands work
steadily on the arm, repairing the damage as best he can, piece by delicate
piece. "Is it?" he asks, and it's not argumentative, like most of the other
things out of his mouth. It's unsure - pleading, almost, because he knows
what he feels in his gut - a bone-deep need to stay together, to
stand by the Winter Soldier, to keep them together. No matter what.
But he also feels that same bone-deep disgust for the chair, for the
handlers, for the drugs they pump through him and the way they make him
forget… things. Things he hasn't even remembered yet - things just beneath
the surface, dark shapes in the water that dissolve as soon as he reaches
for them.
So it's a conundrum, really - a no-win scenario, because he either stays
with the Soldier, goes in for reconditioning like the well-trained asset he
is and forgets… this, whatever this is forming inside him. Or he runs, fast
and hard, with every weapon and skill at his disposal, and he loses the
Soldier, leaves him behind or, maybe worse, captures him and holds him
captive until one of them is forced to kill the other.
He cannot lose the Soldier. They cannot be separated. But the Captain
cannot go back.
His eyes lift from what he's doing as his hands keep working steadily, blue
eyes searching for their match in the other asset's face. "I want to
operate together," he says, and at least some of the old surety is back,
the inflection in his voice now nothing but absolute, rock-solid
conviction. "I want to stay together. It's important." Whether it's
programming or something else - what else could it be? - it's what he
wants, in every atom of his being. It's what he needs to stay alive. To
continue functioning. To be… himself? Who is he?
The Winter Soldier will pause now to consider his next course of action. His partner seems suddenly reasonable; willing to listen, to compromise. In his mind, torn and shredded and rebuilt by the conditioning, "compromise" can only mean submitting to HYDRA. The words that spill from the Captain's mouth should be promising. But he wonders, suddenly, if this is too easy. Why his partner, who had asserted his unquestionable dominance between assets, who had spared his life despite their training, is suddenly asking for his professional opinion.
He stares back, unwilling to lose this moment of clarity that he hopes to grab onto. The Captain is unstable. But maybe he can be prodded in the right direction; stalled; delayed. Brought back to HYDRA in one piece instead of in a bodybag. He hopes this is one of those openings.
"I don't..." the Winter Soldier trails off, his voice, normally hoarse and ragged at the edges, suddenly closing off. This should be easy, after all. Tell the Captain to immediately turn himself in. Do exactly what his conditioning says is SOP if he can't (won't?) just kill his partner. HYDRA, after all, could probably put him on ice, dredge his blood for the strange, one-of-a-kind serum runs in his veins.
Instead he swallows, frowning, and his eyes pierce back, the dark pupils ringed by a cold, almost colorless slate-blue.
"Be there for me."
He pauses again as if realizing that has too much wriggle room. That it's too...open.
The Winter Soldier's metal fingers spasm open-shut-open on the table underneath his partner's repairs, signaling that he's rerouted another connection successfully.
"We should operate under the assumption that the SSR agents will find us. We need to take them out, collect evidence. I can't do this alone." Not when the SSR apparently came more prepared than HYDRA, with restraints and sedatives and names that seemingly have driven a wedge in that comfortable, sometimes wordless, partnership between assets. "We can operate together that way. At least until HYDRA gives me the same clearance they gave you."
And maybe that will quietly bug him, simmering away under the surface, wondering why he wasn't deemed fit enough. Why the Captain can suddenly ask questions, why the man can look at a larger picture than he just can't see.
Be there for me. "Of course I will," the Captain breathes in reply - it's involuntary, the sounds past his lips before he even registers he's making them. Despite that, they feel almost choked out of him - like his throat is closing, his chest is tightening, at the mere thought that he would do anything else. The idea of abandoning the Winter Solider opens a hole in him so big that he can't see the bottom - any maybe it's just as well that the Soldier goes on, keeps speaking, because in the absence of anything else to pay attention to, the Captain might get lost in that yawning emptiness, and never find the bottom.
But his attention snaps right back to the other asset, as soon as he begins to speak again. He focuses on the words, just the same as he forces himself to focus again on the delicate tools in his hands, the circuitry and servos and plates of the Soldier's arm beneath his fingertips. He can agree with what the Soldier says - all of it, this time. The SSR is after them. And, given the situation, they might find them first. And more evidence is exactly what they need, to solve this. He knows too little, right now, and while part of him screams that he knows enough, that he needs to run, that he needs to go with his gut, it's hard to listen to that part of himself, no matter how loud it is, when the Winter Soldier is entreating him like this, here and now.
He's quiet a moment longer, finding the last of the damage, completing the last connection, satisfied with the low, quiet hum that only super soldiers can hear - and then, only when the plating is open like this - that signifies the arm is, if not in perfect condition, exactly, at least in sufficient working order. He pulls the tools back and finally glances back up to meet the Winter Soldier's eyes, his own eyes somehow hard and desperate at the same time. "All right," he says, laying the tools down carefully, methodically, without even looking at what he's doing, eyes still locked on the Soldier's. "We operate together. Like we're supposed to."
What he doesn't say - but what is intensely clear - is that he means as allies. No more attacking each other in their sleep. No more ropes, no more bleach. Everything about him doesn't say, Can I trust you? so much as, perhaps, Will you trust me?
Because the thing that makes them unstoppable is the uncannily smooth, clockwork way they just fit together. Without that, the SSR will win. And the Soldier must know that, too. "We both need rest." Real rest, he means. And neither will get it, if they're waiting for the other to strike. They need to trust each other, like they did before.
That faint hum gives him a small measure of...something. Pleasure? That might be too alien of a concept for the Winter Soldier, but when he hears the hum of his arm vibrating along the wrist to the shoulder socket, where it's connected to bone and nerve, he feels something beyond just the physical sensation. This is promising. This is good that he has an increased use of his armor. It is good, he thinks, that the Captain has repaired it of his own free will. Maybe he can work with that. Maybe ...
Unaware that he's doing the very un-HYDRA sin of "grasping at straws" - that he shouldn't even be indulging in it - the Winter Soldier instead studies his partner, eyes slightly narrowed. The silence is punctuated by the crackle and pop of the fireplace. The jerky hum of his cybernetic fingers as they jerk open and shut as he tests the range of motion available to him. Some of the joints click. Soft but he can hear it. But it's better than before, better than being the amputee he was before HYDRA must have took him in, and he decides it's fine. After all, the alternative was no functioning prosthesis. Or the Captain strangling him while he was unconscious. Easier choices. Neater. The tools click down against the table. The Winter Soldier watches his partner (former partner)? - set down the tools, one by one, as if they're made of glass. An unconscious, soft sigh escapes out of him, betrayed only by his shoulders slipping down from where they'd hunched up. As if he'd been preparing to charge the other super soldier head on. As if he's still surprised by the Captain's newfound softness.
"...Fine."
There's something unspoken here. Something beyond the voiceless comfort that they've received the same intel, the same HYDRA-approved flash training burning into their retinas.
For once in his life, the Winter Soldier can't say for certain if he trusts his old partner. There are invisible orders now. Either the Captain is defective or...or maybe the Winter Soldier is the defective one. He's failed somehow, somewhere. Whatever the case is, he isn't in the know now. He's not on the same page. It happens. But it'd always happened to lesser HYDRA assets: rank and file soldiers, agents, spies. Not him. His mouth flattens into a thin, almost bloodless line that ages him. Did he go wrong somewhere? Did he fail to make the cut?
...Why didn't he get the chance to prove that he was still the soldier HYDRA wanted him to be?
Why does it sound like the Captain will go on without him?
"Okay. I'll rest." There's an open hesitation even as he pulls his repaired arm back to him, cradling it against his chest as if the Captain broke it for no reason. As if he hadn't been, say, defending himself from bleach being poured down his eyes and throat. "Are you going to lock my door? Do you have restraints?"
The Captain should. If he has a shred of HYDRA still alive in him, he would lock him up. Stuff him in a closet and barricade it. It's what they've both done on missions with...uncooperative assets. It would be expected. Maybe a part of him might even appreciate conforming to to the expected standards that he can see aren't set in stone anymore. The Winter Soldier hasn't figured out if he'd be irritated that the Captain couldn't give him that much. Mostly he's staring at the other soldier, still holding his partially-repaired arm hugged close to him with his good hand as if that could stop anyone from taking it away. Now he shifts backward. Shoulders square. But it's defensive, expectant. Almost submissive; as submissive as a genetically engineered asset can get these days.
Following HYDRA's script seems to fill the void. A stop-gap, really: a brief moment to focus on procedure instead of the Captain's inconsistencies.
The way the Soldier pulls his arm back, protects it as if it's still hurt or in danger of being damaged again, makes something deep in the Captain's gut twist. It's the lack of trust - the guarded, wary intent behind the move - that hurts, even though he understands why it's there. It's the only reasonable reaction, he knows, when his own actions are cause for concern. When he's acting off-script, crossing the line, questioning orders and the order of things.
But he has to. He really does worry - doubt - that HYDRA's plan might not be… right.
And yet still, it hurts, to see that betrayal in the line of the Soldier's shoulders, the depths of his eyes. He agrees to the Captain's suggestion, but he doesn't sound happy about it, and that hurts, too.
At the question, he frowns; "I have restraints," he admits, but, "Do you believe they're necessary?"
He isn't sure, suddenly, whether the Soldier is asking because he expects to be restrained, or asking because he doesn't want to be restrained. The Captain is sure, though, that he doesn't want to restrain the Soldier again. He doesn't want to lock him away, he wants to sleep together, in the same location, shoulder to shoulder like they should be able to, because they should be able to trust each other. They should be able to look out for one another. They should have exactly the same goals.
But they don't. That much is clear, because the Soldier threw bleach in the Captain's face, and the Captain has already restrained the Soldier once. That trust is broken - but it doesn't have to be.
Something in the Captain knows that actions speak louder than words. It's why they're punished again and again, why HYDRA is so brutally physical with them, even after the chair and the drugs. It's because the body remembers, even when the mind can't. There's something bone-deep about action that can never, ever be forgotten.
If he wants to rebuild that trust - if he wants to show the soldier it's still there - then he needs to act like it. "I don't believe I need to restrain you. I believe we've come to an understanding," he says, looking right at the Soldier as he says it, eyes searching out their counterpart in the other's face, voice quiet and steady and sure. "We both need to rest. We'll rest together. No restraints. Like before. We're a unit, and we'll act like one."
He gets up, then, to go raid their small stash of supplies. There are blankets, there, and it's not exactly warm in here, no matter the steps they've taken to make it more livable. He knows that the blood loss, his own injured arm, make him more vulnerable to the cold, too. There is not shame in protecting himself from the cold, he thinks - even as some part of him balks like it never has before, at being hurt. This isn't the same feeling, the vague displeasure of a mission gone wrong, of being disabled. This is… different. This is more raw, somehow. This is almost indignance. Anger at himself, at his circumstances, even when that anger is useless. Still, he feels it - just like he feels the pull toward the Soldier, and the need to trust him. To earn his trust in between.
"We'll sleep out here. Together," he finally says, lifting the blankets one-handed and returning to where the Soldier is sitting. "Better sight lines, with the windows." They can adjust the furniture to hide their bodies, if someone looks in from the outside.
had some slight godmoding, lemme know if I should change anything
And that's it. It's clear that the Captain is either cleared far past whatever he could hope for or he's...he's gone rogue. Right now he can't tell the difference. HYDRA, after all, can see further into the future than he ever could.
It's that doubt that stops him from immediately planning on the Captain's murder.
It would be clean if he can manage it. But it could also go against HYDRA's grand scheme and the truth of the matter is that he hasn't been cleared for it. It's always been like that. The Winter Soldier is cleared just enough to complete a mission and nothing more. He'd been weaker; he'd known, in the back of his mind, that he was the backup compared to the Captain. The weak link. If things had progressed as his training said it should, he would've been imprisoned and restrained according to protocol. Not treated like a POW who wasn't regarded as a threat, who wasn't worth the resources, the energy to even shove into a locked cell. It glares before him, distracting. For a split second the Winter Soldier's weakness is plastered on his face, a flash that lights up his dead blue eyes before he drops them stubbornly to the worn carpet at his feet.
"Foolish," he mutters, but it's half-hearted. Unsure in a way he hasn't sounded before.
His eyes come up as the Captain comes back with blankets. As if in a hazy dream, the Winter Soldier automatically stands to shift the furniture around, moving the loveseat just so. He does it with the assumption that he's a prisoner under the watch of a guard - a highly trained guard - but the truth is, it's muscle-memory. He does it because it's familiar, because at least he has control, he understands what he's doing. Because fixing the sight lines is something he can agree on, no matter what has happened to the Captain's new objectives. Because this is a brief break from the questions, from wondering who, exactly, is the defective one.
That doesn't last long. After all, there's only so long a man can drag out fixing sight lines with a limited amount of furniture.
Eventually he has to cave. He lies down, slowly, mindful of his repaired arm. The wrongness of his freedom glares. It gets even worse when he can feel the Captain settling next to him, draping the blankets around them, and it almost - for a split second - feels like all those times they had shared body warmth in the field. Except it isn't the same, it isn't...
And that's where he drifts off to sleep. There's a limit to the stressors a super soldier can take and he falls back into the welcome, thoughtless void of sleep after a point, before he can decide if he should make another pass at incapacitating the man next to him. He sleeps...well, surprisingly. No jolting awake. No choking on bile or blood from missions he can't remember. When the Winter Soldier wakes up, the room is lighter than before, a dim gray to hint at the morning sunlight hitting the resort's dated curtains. His back and limbs ache (clearly he didn't twist in his sleep to relieve blood pressure) and when he lifts his head, he can see that the blankets are rumpled. The Captain beat him to wakefulness.
He also didn't wake him like he used to.
Sitting up, the Winter Soldier clenches the blankets close. He isn't cold, but right now he's aware of grabbing at anything that could be a potential tool, a weapon. His hand unconsciously gropes to his side and oh, yeah: disarmed. Of course he doesn't have that familiar weight of his SMG or his knife at his side. Gone. Confiscated by the SSR. He'll sit up to see the Captain awake and standing a good distance away, hunched over something that looks like a disemboweled radio with its guts spilled all over.
"Any news?" he rasps. His hand comes up to scrub at his eyes, fingers curled into a silver fist. Can't tell if he wants to know where the news comes from, but anything is better than being in the dark.
The Captain lies awake after he hears the other asset fall asleep beside him, aware as the other's posture relaxes into the slackness of sleep and his breathing evens out, slow and deep but still silent, as though even in sleep he knows that to give himself away would be worse than death. He lies awake with his face still tingling as pale new skin grows and his mind races like his brain is a cup being filled by a faucet left running, about to overflow with no way to stop it. He feels keyed up and yet utterly relaxed by the solid weight of the Winter Soldier beside him, and if he spreads his own weight just a little more than necessary, if he takes comfort and clarity from the feel of the Soldier's body pressed all along his side… well, no one will ever know. He holds that feeling tight within himself and swears to anything that matters that even HYDRA won't rip that feeling from him (again?), no matter if they put him in the chair for the next hundred years straight.
Eventually he falls asleep, too — and he dreams. He dreams in strange, sepia tones tainted with blood and watercolor paint. He dreams of fighting a war like he's never fought for HYDRA, not cloaked in black and blood but covered in bright colors, a target — a symbol, a banner waved in front of the troops instead of a shadow behind the scenes. It's utterly foreign and yet intimately familiar. He looks to his right and the Asset is there, only his face is different — determined and serious as always, yes, but… young. Wry. His short hair ruffles in the breeze and his rifle glints in the sun and he is always, always there, they are always together —
Until they're not. And when the Captain sits bolt upright in the thin, early light of dawn, he knows in the core of himself that the thing that pulled them apart was HYDRA. It tore them to pieces and then put them back together, only it was like a puzzle where the pieces are all assembled wrong, so the picture isn't the same and the way each piece interlocks with the next isn't quite right. HYDRA broke them and rebuilt them and tried to wipe out the original picture, to warp the way they're supposed to fit, only now he's remembering. It's being slowly scratched away, like taking a chisel to a piece of marble and revealing the form underneath. There's the shell of what they are… and the core of it. HYDRA is concerned only with the shell, but now he knows there's something more underneath.
He glances at the Soldier, still asleep beside him; without waking the other, he carefully extricates himself from the blankets and stands for a moment, trying to rotate his stiff, aching shoulder, to determine how bad the damage still is, if it's ongoing or static. There's a sharp pain - the bullet digging into bone and muscle - every time he rotates it too far in one direction or the other. It makes him blanche and the worst of it makes him almost nauseous, so he tucks the arm back against himself and silently makes his way through the lodge, checking the fire (dying, so he feeds it several more logs), the perimeter (secure), the weather (still bad), their supplies (decent, if uninspired). It's then that he finds the old radio in a back room, shoved onto a shelf where it's gathering dust. It's just a receiver, meant to pick up the local stations, but he brings it back to the main room, sets it on a table and begins methodically dismantling it, cleaning each piece with a soft cloth he found in the kitchen, setting them out on the table like he's building a three-dimensional schematic of the thing from the inside out.
His mind is still buzzing, but the task, somehow, helps to keep that buzzing just below the surface. It feels like if he tries too hard, that's when the headaches and confusion come. If he lets his mind sort itself out… maybe that's when the picture, still blurry, will become clear.
He glances up at the sound of the the Soldier's voice, lips twitching up into a wry little smile at the sight of him wiping the sleep from his eyes. He never was a morning person, always preferring to sleep in unless he had an early shift at -
At the…
"No," he says, after a beat or two too long. "At least - not yet." He's got all the parts laid out and cleaned, now, and he slowly starts putting each one back, reassembling the radio in the exact reverse order that he took it apart, mind easily supplying the next step to take, the place where each piece fits. He wishes it were that easy when he looked at the Soldier, when he thought about his own past. "But if we can get this to turn on when it's back together, we might be able to tune it to the right frequency." Especially because he's adjusted the receiver and the dial, so it will pick up stations it was never meant to tune into.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, eyes on his work, trying to give nothing about the turmoil still wracking his mind.
maybe I matched you in late tags - had trouble with Bucky's writing voice
The Winter Soldier decides he doesn't approve of how the Captain smiles at him like that.
It's too open of an expression - nothing like the little stolen micro-expressions between them, like a secret language only the two of them know. The smile might be tiny for the average person, but to the Winter Soldier, it's too much. Too human. If a handler could see it, then it's unacceptable. Anyone could see that discrete look on his partner's face and read him. Yet another reminder that this isn't the Captain he had known for years, who he would have without thought thrown his life down to ensure that the superior asset survives. Unease, nameless, clawing, tugs at the Winter Soldier.
His blue eyes avert and fix on the radio's gutted parts spread before the other asset.
It's almost a relief to know that the Captain hasn't made contact. Who might be listening on the other end? What trigger words could be whispered? What did he mean, exactly, when he said right frequency?
"Functional," the Winter Soldier replies, tone curt even for him.
He'll pretend to wander off, as if that radio isn't bothering him. A mistake. Should have realized that thing would be a threat before this, but he'd allowed himself to be distracted by the Captain's injuries, let himself grow soft at the idea of actually executing the other asset before he became the glaring problem he is now. If they get back to HYDRA, the "re-education" will be thorough and, maybe, deserved for once. Never has the Winter Soldier failed like this.
If he had just been quicker with the bleach...
"We have food for a few days - less, as you have another mouth to feed," the Winter Soldier adds.
As the Captain seems determined to keep his fellow asset alive, despite the fact he had tried to poison him, he assumes he wants to make sure he doesn't starve or dehydrate. Their accelerated metabolisms means that food that would've lasted two normal men several weeks will only last days at best. Going off into the ice cold wilderness isn't optimal, but anything is better than allowing the Captain to continue fooling around with that radio, continuing to get ideas. Besides, maybe he might have another chance to incapacitate his partner in the forest, when the temperature drops, when his addled mind makes a grave misstep.
The thought is...promising.
If he was more self-aware, he would've said it even cheered him up.
Now the Winter Soldier settles himself on a chair that is a respectable distances from the Captain, and he'll even allow the other asset to see that his hands are empty. Look, no weapons. Just a blanket draped around faintly shivering shoulders. He hasn't gone for the bleach or dug around in the fireplace for any embers or chunks of wood to use as a weapon. In short, he's behaving. A model prisoner.
"I do," the Captain agrees, calm and steady, eyes on his work as he slowly reassembles the radio, piece by piece. There are two mouths to feed, and that's not going to change. Now that he's made that decision, locked it in as the cornerstone of all further tactical planning — no one will separate them again — it's a fact. Not a factor.
"If you're concerned, we'll go to half-rations." It's not ideal, they both burn a lot of calories, but it won't be the first time they've gone hungry. He's… sure of that, somehow, even though he can't pinpoint when it had last happened. It doesn't matter, really. It could have been any one of hundreds, thousands of reasons. Punishment. Long missions that went sideways. Extended waits for extraction.
Poverty…?
But whatever the reason, they have plentiful water, given all the snow outside. That's most important. The human body can survive for far longer with only water than only food. Or neither.
The Captain finally glances up at the sound of the Soldier settling himself into a chair. There's a weird, tight smile that tugs at the corners of his lips for an eyeblink, and then his attention goes back to the radio. It's coming together, piece by piece, as gears and transistors and wires disappear off the table, go back into the bowels of the little box, fitting back where they're supposed to go. He wonders if the radio he'll get when he's done is the same radio as the one he took apart. The same pieces, put back in the same patterns. But it was disassembled and reassembled in between. Is it different, or the same?
He shakes his head minutely, as if to clear it, and puts his eyes back on his work. "We have two courses of action," he says, trying to narrow things down, go off of what the Soldier said last night: The SSR is looking fo them. The SSR will likely even find them. But the SSR has information they need. "Either we wait for the SSR to come to us, or we go to them."
Neither is ideal — yes, they know exactly where to find the SSR, can backtrack to the base, break in, access their equipment and communications and… and their files. Maybe there's information, there, on this protocol, or someone they can interrogate. Someone who can tell them, exactly, why they think the assets have names. What those names mean.
Rogers and Barnes.
But they're ill-equipped and the Captain is still injured, and the Soldier's arm has been repaired, but it's not at full capacity. They have certainly done more with less, but it feels like walking into a mission poorly prepared. It chafes.
Or, they hole up here, with the knowledge that the SSR is looking for them. They monitor the radio and hope for intel, from either the SSR or from HYDRA. Because HYDRA is still a factor. One that sits uneasily in the Captain's gut, if only because he knows they won't get answers there. HYDRA takes, it doesn't give. HYDRA will put him in the chair and bury this protocol back inside him. HYDRA might even just kill him, or maybe they'll kill the Winter Soldier while he watches, take away the thing he feels this desperate need to keep close. Either seems equally likely. Both are unacceptable.
And somehow, waiting seems worse than walking into a trap. The Captain, who has had patience and calm beaten, burned into him, time and time again, can feel it sloughing off with all the rest of it. He doesn't want to sit here. He doesn't want to wait for the walls to close in.
Next, his nose unconsciously crinkles faintly in distaste.
Yes, half-rations are acceptable on paper. But that is for normal men. They are two super soldier, two theoretically better men with biological needs that match that, and now there is one who is malfunctioning and likely to make foolish mistakes regarding caloric intake. So no, he has doubts about the Captain's rosy estimate that half-rations will tide them over. The longer they wait, the more those half-rations will mean they can put one foot in front of other, keep their eyes open and not much else.
The Winter Soldier settles himself in the chair and finds that the look his partner gives isn't enough. No longer does it turn his core warm with an alien contentment and a feeling of temporary security that HYDRA will rightfully wipe away before cryo. Instead there is unease; wondering, maybe, what the Captain mistakenly thinks he sees in his partner when those blue eyes burn his way. His grip around the blanket draped around his shoulders tightens.
"Go to the SSR?"
The Winter Soldier repeats it and maybe a part of him assumes - hopes - that the Captain will see reason hearing the nonsense spoken aloud. Go to the SSR, he says. The same hostiles that had tried their damnedest to capture and compromise them...yes? Those ones? The only reason he could see this being acceptable is if the Captain knew something he didn't. Perhaps he knew of primary targets. Perhaps HYDRA had cleared him to know of such things. Men and women of high interest to HYDRA; names that he could share with the Winter Soldier, so that he may eliminate them from the equation permanently. And yet...the Winter Solder finds himself doubting this scenario. Too many variables. Too many questions allowed for his uncooperative partner.
Maybe this is as simple as he dreads: maybe this is a case of an asset going rogue after all.
The Winter Soldier shifts on his seat. "When? How? You have no idea if they haven't cleared out."
After all, they had just assaulted that base and then broken out of it in the same day, killing a respectable amount of SSR assets in the process. Surely the SSR would be fools to maintain such a compromised base.
That slight wrinkle of the nose sets off something in the Captain that makes his lips twitch involuntarily, almost like a muscle tic that's there and gone, the fleeting ghost of a smile that only high-speed film might catch. But it's there and gone, the same way there's this inexplicable burst of something in his chest that he doesn't let out, but might have been a laugh, a little surprised huff, if he'd been a normal man.
Neither of them are normal men, and the sound doesn't escape, even compromised as he is. Half-rations are not ideal. But it's that, or make a move, and this time, it's not a twitch of his lips but a tiny, tiny flick of the eyes, as the Captain suppresses the sudden, inexplicable urge to roll them.
The Winter Soldier's voice might be dull, but even with no inflection at all, he doesn't sound impressed.
"I don't," he confirms, when the Soldier goes over everything he doesn't know. Everything they don't know. Because they know very little. They've never been so completely on their own before, and it's as terrifying as it is liberating, and both of those feelings are at the same time foreign in equal measure.
But not knowing what they might meet isn't really a concern. They've been trained to handle myriad situations, as many shitstorms as their handlers and trainers and those people's handlers and trainers could come up with.
Funny, none of those scenarios had ever involved people recognizing the assets. Calling them by names.
Rogers and Barnes.
Why won't the echoes of those syllables leave him alone?
"It's not what they'll be expecting," he says, and there's something in his eyes, some light flashing behind them, some spark that's been dulled, and now it's not. Not anymore. "Whether they're there or not, they won't think we'll walk right back in. And that's why it's a good idea. They're either regrouping and vulnerable, or they left in a hurry and were sloppy. We might find something of value we didn't have time to check for before."
There's a long pause, after which the Captain shrugs his good shoulder and says, some strange lilt to his voice that's never been there before, "If you're worried, then stay here. Maintain this base, and I'll go do recon."
It's almost a challenge: If you're afraid, then stay here and wait for orders that will never come, while I go and find out what we're really up against.
The Winter Soldier cuts in almost as soon as the other asset finishes speaking.
"I must continue monitoring you for further degradation in your unstable state," the Soldier says, and it sounds almost like he's reciting from the HYDRA manual on enhanced assets. "You should know better."
It would have been a different matter if the Captain was his usual self: collected and dependable and there. But he isn't. So no, the Winter Soldier won't be maintaining the base as if nothing as changed. Since he can't trust his partner, he can't assume that "recon" will actually be recon at this point. Eyes locked on the other asset, the Soldier's grip on the blanket draped around his shoulder tightens as if he could squeeze the insubordination out of the other man just by sheer will power. This is more difficult than it has to be. If you just turned yourself in, HYDRA could fix you before it's too late.
He doesn't sigh. Bucky Barnes may have, years ago, but the man he is now only stills, tilts his head slightly to the side and down, the faintest of frowns tugging at his mouth.
This is unorthodox. It is a bad idea and yet he has no choice: HYDRA was very clear on who was the more valuable asset and even if the Captain is compromised, it is the Winter Soldier's responsibility - his duty - to see him brought back into the fold. There is only one of him, and the serum running in his blood is irreplaceable.
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"Poor," the Winter Soldier opts for being truthful. After failing to incapacitate his partner, he'll need to work on buying enough of that trust back so he can get another opening. If it means being upfront about his weaknesses, then so be it. "It'll lower my effectiveness once we leave if it's left non-functional."
He can operate without it if needed. There had been plenty of exercises with it detached, both against the Captain and against select trainees fast-tracked to rise in the ranks. Some of them had found that no matter their skill level, their background - they couldn't last even a minute when he was one-handed and they thought he wouldn't kill because of their background, their contacts, the fact they were too prideful to surrender. The Captain, though. He'd always lasted. Always knew to go for his weak spot, use the missing limb to his advantage in any exercises, and he knew how to disable him using pain, location, and bone breaks on the flesh side. There had always been an immediacy about his approach. The Winter Soldier remembers respecting that, even if most of the actual details were only faint impressions of pain and smell and sound. Glancing at his partner, the Soldier studies him and he has to assume that part hasn't change. The injections may not have worked...but his sense of tactics, of taking advantage of a perceived weakness? Those are still fresh and he can't assume those will degrade too.
The Winter Soldier touches his damaged arm. It's non-functional from the elbow joint down to the wrist, where most of the damage was done. His face feels tender, as if he'd run headfirst into a tinder block, and there's no doubt some swelling from the Captain smashing his face into the floor as hard as he did. There's a vague memory that he hadn't settled for hitting him just the once. He'd done in multiple times, to be thorough. To be exact. Good to know that some instincts haven't degraded like his mental conditioning has.
It's a small comfort.
"You need to decide what to do about my arm," the Winter Soldier plunks that into his partner's lap. While he has his SOP to carry out, for now the Captain still has higher rank...and he must know that if he really wants the two of them to walk out of here, he can't have his partner crippled. It's weighing the odds, the pros and cons. How far he's willing to go to drag someone with him in this. "Either it needs to be repaired or you can leave me here."
The snow will die down, eventually. Probably can make his way out, contact the nearest cell. Take his chances dodging the SSR. Not ideal scenarios. But there's a choice, and now it's laid out in front of Rogers to choose how much he wants to risk for this unspoken, impossible mission of his. Things won't be the same between them. They can't be; not when the Winter Soldier has that new order brimming to the surface, feeling like it's somehow pulling at his nerve endings and his very bones and skin. Not when the Captain is acting like he'll go AWOL. Not when he speaks as if this invisible mission of his supersedes HYDRA itself.
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So the Captain makes the call, because that’s what he does. He has been honed and trained to evaluate every single situation, take in all the information, and make the right call. “I’ll repair it,” he says, just as bluntly, just as confidently and with no room for argument. He isn’t a tech, of course, doesn’t possess the specialized skills for significant repairs. But he’s well versed in the arm’s workings and on the most basic ways to repair it, the best workarounds and solutions for the field, because he’s got to be. HYDRA had planned for every contingency (or, at least, so they thought): for the Captain’s time in the chair to wear off, and for the Soldier’s arm to become damaged. Of course, HYDRA always planned to ensure their super soldiers were accompanied by handlers, and that’s no longer true, but that never meant they didn’t give their most valuable assets the tools and skills they needed to keep each other going.
It’s… good, knowing he can do something about the arm. Of course, he’s the one who damaged it in the first place, but he can still undo it. He can make the Solider functional again, give him what he needs to survive, and even though the Captain knows it’s a gamble against his own survival, he doesn’t hesitate to make that call.
“I’ll repair your arm,” he repeats, not because he doesn’t think it was understood, but because now he’s using it as a jumping-off point, now it’s the basis of their new plan. “And then we’re going to lay out all the intel we have on the SSR, and what we heard there. I want to know more about Rogers and Barnes.” And this time, he won’t let the Soldier shy away from the names, from what he might know. They’re going to go digging, and it might not be pleasant, but it’s going to yield results. He’s sure of it.
In fact… he considers for only a moment before he decides that they can do both at once, really. He can repair the arm and they can talk at the same time. He glances out the windows, at the grey skies and the blowing snow, and makes a third call: “We can afford a fire,” he decides, because the lodge has a nice big fireplace and plenty that will burn and any smoke will be blown away quickly, lost in the gale still raging outside. He’s cold and stiff, his shoulder aching fiercely, and the Soldier can’t be feeling much better, with a damaged arm. They could both do to warm up, and there’s no reason to stay in these less-than-optimal conditions, with the storm blowing enough to dissipate any sign of their presence. “Help me gather kindling.” They sure make a pair, each with a damaged arm, but between the two of them, they can start a fire easily enough, and sit down by it so the Captain can pull out the repair kit he keeps in his belt and get to work on the Soldier’s arm. And then they can talk about Rogers and Barnes.
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It's something.
The Winter Soldier falls into place as the Captain makes for the door. The arm repair will come next, when he's back inside, when he can't ambush the other asset out in the snow. He doesn't try to jump the Captain as they venture outside, the biting cold against lancing across their exposed skin and he takes point again, part of out muscle memory, part because he's aware that even his partner, with that new, alien mission buzzing around in his mind like a corruption, wants him where he can see him. He's lost the white mask that usually muzzles his lower face, his lips numbing as he ducks his head and presses out into the snow. Visibility is low, a swirling mass of white smearing against shapes of buildings, of a garage and bowing bushes and trees. It's not as bad as the first night. He presses on, spreading out with the Captain to search near the forest's edge. Some of the kindling is too wet and will need to be tried. Others have recently fallen, the Winter Soldier holding as much as he can with one working arm until the Captain calls it for the day.
They return back inside, snow drifting across the foyer's floor before the door's tugged shut and locked. It's enough for a fire for a few hours, at least, and the Winter Soldier finds himself tasked with getting it started as his partner spreads out the repair kit: small, compact, but with everything needed to get his arm in working order.
The Winter Soldier sits down by the fire, close enough to get some of the heat warming his body. Far enough, though, that he can't possibly kick the sparking logs at the Captain. The time for that was yesterday. If he wants another crack at his partner, it'll be later, when he's good and ready and sure that this time he won't hesitate. Until then, he cooperates.
He's dragged over one of the end tables closer to the sofa, pulling it closer so he can grip his left arm by its chrome wrist and set it down on top with a dull clang. The arm's heavy when he isn't controlling it: a normal man would've had trouble lifting it. His fingers remain curled in mechanical rigor mortis as he glances over at the Captain. His face by now looks almost as good as new, unfortunately. The other asset's skin is reddened from snow exposure but his eyes are more alert and focused and whatever advantage he might've had from the corneal damage is gone.
"You said you wanted to talk," the Winter Soldier does everything he can to show that he's cooperating. Behaving. Displaying the obedience that he normally wouldn't have to fake. His gut wants to keep following his Captain even though his mind knows better. Knows that HYDRA must come first even before the man. His chin lifts as he glances at the fire, his face cast half in amber as he looks into the sparks and tries to steel himself for what will be...unpleasant. Very unpleasant.
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Once the fire is crackling, and the Winter Soldier has his arm laid out on the table, the Captain lowers himself gracefully, soundlessly to the sofa despite his bone-weariness - fatigue is not tolerated, and neither is showing it - and puts his bare hands to the chilled metal, assessing with his fingers as well as his eyes before he even picks up the first tool.
“Yes,” he confirms, his eyes on his work without lifting at the sound of the Soldier’s voice. He picks up the first instrument and begins working, testing the seams of each meal plate to find where they’re most badly bent, and where access to the arm’s inner workings will be easiest to gain. “I want to talk about what you know. What you remember. About Rogers and Barnes.”
He pauses, just for a few breaths. He knows - they both know - that the chair is more effective on the Soldier. It always has been; it’s why the Captain needs the injections, needs his partner, needs his handlers when missions go on too long. It’s why there are so many failsafes in place, except all of them have failed spectacularly, to this point. Well - almost all of them. The Soldier might have ostensibly failed, but he’s down, not out. They both know it.
“Start with the base,” he suggests. “With what you heard. How they reacted to you.” Even if the Solider won’t gain recall of a past mission, at least he’ll be able to fulfill that order. The Captain even offers up his own tidbit, as if laying out an olive branch. “When they called me Rogers… they really believed I was him. Whoever he was. They weren’t trying to make me believe it. They believed it.” He knows, based on all of his observations - pupil size, breathing rates, vocal tones and eye movements - that what he’s saying is true. “I’m not sure even their intelligence is bad enough to try to convince me I’m one of my past covers.” The SSR is weak, but not stupid. Which means, they don’t think Rogers was his cover. They think it was his. His everything. His life.
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He studies his partner. The Captain takes his time looking at the damage to the cybernetics, almost as thorough as his own team of techs, inspecting each plate.
"The base," the Winter Soldier says, that small hint of distaste again in his voice, flat to everyone else but the man who knows him most. "They started with asking the usual. Name; age; rank. They had a list of names they were asking: people we sanctioned over the years, I think."
A few struck a primal cord. Recognition, even if he couldn't point out a face from a lineup. Maybe the kill had stood out, been more difficult and engaging. Maybe it had been something more deep cover and maybe he'd had to fraternize to get closer to the target. Others were just blanks, the memory suppression keeping it away from him in case he was tortured. His lips purse as he thinks back, tries to ignore how almost pleasant the sedative felt - no howling nothing like cryo, no fear or nausea or wondering if he'll see the Captain again or if this is it. He just was. It's an unacceptable weakness he'll report back to his new handlers once this is over...assuming he makes it back to at all. There's still time for the Captain to change his mind and finish what he really should've started.
The Winter Soldier goes on, his monotone more pronounced than usual, almost as if he's retreating behind it and raising a shield. "They were handling me with kid gloves. Incorrect dosage. Thought I heard them call me Barnes, but I'd have to verify back with command if that's my name or an old alias."
Does it matter? They botched the mission, maybe not as badly as their handlers did, but they're making it worse by discussing this. By thinking of themselves outside of HYDRA.
"I don't remember Rogers or Barnes," and maybe the Winter Soldier betrays himself with a little shrug, his eyes darting to the fire sparks popping off the wood as they crack and resettle. The golden glow cast in the room pulls at him, seems to tug at some old memory he can't identify the when. Something about this position seems familiar, right down to the gentle hands on his arm, although it had been cleaning a wound of dirt, wrapping gauze on skin that wasn't there... "They said I served with you. That we used to fight for America." His mouth twitches. "Easy for them to say without proof. I'd want confirmation before I believe the SSR. They got lucky, but they're desperate. They don't have soldiers like us in the field and I suspect they'd want us instead of making their own."
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“Maybe they had us,” the Captain suggests, because while he can sort of maybe reconcile the idea that maybe he had a name and a life once, he’s still unable to really, truly, get a grasp on free will just yet. So he takes what he knows - what he’s heard and what he can feel, deep in his gut - and fits it into his strange, cobbled-together picture of the world, based on chairs and drugs and handlers and nothing but endless missions, and comes up with that. And, on the heels of it, “Maybe they lost us to HYDRA,” he muses, brain ticking over the possibilities as a picture starts to maybe slot into place, all the while keeping his eyes on the Soldier’s arm, his hands moving as the tools test and repair each interlocking section before moving on to the next. He knows he’s hard to control - even without whatever’s going on in his head, trying to break free, he knows. His handlers have told him, time and again, it’s been coded into his very being, how hard he is to control, and how hard HYDRA has worked to bring him to this point. Maybe the SSR never could. Maybe, in letting him have a name, more freedom, something, he became too hard to control, and they lost him. HYDRA had picked up the pieces, and perfected them, and -
He feels the tiniest pang of longing for the order HYDRA has always brought to his life. The last little bit of his programming is holding on tooth and nail, making him miss the simplicity of the chair, the drugs. They’re frightening and abhorrent, yes. But they also bring peace and order and they keep him working with the Soldier.
He must have been working with the Soldier for even longer than he’s known, if they used to fight for America together. He knows, beyond anything else, that he doesn’t want to lose that.
He moves on down the Soldier’s arm, bypassing the crumpled outer plates for now - he’ll have to fix those later, but the intricate inner workings must come first, and piece by piece, the Soldier's motility returns. Regardless of what might have happened with the SSR in the past, “Of course they want us,” he agrees. Why make something when you can steal it and bend it to your will? The Captain has no doubt now that’s what HYDRA must have done, and they did it well. He also has no doubt that if the SSR figures it out, they could potentially do the same.
He isn’t sure, all of a sudden, how he feels about the fact that he might have changed hands, switched sides, countless times before - all depending on who held the switch. Who held the better drugs, the best chair.
“We’re just pawns,” he finally says, almost coming to a realization. He knew this already - of course they’re pawns, they’re tools that can be moved around the board to serve whatever purpose is needed. He’d never questioned that, and it’s true now, but the question of allegiance had never come to the fore. Now it’s here, staring him in the face. “We could have switched sides before.”
Finally, he glances up at the Soldier. He wants to know what his partner feels about that.
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The thing is, he never considered life before HYDRA. Why would he? All he needed to continue operations was a team of handlers, the reassurance that HYDRA was 1) still on target for its goal and 2) the Captain was still on the field. Everything else was...irrelevant. The expression on his face turns into more of a frown than that neutral, mask-like state it usually takes when he's on board with how things are panning out. His good hand tightens into a fist before he forces it to relax.
"It's...possible," and from the sound of it, not one the Winter Soldier wants to agree with. His own mental conditioning demands full loyalty to HYDRA: he'd been easier to break than the Captain and that means that those loyalties are burned in deeper, a cancer inside his body and mind keeping him operating instead of breaking down with the reality of what's been done to the both of them. "But they weren't strong enough to keep us. That should say enough."
A pause, then, as his eyes, blue and cold, travel down to inspect the other asset's work.
"I don't think it should make a difference," the Winter Soldier says, thin-lipped, not realizing he's displaying those small, tell-tale signs he's on edge. Only the Captain could pick them out, used to the slightest deviations from his status quo. "HYDRA wants to correct the world, steer it on the best course. The SSR doesn't seem like they want to play ball."
Which is enough for the Soldier, with his simplified mental conditioning. It should be that simple.
Glancing back up at his partner's face shows it isn't that simple.
He stares back at the Captain's face, studies how the firelight flickers and paints fresh lines in it. He can't pinpoint the other man's exact age. There's a timeless quality there helped along with a good dose of cryo. Before this, he couldn't have even said if they started the super soldier program at the same time. It wouldn't have mattered, really. It shouldn't have mattered. Suddenly it seems to. Now he wonders if they'd served together. If they were from the same batch. All thoughts that will swirl around, confused, banging up against walls that hadn't anticipated those questions. His lips purse.
The Winter Soldier's the first to break eye contact, giving himself a moment of glancing at the table, then at the windows covered by thick, dusty curtains, to wait for his trusted programming to kick in and correct whatever doubts he might have. Whatever "instabilities" might be trying to worm in, invasive, unwanted. He tells himself it's unwanted, almost convinces himself those thoughts are his.
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He can't argue with the Soldier's assessment of the situation. Even if the SSR had them, they don't anymore, and that implies weakness. They should shy away from weakness, stand beside the strongest - and HYDRA is the strongest. But there's something in the Captain that catches at that, that keeps getting hung up on the SSR and their thankless plight. They are desperate and scattered and humane - not nearly as ruthless as HYDRA - and that is why they will lose.
Or, something inside him whispers, at the edges of his mind, is that why they will win?
When their eye contact breaks, the Captain sits back and lets the Soldier assess his repairs so far; whereas someone else might have made a gesture, a little go ahead, he just pulls back his hands and knows the other will understand what he means. The Soldier is most definitely on edge, uncomfortable, and something in the Captain hates making him this way… and yet he can't stop pushing for it, too. Can't stop pushing for that discomfort, for him to think, rather than accept.
"The SSR wants something different," he concedes, after a moment. That much is true. "They steer, but - they don't correct." Even as he says it, something flickers behind his eyes. Something about the words, those words exactly. He and the Soldier have both been through countless corrections. Most, he can't remember, except for the way they make him react, like Pavlov's dog, snapping to the appropriate response, be it fear - never show fear - or force, at the right prompting. HYDRA corrects. Their world requires many corrections, because there is no room for imperfection. Imperfection is weak. Cogs that think too much for themselves are weak.
But imperfections don't have to be flaws. Differences can make something stronger. That thought worms its way up through the Captain's gut unwarranted, and he leans in close again, to catch the Soldier's eye. "What if there were no more corrections," he says, and even now, as HYDRA's control is slipping, his voice is quiet, almost a whisper, as though the room is bugged and they'll hear him. Punish him. Correct him. "What if we were…"
He doesn't know the word he wants to use. Equals? Trusted? People?
He picks up the next tool, unconsciously biting at one corner of his lip, a tic that should never appear on an asset's face. It feels like pushing a bruise, thinking about it too much. It hurts, but he can't stop. He has to see how far he can go. "What if HYDRA's way isn't the only way. Why are we beholden to them?"
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A fundamental weakness.
The Winter Soldier's looking tense again despite the fact that he isn't bleeding, he doesn't have broken bones and he isn't convulsing in the Chair. Even so, his face looks drawn, his jaw tightening, and he leans forward now, almost as if he'd like nothing more than to take whatever subversive thought has infected his partner and beat its skull in. If only it was that easy. But something in him wants to pause, to listen. To drag his feet instead of reaching out and forcing the Captain's head into the fire, like he would've with any other compromised asset.
"Because HYDRA will correct the world," he replies, and his voice is small, tight, even as his eyes burn blue at the Captain. How could he question this? It's the order of things. HYDRA has the will to do what no one else has the stomach or drive for - isn't that much obvious? "Those corrections allow us to help others."
He stares back at the Captain, unwilling to show how unnerved he is (is that the word?) at this new, alien conviction of his. The Captain almost doesn't look human to him. The skin around his eyes is sill seared red from the bleach and he blinks too much. But something about him looks too symmetrical, the blue in his eyes suddenly overly saturated. Piercing. It almost feels like he can see right to his core and the primary objective of deal with a rogue Asset that's spread through the Winter Soldier like the plague.
"Doing anything less would be selfish. We're helping people in the long run," he says. He'll insist on it. For all the brainwashing, all the torture through traditional pain, chemicals, and the Chair, and that's the most effective line that HYDRA has used. That they're looking at the great picture. Sacrificing themselves for future generations. They might not enjoy the fruits of a peaceful, orderly world, but billions will. Small price to pay. They can rest once that's carried out. Put like that, the Winter Soldier can only struggle to follow his partner's thought process. Is he saying that they should....that they should come first?
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His brow furrows, and his foot actually starts tapping a little impatiently, before he seems to catch himself and falls back into stillness. When he continues speaking, it's with his eyes on the delicate work repairing the Soldier's arm, his voice soft but clear, piercing the soft roar of the winter storm.
"If we can't see the long run, then we don't know," he says. "We only have what we're told, and our handlers are fallible. They can be wrong." They both know that, learned that firsthand hours ago. Their handlers aren't perfect. Their handlers are dead. And with them is the Captain's conviction in them, slowly - maybe not-so-slowly - being eaten away by underlying programming that scares as much as it excites him.
He looks up at the other Asset now, hands pulling away, face twisted into something that's almost entreating. "What if we're wrong, to stay? We can't - I can't - "
He makes a noise of dissatisfaction, skin crawling and heart racing and he sets the tools down with far more care than the way he pushes himself up a moment later, not willing to harm the Soldier with this excess energy running through him, but feeling the need to suddenly be on his feet, to be doing something, but the storm is still raging outside and his partner is still an unnerving wall of blank conviction here inside with him. "I don't know what to do," he says, and there's the tiniest bit of fear, of frustration, in his tone - so tiny that only the other Asset would recognize it at all, but to him, it must be like a blaring siren, flashing lights. "I don't know what's right. I think this protocol," the one that's trying to break free - that is breaking free - "is doing this to me. I don't even know if I like it."
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He isn't sure how old he is, just how long he's been in operation. At least years judging by the change in handler faces and the car shapes and he assumes that can be easily stretched out into decades with cryofreeze. HYDRA's goal is too great for the individual. For this we. The skin around his eyes tightens as he squints, just a hair, and he might as well be openly glaring at the Captain for all their shared history together.
"It shouldn't be up to you - or me - to like it. And even if those were in our mission parameters, I don't understand why you seem to - to accept this. There's no we."
The Asset's voice comes out low and raspy, just like it always does; the voice of a man who doesn't do much talking because there's no need. Because he'd already screamed out any undesirable tendencies in the suppression chair, it's arc humming away like a drone. Now he almost catches himself wishing it was here. At the very least it could've remove the edge of this other side of the Captain he's seeing. He leans forward, even though his arm is still shot, even though there's still plenty of work to do and he knows he should keep his partner's trust. Giving in too easily, nodding along to everything he says? That would send up more red flags in front of the other asset. With the bleach attempt still fresh in their minds, he has to minimize anything that would let the other man suspect he was different. That he was faking it until real help came.
Limit the red flags. He needs to react how he normally would, which is digging in his heels. Believe in HYDRA. HYDRA is everything. One day, maybe in his extended lifetime, he might even see HYDRA share its gifts with the world.
Strangely, it...hurts to think the Captain might not be there to see it too.
"Someone should inspect this new protocol," he says. "Determine if it's from HYDRA or the SSR."
Not that he expects the SSR to have had enough time to do it right. But he'd been unconscious for how long and he doesn't know how long the Captain was alone with them. It's a valid concern. The Captain, after all, had been operating perfectly until their capture. No sense leaving that leaf un-turned.
His stares at his partner, eyes seeming to dully seek his face. Outside of combat, the Winter Soldier tends to have a glassy, drugged-out look, like he can't quite focus on the world: deceptive, though, because behind those flattened eyes, he's always observing. Picking out allies and escape routes and cover. It beats wallowing in the pain, reminding himself he came out of cryo alive. There's a hint of a spark in there, of awareness. No handler has seen it. The Captain, though. They're cut from similar cloth. He won't speak down to him, pretend he's a drooling idiot. Even when his eyes drifted to the floor and his mouth fell slack, he'd caught the Captain staring right at him, speaking right at him. Maybe he doesn't want to lose that.
...Maybe he hangs onto the idea of a second chance for his partner.
"Think about it. It's a waste to liquidate you if the SSR is responsible," the Asset adds quietly. HYDRA, of course, would want to know how the SSR managed. Surely they'd keep the Captain alive during processing. Maybe he'd have enough time to talk to the new handlers, drive in the point that the Winter Soldier and the Captain are worth the endless late nights of R&D.
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"And if it's HYDRA?" the Captain says, so low and quiet it'd be impossible for anyone but the other asset to hear. "If this protocol is something HYDRA wants me to have - or used to want me to have?"
He can't begin to guess at HYDRA's true intentions. He knows what he's been told, and he knows what he's been forced to believe, because he remembers the chair, too - he remembers how it burns and it hurts until it's wiped away everything, but he also remembers that there is something before the calm that comes when the electric buzzing finally, finally shuts off and he's left with only the sound of his breath rattling between his teeth, clenched on the black rubber mouthguard between them. He knows there is something there that the chair wipes away each time, even if it's still squarely out of reach.
But what if it's this? What if it's this thing that's trying to uncoil inside him, this conviction that all the procedures are wrong, that the path might be right but the steps they're taking down it are sideways, backwards, faltering when they could be something else. He looks at the Soldier, and he sees in him something far more precious than any conviction the chair could give him. He sees in the Soldier the things he wants, far more than the purpose the chair tries to implant. He watches the other asset's profile in the flickering firelight, and it comes on him suddenly, absolutely, like being pulled under freezing water and opening your mouth to get nothing but cold fluid, instead of precious air. "I don't want to let anyone take this away from me," he says, voice still hoarse and quiet, eyes bright - almost feverish - as he sinks down again in front of the Soldier, eyes boring into his. "And I don't want to let anyone take you away from me."
It's ridiculous. It's laughable, that he wants to... to own the Soldier - is that right? He isn't sure, but he doesn't have any other way to describe what it is he's feeling. He wants to take the Soldier by the hand and disappear into the night, run away from HYDRA and the SSR and anyone, anything, that would seek to choose their path for them. He wants to find a new path, but his thoughts still mirror the Soldier's along one key line: he doesn't want to do it alone. And the Soldier is the only one he wants with him.
The Captain shakes his head, breaking eye contact as he makes a frustrated sound and stands up abruptly, fists clenching. "You don't feel the same way," he says gruffly, like he's deciding before the other asset can even confirm or deny it. But he knows. He knows. "You still want to turn me in for repairs and maintenance. Reconditioning."
It's not really an accusation, but it's not really not, either. He blows out a breath and moves to sit back down like he'd said nothing at all, picking up the next tool, attention back on the Soldier's damaged arm like he's ending the conversation. But all the same, it hangs there, what he'd said, in the heavy, pregnant space between them as he gets back to work, frustration and tension in every line of him, agitation replacing what once was trying to be calm.
no subject
Well, then the answer is easier to digest.
"If it's HYDRA, then it must be right. Then maybe I must not be cleared for this, but it must be right."
The Winter Soldier frowns again as he processes this and maybe, just maybe, that would've been enough. But he watches his partner, sees the tightening of his jaw, and he knows, somehow, that this isn't over with. The the Captain has more to say, he will share it and because he shares his innermost thoughts, he makes this harder and harder by the second. His eyes, blue and so pale they're almost devoid of color, are locked on the micro-expressions of the other asset's face, still reddened from the bleach but for all intents and purposes, already healed. Truth is, he hasn't thought about what HYDRA used to want. What matters it the current orders, the current handlers. The current Command. For the first time in his operation, it suddenly occurs to him that they have a backlog of old, outdated orders and there's a human error there - maybe, just maybe, the handlers, the techs, have failed in their duties. Maybe they didn't clear the backlog. Maybe they didn't make sure they were properly wiped.
It's enough to make even the Winter Soldier pause. Re-evaluate.
What if this isn't a defect in the Captain? What if this is a tech problem? What if it could be fixed once those faulty, lazy techs are replaced?
His focus snaps back to the Captain as he kneels in front of him, as if he's surrendering. The Winter Soldier visibly goes stiff at the sight and the discomfort radiates out of him as in a cloud even as his worn, exhausted face schools into an expressionless mask.
Even when he gets back up, his words ring, wriggling in deep like shrapnel lodged in soft tissue. The Winter Soldier's lips part. No words come. He doesn't have them. HYDRA hasn't allowed his mind, his perspective, to broaden wide enough to be able to counter this. Something behind his eyes pales and flattens, glazes over as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do. There's no handler hissing orders in his ear. There's just the crackle-pop of the fire, the dim pulsing glow that washes against his outstretched arm and the Captain's strong jaw. Of course what he says is true. He doesn't feel that same way about him. He can't. How could he? His conditioning is still stable and he can still focus on the mission, on HYDRA's long-term goals. So why does this strange, ugly feeling curdle in his stomach and leave a bad taste in his mouth? Why does he wish that his partner didn't say any of that?
He's disappointingly silent at first, just like the Captain expected. No affirmations that no, he does feel the same way, that no, they really are together until the end of the line. His eyes drop to watch the the little steel pick slipping between the exposed titanium plates and he lingers on it more than he needs to.
"I'd want you to do the same for me. Reconditioning is the only way to ensure we operate together." The Winter Soldier frames this in a way he can understand. That he can accept. His chapped lips purse. The unused smile lines at the corners of his eyes are visible thanks to the shadows cast by the fireplace. "I'm failing to understand why this's so hard for you to accept, Captain."
There's an almost childish earnestness now, as if things really are that black and white. The poison of HYDRA's mental programming has always run stronger in the Winter Soldier than the Captain. Now it's even more evident. And now the Captain might even be able to see it for what it is - a leash, a collar, chains around the both of them and while his are weakening until he might even flex and snap the brittle metal, the Winter Soldier's still tied down, prostrated on his hands and knees like a worshiper who's spent so long looking at the floor that he doesn't dare look up if the chains go slack. Not after all this time, all these years.
no subject
Reconditioning is the only way to ensure we operate together. The Captain frowns at the words, unhappy and agitated, even as his hands work steadily on the arm, repairing the damage as best he can, piece by delicate piece. "Is it?" he asks, and it's not argumentative, like most of the other things out of his mouth. It's unsure - pleading, almost, because he knows what he feels in his gut - a bone-deep need to stay together, to stand by the Winter Soldier, to keep them together. No matter what.
But he also feels that same bone-deep disgust for the chair, for the handlers, for the drugs they pump through him and the way they make him forget… things. Things he hasn't even remembered yet - things just beneath the surface, dark shapes in the water that dissolve as soon as he reaches for them.
So it's a conundrum, really - a no-win scenario, because he either stays with the Soldier, goes in for reconditioning like the well-trained asset he is and forgets… this, whatever this is forming inside him. Or he runs, fast and hard, with every weapon and skill at his disposal, and he loses the Soldier, leaves him behind or, maybe worse, captures him and holds him captive until one of them is forced to kill the other.
He cannot lose the Soldier. They cannot be separated. But the Captain cannot go back.
His eyes lift from what he's doing as his hands keep working steadily, blue eyes searching for their match in the other asset's face. "I want to operate together," he says, and at least some of the old surety is back, the inflection in his voice now nothing but absolute, rock-solid conviction. "I want to stay together. It's important." Whether it's programming or something else - what else could it be? - it's what he wants, in every atom of his being. It's what he needs to stay alive. To continue functioning. To be… himself? Who is he?
"What would you want me to do for you?"
no subject
He stares back, unwilling to lose this moment of clarity that he hopes to grab onto. The Captain is unstable. But maybe he can be prodded in the right direction; stalled; delayed. Brought back to HYDRA in one piece instead of in a bodybag. He hopes this is one of those openings.
"I don't..." the Winter Soldier trails off, his voice, normally hoarse and ragged at the edges, suddenly closing off. This should be easy, after all. Tell the Captain to immediately turn himself in. Do exactly what his conditioning says is SOP if he can't (won't?) just kill his partner. HYDRA, after all, could probably put him on ice, dredge his blood for the strange, one-of-a-kind serum runs in his veins.
Instead he swallows, frowning, and his eyes pierce back, the dark pupils ringed by a cold, almost colorless slate-blue.
"Be there for me."
He pauses again as if realizing that has too much wriggle room. That it's too...open.
The Winter Soldier's metal fingers spasm open-shut-open on the table underneath his partner's repairs, signaling that he's rerouted another connection successfully.
"We should operate under the assumption that the SSR agents will find us. We need to take them out, collect evidence. I can't do this alone." Not when the SSR apparently came more prepared than HYDRA, with restraints and sedatives and names that seemingly have driven a wedge in that comfortable, sometimes wordless, partnership between assets. "We can operate together that way. At least until HYDRA gives me the same clearance they gave you."
And maybe that will quietly bug him, simmering away under the surface, wondering why he wasn't deemed fit enough. Why the Captain can suddenly ask questions, why the man can look at a larger picture than he just can't see.
no subject
But his attention snaps right back to the other asset, as soon as he begins to speak again. He focuses on the words, just the same as he forces himself to focus again on the delicate tools in his hands, the circuitry and servos and plates of the Soldier's arm beneath his fingertips. He can agree with what the Soldier says - all of it, this time. The SSR is after them. And, given the situation, they might find them first. And more evidence is exactly what they need, to solve this. He knows too little, right now, and while part of him screams that he knows enough, that he needs to run, that he needs to go with his gut, it's hard to listen to that part of himself, no matter how loud it is, when the Winter Soldier is entreating him like this, here and now.
He's quiet a moment longer, finding the last of the damage, completing the last connection, satisfied with the low, quiet hum that only super soldiers can hear - and then, only when the plating is open like this - that signifies the arm is, if not in perfect condition, exactly, at least in sufficient working order. He pulls the tools back and finally glances back up to meet the Winter Soldier's eyes, his own eyes somehow hard and desperate at the same time. "All right," he says, laying the tools down carefully, methodically, without even looking at what he's doing, eyes still locked on the Soldier's. "We operate together. Like we're supposed to."
What he doesn't say - but what is intensely clear - is that he means as allies. No more attacking each other in their sleep. No more ropes, no more bleach. Everything about him doesn't say, Can I trust you? so much as, perhaps, Will you trust me?
Because the thing that makes them unstoppable is the uncannily smooth, clockwork way they just fit together. Without that, the SSR will win. And the Soldier must know that, too. "We both need rest." Real rest, he means. And neither will get it, if they're waiting for the other to strike. They need to trust each other, like they did before.
no subject
Unaware that he's doing the very un-HYDRA sin of "grasping at straws" - that he shouldn't even be indulging in it - the Winter Soldier instead studies his partner, eyes slightly narrowed. The silence is punctuated by the crackle and pop of the fireplace. The jerky hum of his cybernetic fingers as they jerk open and shut as he tests the range of motion available to him. Some of the joints click. Soft but he can hear it. But it's better than before, better than being the amputee he was before HYDRA must have took him in, and he decides it's fine. After all, the alternative was no functioning prosthesis. Or the Captain strangling him while he was unconscious. Easier choices. Neater. The tools click down against the table. The Winter Soldier watches his partner (former partner)? - set down the tools, one by one, as if they're made of glass. An unconscious, soft sigh escapes out of him, betrayed only by his shoulders slipping down from where they'd hunched up. As if he'd been preparing to charge the other super soldier head on. As if he's still surprised by the Captain's newfound softness.
"...Fine."
There's something unspoken here. Something beyond the voiceless comfort that they've received the same intel, the same HYDRA-approved flash training burning into their retinas.
For once in his life, the Winter Soldier can't say for certain if he trusts his old partner. There are invisible orders now. Either the Captain is defective or...or maybe the Winter Soldier is the defective one. He's failed somehow, somewhere. Whatever the case is, he isn't in the know now. He's not on the same page. It happens. But it'd always happened to lesser HYDRA assets: rank and file soldiers, agents, spies. Not him. His mouth flattens into a thin, almost bloodless line that ages him. Did he go wrong somewhere? Did he fail to make the cut?
...Why didn't he get the chance to prove that he was still the soldier HYDRA wanted him to be?
Why does it sound like the Captain will go on without him?
"Okay. I'll rest." There's an open hesitation even as he pulls his repaired arm back to him, cradling it against his chest as if the Captain broke it for no reason. As if he hadn't been, say, defending himself from bleach being poured down his eyes and throat. "Are you going to lock my door? Do you have restraints?"
The Captain should. If he has a shred of HYDRA still alive in him, he would lock him up. Stuff him in a closet and barricade it. It's what they've both done on missions with...uncooperative assets. It would be expected. Maybe a part of him might even appreciate conforming to to the expected standards that he can see aren't set in stone anymore. The Winter Soldier hasn't figured out if he'd be irritated that the Captain couldn't give him that much. Mostly he's staring at the other soldier, still holding his partially-repaired arm hugged close to him with his good hand as if that could stop anyone from taking it away. Now he shifts backward. Shoulders square. But it's defensive, expectant. Almost submissive; as submissive as a genetically engineered asset can get these days.
Following HYDRA's script seems to fill the void. A stop-gap, really: a brief moment to focus on procedure instead of the Captain's inconsistencies.
no subject
But he has to. He really does worry - doubt - that HYDRA's plan might not be… right.
And yet still, it hurts, to see that betrayal in the line of the Soldier's shoulders, the depths of his eyes. He agrees to the Captain's suggestion, but he doesn't sound happy about it, and that hurts, too.
At the question, he frowns; "I have restraints," he admits, but, "Do you believe they're necessary?"
He isn't sure, suddenly, whether the Soldier is asking because he expects to be restrained, or asking because he doesn't want to be restrained. The Captain is sure, though, that he doesn't want to restrain the Soldier again. He doesn't want to lock him away, he wants to sleep together, in the same location, shoulder to shoulder like they should be able to, because they should be able to trust each other. They should be able to look out for one another. They should have exactly the same goals.
But they don't. That much is clear, because the Soldier threw bleach in the Captain's face, and the Captain has already restrained the Soldier once. That trust is broken - but it doesn't have to be.
Something in the Captain knows that actions speak louder than words. It's why they're punished again and again, why HYDRA is so brutally physical with them, even after the chair and the drugs. It's because the body remembers, even when the mind can't. There's something bone-deep about action that can never, ever be forgotten.
If he wants to rebuild that trust - if he wants to show the soldier it's still there - then he needs to act like it. "I don't believe I need to restrain you. I believe we've come to an understanding," he says, looking right at the Soldier as he says it, eyes searching out their counterpart in the other's face, voice quiet and steady and sure. "We both need to rest. We'll rest together. No restraints. Like before. We're a unit, and we'll act like one."
He gets up, then, to go raid their small stash of supplies. There are blankets, there, and it's not exactly warm in here, no matter the steps they've taken to make it more livable. He knows that the blood loss, his own injured arm, make him more vulnerable to the cold, too. There is not shame in protecting himself from the cold, he thinks - even as some part of him balks like it never has before, at being hurt. This isn't the same feeling, the vague displeasure of a mission gone wrong, of being disabled. This is… different. This is more raw, somehow. This is almost indignance. Anger at himself, at his circumstances, even when that anger is useless. Still, he feels it - just like he feels the pull toward the Soldier, and the need to trust him. To earn his trust in between.
"We'll sleep out here. Together," he finally says, lifting the blankets one-handed and returning to where the Soldier is sitting. "Better sight lines, with the windows." They can adjust the furniture to hide their bodies, if someone looks in from the outside.
had some slight godmoding, lemme know if I should change anything
It's that doubt that stops him from immediately planning on the Captain's murder.
It would be clean if he can manage it. But it could also go against HYDRA's grand scheme and the truth of the matter is that he hasn't been cleared for it. It's always been like that. The Winter Soldier is cleared just enough to complete a mission and nothing more. He'd been weaker; he'd known, in the back of his mind, that he was the backup compared to the Captain. The weak link. If things had progressed as his training said it should, he would've been imprisoned and restrained according to protocol. Not treated like a POW who wasn't regarded as a threat, who wasn't worth the resources, the energy to even shove into a locked cell. It glares before him, distracting. For a split second the Winter Soldier's weakness is plastered on his face, a flash that lights up his dead blue eyes before he drops them stubbornly to the worn carpet at his feet.
"Foolish," he mutters, but it's half-hearted. Unsure in a way he hasn't sounded before.
His eyes come up as the Captain comes back with blankets. As if in a hazy dream, the Winter Soldier automatically stands to shift the furniture around, moving the loveseat just so. He does it with the assumption that he's a prisoner under the watch of a guard - a highly trained guard - but the truth is, it's muscle-memory. He does it because it's familiar, because at least he has control, he understands what he's doing. Because fixing the sight lines is something he can agree on, no matter what has happened to the Captain's new objectives. Because this is a brief break from the questions, from wondering who, exactly, is the defective one.
That doesn't last long. After all, there's only so long a man can drag out fixing sight lines with a limited amount of furniture.
Eventually he has to cave. He lies down, slowly, mindful of his repaired arm. The wrongness of his freedom glares. It gets even worse when he can feel the Captain settling next to him, draping the blankets around them, and it almost - for a split second - feels like all those times they had shared body warmth in the field. Except it isn't the same, it isn't...
And that's where he drifts off to sleep. There's a limit to the stressors a super soldier can take and he falls back into the welcome, thoughtless void of sleep after a point, before he can decide if he should make another pass at incapacitating the man next to him. He sleeps...well, surprisingly. No jolting awake. No choking on bile or blood from missions he can't remember. When the Winter Soldier wakes up, the room is lighter than before, a dim gray to hint at the morning sunlight hitting the resort's dated curtains. His back and limbs ache (clearly he didn't twist in his sleep to relieve blood pressure) and when he lifts his head, he can see that the blankets are rumpled. The Captain beat him to wakefulness.
He also didn't wake him like he used to.
Sitting up, the Winter Soldier clenches the blankets close. He isn't cold, but right now he's aware of grabbing at anything that could be a potential tool, a weapon. His hand unconsciously gropes to his side and oh, yeah: disarmed. Of course he doesn't have that familiar weight of his SMG or his knife at his side. Gone. Confiscated by the SSR. He'll sit up to see the Captain awake and standing a good distance away, hunched over something that looks like a disemboweled radio with its guts spilled all over.
"Any news?" he rasps. His hand comes up to scrub at his eyes, fingers curled into a silver fist. Can't tell if he wants to know where the news comes from, but anything is better than being in the dark.
THE LATEST TAG holy crap /o\
Eventually he falls asleep, too — and he dreams. He dreams in strange, sepia tones tainted with blood and watercolor paint. He dreams of fighting a war like he's never fought for HYDRA, not cloaked in black and blood but covered in bright colors, a target — a symbol, a banner waved in front of the troops instead of a shadow behind the scenes. It's utterly foreign and yet intimately familiar. He looks to his right and the Asset is there, only his face is different — determined and serious as always, yes, but… young. Wry. His short hair ruffles in the breeze and his rifle glints in the sun and he is always, always there, they are always together —
Until they're not. And when the Captain sits bolt upright in the thin, early light of dawn, he knows in the core of himself that the thing that pulled them apart was HYDRA. It tore them to pieces and then put them back together, only it was like a puzzle where the pieces are all assembled wrong, so the picture isn't the same and the way each piece interlocks with the next isn't quite right. HYDRA broke them and rebuilt them and tried to wipe out the original picture, to warp the way they're supposed to fit, only now he's remembering. It's being slowly scratched away, like taking a chisel to a piece of marble and revealing the form underneath. There's the shell of what they are… and the core of it. HYDRA is concerned only with the shell, but now he knows there's something more underneath.
He glances at the Soldier, still asleep beside him; without waking the other, he carefully extricates himself from the blankets and stands for a moment, trying to rotate his stiff, aching shoulder, to determine how bad the damage still is, if it's ongoing or static. There's a sharp pain - the bullet digging into bone and muscle - every time he rotates it too far in one direction or the other. It makes him blanche and the worst of it makes him almost nauseous, so he tucks the arm back against himself and silently makes his way through the lodge, checking the fire (dying, so he feeds it several more logs), the perimeter (secure), the weather (still bad), their supplies (decent, if uninspired). It's then that he finds the old radio in a back room, shoved onto a shelf where it's gathering dust. It's just a receiver, meant to pick up the local stations, but he brings it back to the main room, sets it on a table and begins methodically dismantling it, cleaning each piece with a soft cloth he found in the kitchen, setting them out on the table like he's building a three-dimensional schematic of the thing from the inside out.
His mind is still buzzing, but the task, somehow, helps to keep that buzzing just below the surface. It feels like if he tries too hard, that's when the headaches and confusion come. If he lets his mind sort itself out… maybe that's when the picture, still blurry, will become clear.
He glances up at the sound of the the Soldier's voice, lips twitching up into a wry little smile at the sight of him wiping the sleep from his eyes. He never was a morning person, always preferring to sleep in unless he had an early shift at -
At the…
"No," he says, after a beat or two too long. "At least - not yet." He's got all the parts laid out and cleaned, now, and he slowly starts putting each one back, reassembling the radio in the exact reverse order that he took it apart, mind easily supplying the next step to take, the place where each piece fits. He wishes it were that easy when he looked at the Soldier, when he thought about his own past. "But if we can get this to turn on when it's back together, we might be able to tune it to the right frequency." Especially because he's adjusted the receiver and the dial, so it will pick up stations it was never meant to tune into.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, eyes on his work, trying to give nothing about the turmoil still wracking his mind.
maybe I matched you in late tags - had trouble with Bucky's writing voice
It's too open of an expression - nothing like the little stolen micro-expressions between them, like a secret language only the two of them know. The smile might be tiny for the average person, but to the Winter Soldier, it's too much. Too human. If a handler could see it, then it's unacceptable. Anyone could see that discrete look on his partner's face and read him. Yet another reminder that this isn't the Captain he had known for years, who he would have without thought thrown his life down to ensure that the superior asset survives. Unease, nameless, clawing, tugs at the Winter Soldier.
His blue eyes avert and fix on the radio's gutted parts spread before the other asset.
It's almost a relief to know that the Captain hasn't made contact. Who might be listening on the other end? What trigger words could be whispered? What did he mean, exactly, when he said right frequency?
"Functional," the Winter Soldier replies, tone curt even for him.
He'll pretend to wander off, as if that radio isn't bothering him. A mistake. Should have realized that thing would be a threat before this, but he'd allowed himself to be distracted by the Captain's injuries, let himself grow soft at the idea of actually executing the other asset before he became the glaring problem he is now. If they get back to HYDRA, the "re-education" will be thorough and, maybe, deserved for once. Never has the Winter Soldier failed like this.
If he had just been quicker with the bleach...
"We have food for a few days - less, as you have another mouth to feed," the Winter Soldier adds.
As the Captain seems determined to keep his fellow asset alive, despite the fact he had tried to poison him, he assumes he wants to make sure he doesn't starve or dehydrate. Their accelerated metabolisms means that food that would've lasted two normal men several weeks will only last days at best. Going off into the ice cold wilderness isn't optimal, but anything is better than allowing the Captain to continue fooling around with that radio, continuing to get ideas. Besides, maybe he might have another chance to incapacitate his partner in the forest, when the temperature drops, when his addled mind makes a grave misstep.
The thought is...promising.
If he was more self-aware, he would've said it even cheered him up.
Now the Winter Soldier settles himself on a chair that is a respectable distances from the Captain, and he'll even allow the other asset to see that his hands are empty. Look, no weapons. Just a blanket draped around faintly shivering shoulders. He hasn't gone for the bleach or dug around in the fireplace for any embers or chunks of wood to use as a weapon. In short, he's behaving. A model prisoner.
No worries at alllll
"If you're concerned, we'll go to half-rations." It's not ideal, they both burn a lot of calories, but it won't be the first time they've gone hungry. He's… sure of that, somehow, even though he can't pinpoint when it had last happened. It doesn't matter, really. It could have been any one of hundreds, thousands of reasons. Punishment. Long missions that went sideways. Extended waits for extraction.
Poverty…?
But whatever the reason, they have plentiful water, given all the snow outside. That's most important. The human body can survive for far longer with only water than only food. Or neither.
The Captain finally glances up at the sound of the Soldier settling himself into a chair. There's a weird, tight smile that tugs at the corners of his lips for an eyeblink, and then his attention goes back to the radio. It's coming together, piece by piece, as gears and transistors and wires disappear off the table, go back into the bowels of the little box, fitting back where they're supposed to go. He wonders if the radio he'll get when he's done is the same radio as the one he took apart. The same pieces, put back in the same patterns. But it was disassembled and reassembled in between. Is it different, or the same?
He shakes his head minutely, as if to clear it, and puts his eyes back on his work. "We have two courses of action," he says, trying to narrow things down, go off of what the Soldier said last night: The SSR is looking fo them. The SSR will likely even find them. But the SSR has information they need. "Either we wait for the SSR to come to us, or we go to them."
Neither is ideal — yes, they know exactly where to find the SSR, can backtrack to the base, break in, access their equipment and communications and… and their files. Maybe there's information, there, on this protocol, or someone they can interrogate. Someone who can tell them, exactly, why they think the assets have names. What those names mean.
Rogers and Barnes.
But they're ill-equipped and the Captain is still injured, and the Soldier's arm has been repaired, but it's not at full capacity. They have certainly done more with less, but it feels like walking into a mission poorly prepared. It chafes.
Or, they hole up here, with the knowledge that the SSR is looking for them. They monitor the radio and hope for intel, from either the SSR or from HYDRA. Because HYDRA is still a factor. One that sits uneasily in the Captain's gut, if only because he knows they won't get answers there. HYDRA takes, it doesn't give. HYDRA will put him in the chair and bury this protocol back inside him. HYDRA might even just kill him, or maybe they'll kill the Winter Soldier while he watches, take away the thing he feels this desperate need to keep close. Either seems equally likely. Both are unacceptable.
And somehow, waiting seems worse than walking into a trap. The Captain, who has had patience and calm beaten, burned into him, time and time again, can feel it sloughing off with all the rest of it. He doesn't want to sit here. He doesn't want to wait for the walls to close in.
"I think we should go to them."
apologies, shorter post
The Winter Soldier's face pinches again.
Next, his nose unconsciously crinkles faintly in distaste.
Yes, half-rations are acceptable on paper. But that is for normal men. They are two super soldier, two theoretically better men with biological needs that match that, and now there is one who is malfunctioning and likely to make foolish mistakes regarding caloric intake. So no, he has doubts about the Captain's rosy estimate that half-rations will tide them over. The longer they wait, the more those half-rations will mean they can put one foot in front of other, keep their eyes open and not much else.
The Winter Soldier settles himself in the chair and finds that the look his partner gives isn't enough. No longer does it turn his core warm with an alien contentment and a feeling of temporary security that HYDRA will rightfully wipe away before cryo. Instead there is unease; wondering, maybe, what the Captain mistakenly thinks he sees in his partner when those blue eyes burn his way. His grip around the blanket draped around his shoulders tightens.
"Go to the SSR?"
The Winter Soldier repeats it and maybe a part of him assumes - hopes - that the Captain will see reason hearing the nonsense spoken aloud. Go to the SSR, he says. The same hostiles that had tried their damnedest to capture and compromise them...yes? Those ones? The only reason he could see this being acceptable is if the Captain knew something he didn't. Perhaps he knew of primary targets. Perhaps HYDRA had cleared him to know of such things. Men and women of high interest to HYDRA; names that he could share with the Winter Soldier, so that he may eliminate them from the equation permanently. And yet...the Winter Solder finds himself doubting this scenario. Too many variables. Too many questions allowed for his uncooperative partner.
Maybe this is as simple as he dreads: maybe this is a case of an asset going rogue after all.
The Winter Soldier shifts on his seat. "When? How? You have no idea if they haven't cleared out."
After all, they had just assaulted that base and then broken out of it in the same day, killing a respectable amount of SSR assets in the process. Surely the SSR would be fools to maintain such a compromised base.
Not at all!
Neither of them are normal men, and the sound doesn't escape, even compromised as he is. Half-rations are not ideal. But it's that, or make a move, and this time, it's not a twitch of his lips but a tiny, tiny flick of the eyes, as the Captain suppresses the sudden, inexplicable urge to roll them.
The Winter Soldier's voice might be dull, but even with no inflection at all, he doesn't sound impressed.
"I don't," he confirms, when the Soldier goes over everything he doesn't know. Everything they don't know. Because they know very little. They've never been so completely on their own before, and it's as terrifying as it is liberating, and both of those feelings are at the same time foreign in equal measure.
But not knowing what they might meet isn't really a concern. They've been trained to handle myriad situations, as many shitstorms as their handlers and trainers and those people's handlers and trainers could come up with.
Funny, none of those scenarios had ever involved people recognizing the assets. Calling them by names.
Rogers and Barnes.
Why won't the echoes of those syllables leave him alone?
"It's not what they'll be expecting," he says, and there's something in his eyes, some light flashing behind them, some spark that's been dulled, and now it's not. Not anymore. "Whether they're there or not, they won't think we'll walk right back in. And that's why it's a good idea. They're either regrouping and vulnerable, or they left in a hurry and were sloppy. We might find something of value we didn't have time to check for before."
There's a long pause, after which the Captain shrugs his good shoulder and says, some strange lilt to his voice that's never been there before, "If you're worried, then stay here. Maintain this base, and I'll go do recon."
It's almost a challenge: If you're afraid, then stay here and wait for orders that will never come, while I go and find out what we're really up against.
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The Winter Soldier cuts in almost as soon as the other asset finishes speaking.
"I must continue monitoring you for further degradation in your unstable state," the Soldier says, and it sounds almost like he's reciting from the HYDRA manual on enhanced assets. "You should know better."
It would have been a different matter if the Captain was his usual self: collected and dependable and there. But he isn't. So no, the Winter Soldier won't be maintaining the base as if nothing as changed. Since he can't trust his partner, he can't assume that "recon" will actually be recon at this point. Eyes locked on the other asset, the Soldier's grip on the blanket draped around his shoulder tightens as if he could squeeze the insubordination out of the other man just by sheer will power. This is more difficult than it has to be. If you just turned yourself in, HYDRA could fix you before it's too late.
He doesn't sigh. Bucky Barnes may have, years ago, but the man he is now only stills, tilts his head slightly to the side and down, the faintest of frowns tugging at his mouth.
This is unorthodox. It is a bad idea and yet he has no choice: HYDRA was very clear on who was the more valuable asset and even if the Captain is compromised, it is the Winter Soldier's responsibility - his duty - to see him brought back into the fold. There is only one of him, and the serum running in his blood is irreplaceable.
"When are we leaving?"
I figure we can skip ahead over the next tag or two if needed?
light timeskip
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let me know if finding a body doesn't work for you and I can change that!
all cool! I'm game if Bucky keeps side-eyeing Steve.
o7 I figure they can get to the infirmary shortly
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Lemme know if any of this isn't okay!
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