“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.
"When are we leaving?"
I figure we can skip ahead over the next tag or two if needed?
The Captain doesn't smirk. Not visibly. But it's there, just behind his eyes, in that secret language only the two assets speak. Gotcha.
"Then we go together," he confirms, because that's the preferred plan for so many reasons, even if he would have gone alone, if the other asset had truly balked.
The thing is, he knows what the Winter Soldier wants him to do. It's been trained into him nearly — although clearly not quite — as hard as the other: If the programming breaks down, if the drugs stop working, abort the mission and return to base. Return to HYDRA. Submit to recalibration. You are damaged and need to be repaired.
He'd believed that for so long, believed it like so much of the other training, the other procedures and protocols. He'd just never anticipated that being broken would feel so much better, even if it's in a strange, roundabout, backwards way. He feels like he's in the dark, feeling his way through a maze of spiderwebs and molasses, but he needs to keep going, keep wading through. There are answers, if he can just stay here long enough to look for them. Old protocols that he needs to know.
Just like needs to get back to that SSR base, to find whatever's there for him to find. For them to find.
He squints out the windows, frowns a little at the light, but, "Soon." The longer they stay here, the less stable things become. They've broken the trust between them, he can acknowledge that. But the longer they sit here and stew in it, the worse, he thinks. Action won't fix this, but it might stave off the rot that's seeping between them. Maybe something they find at that base will even repair it, somehow, even if he doesn't know how. He just knows that he thinks — hopes — that might be the case.
That's a foreign feeling. It almost makes him feel sick, the weird sharp stab of it: hope.
"I think we should go soon," he repeats. He picks up the next piece of the radio; there are precious few left on the table in front of him now. It's almost all back together. "Once I finish this, we can scan for communications. Give them a few hours. After that… we should go before it gets dark." The weather could turn again, and while they're both designed to survive much worse, neither is running at optimal capacity. His shoulder aches and grinds, stabs if he rotates it the wrong way. And the Soldier's arm might not get worse, now that it's been repaired, but it certainly won't get better. He doesn't want to waste much more time waiting for orders that, he thinks, will never come.
And even if they do… part of him knows he might not follow them.
"We should get cleaned up. Gather as much gear as is reasonable to carry. We might not come back here."
Never has the Winter Soldier had to bend to such insubordination.
He knows this in his gut, his core; in some part of him that feels right and true. If it wasn't the Captain, if it had been anyone else at all in HYDRA, even a handler, he knows what he would've done: sanction the weakness immediately and with extreme prejudice, an excision that would be quick as it was merciful, and he wouldn't have to think at all about the logistics of following a faulty asset back to the SSR facility. What might happen if they did/didn't find anything of note. The only reason he agrees is because the Captain's life is elevated above his in HYDRA's base protocol. A superior serum; a superior man. What the Winter Soldier is can be eventually replicated; perfected. His partner, however...now that is another thing entirely.
Maiming him was acceptable. Killing him, however? No. This asset is even more rare than he is.
The Captain issues new orders and the Winter Soldier pauses and then averts his eyes, looking at his feet so that he may steel himself for this...unorthodox change in plans.
By dawn they set out with what supplies they scrounged up from the mountain resort.
The supplies are respectable, actually, because even two injured super soldiers can easily carry more than the common man. As they work their way down the snow-covered road and divert into the wall of trees, the Winter Soldier isn't surprised to find that he is placed up front. That isn't out of the ordinary. Given that he is classed as less valuable than the Captain, it would make sense that he take point...under normal circumstances. Now he suspects that he takes point because the Captain wants to keep eyes on him and doesn't trust him to walk behind where he can't see. (A valid point).
The trip back to the SSR facility is mostly silent aside from the occasional crunch of boots against rock, snow and dead branches, the rasping whisper or grunt of two assets communicating. Loose rock here, the Winter Soldier grunts. Yeah, the Captain rumbles from behind him (out of arm's reach, he notices: as if he's keeping out of range of a possible knife or sharp object in the Winter Soldier's hand). Picking their way back takes time, but it is still quicker than their escape not long before. The Captain has had some time to recover from his gunshot, and he sets the pace, calls the shots. A reminder that the Winter Soldier now must be more mindful of that pull of rank, that voice of command, because the other asset is compromised and his usual rock-solid judgment can no longer be trusted. For once, to better HYDRA doesn't mean he has to follow his partner's orders.
Dusk looms as the Winter Soldier crouches down at the ridge, peering at the compound. They'd approached it from a different angle when he had sniped the guards and the Captain went in to get the rest. Somehow it seemed like a lifetime ago, although he knows it was only a day or two at most.
"No visible guards," the Soldier mutters, his eyelashes speckled with frost, his head tucked down as he grips against a hunk of rock and resists the urge to glance at his partner for guidance. "Maybe they cleared out."
The Captain wants to trust his fellow asset — but he knows better. He knows the Winter Soldier's every tic and tell, subtle though they are, and the Soldier is on guard. The Soldier is wary and untrusting, and the Captain doesn't like it, but he understands. And he has to work with what he's got, not what he wishes was the case.
So the Soldier goes first, as they walk. The Captain stays out of arms' reach. the shield carried on his bad arm, no matter the ache. He has to be ready for anything. And he has to hope that whatever they find at the base will bring the other asset around.
He steps silently up beside the Soldier, on his right side, the shield feeling like an impenetrable wall between them. But ahead lies something that feels like a beacon. He nods at the Soldier's assessment; he's correct, there are no guards in sight, no sounds or other signs of life coming from the building. That's good. The Captain doesn't believe in luck (does he?) but it seems to be on their side, nonetheless. An empty base is far better for infiltration and intel gathering than an occupied one. The would have had to clear out in a hurry, if it's truly deserted. That means they'd have had to prioritize what came with, and what didn't. That means they could have made mistakes.
Both bode well for learning more.
"Only one way to find out," the Captain says, after a moment of tense silence between them. He starts forward, footfalls still silent on the snow; whatever's affecting him, his training hasn't suffered for it. He's slow, steady, deliberate, and silent as a ghost, even with the ache and pull and occasional sharp grinding of his damaged shoulder socket. If anything, the pain serves to focus his attention, sharpen his senses, as he makes it up to the exterior wall of the building, slides along it to the closed blast doors, expecting that either the Soldier will follow, or he won't. They've come this far, though. He wants to believe his partner will appear, even if he knows he can't count on the Soldier to watch his back the way he might once have.
He hopes that will change, based on what they find inside.
He could simply smash the controls with the shield, but that would alert anyone left inside. Instead, he reaches for the handle depressed into one of the doors with his right hand and puts his back into it, something in his gut telling him that if power is down, the doors won't be sealed. His recollection of the base blueprints they studied ahead of time tells him these doors are normally electronically sealed. There's a second set of doors inside with a physical lock, but if this one gives, then they can smash the second ones without worrying.
It takes a moment, but the door gives under his strength, even as he feels the strain in his arm, his shoulder, his back. It gives, and slides smoothly, silently open. The compound beyond is silent and dark.
Now he looks over his shoulder to see whether the Soldier will actually follow him inside.
It has to hurt, straining that much to open the door. Unfortunately it doesn't hit that threshold, that moment of visible weakness, that would've had the Winter Soldier trying to jump his partner again just like back at the resort with the bleach. If he'd gone on his knees, if he'd cried out at the jolt of pain then maybe that chance would've been worth taking.
Not yet.
Maybe not for awhile.
The Winter Soldier has made a conscious effort to smooth his face more than usual on the trip here. The Captain is able to read him like no one else can and before that had been a benefit, something that had yielded favorable results. Now it can be turned against him. Suddenly he catches himself missing that mask muzzling him, the same one that had always been hot and muggy. It had, at least, helped to mask the micro-expressions that even a super soldier can't hide. Now with the Captain watching him and searching for clues of his cooperation running its course...well. Suddenly he has begun to wonder if that silent, secret language between them is such a good thing after all. Surely it isn't helping HYDRA.
With the door open, he has no choice but to follow the Captain inside.
They switch positions as their eyes acclimate to dim light filtering through the door that was forced open, the Winter Soldier leading as always. Chairs are overturned or scooted away from desks; filing cabinets with some drawers not entirely shut. There is a faint pull of some latent conditioning that he can feel in the back of his mind. HYDRA could find whatever's left useful, he thinks, and then he has to bodily force that down because the priority is the Captain. Nothing else matters as much as wrangling the other super soldier and getting him and the invaluable serum running through him back to base.
The Winter Soldier does find an abandoned flashlight sitting on one of the desks. Flicking it on, the Winter Soldier holds up his other hand, the silver dull with dust and faint scuff marks as he stiffly spreads his fingers to show that he is, indeed, unarmed. (He didn't grab that screwdriver half-hidden by the typewriter, that the Captain surely saw as well).
Still cooperating, the gesture says.
"Phone's dead," the Winter Soldier says after he stops and tests one, the receiver against his ear as he turns toward his partner's shadow. "Two options: clear the place together or separate."
Normally they would do this separately. But that was before the degradation of the Captain's programming and he assumes (knows) that the other asset won't allow him to wander off and accumulate weapons and resources, to have time to himself to booby-trap the place. If he was, especially in a place like this, it wouldn't be just bleach to the face. Someone like the Captain heals quickly and that's before HYDRA's best medical teams come into play. Still, a shame the phones don't work.
He can't ambush the Captain, yet, but if he can find a way of getting a message out, maybe it'd be possible to call in reinforcements to subdue him.
let me know if finding a body doesn't work for you and I can change that!
It would be so easy to slip back into trusting the Winter Soldier, the Captain thinks. So easy to pretend this is just a normal mission. Then he catches himself, wonders that he'd even had that thought at all. HYDRA's assets aren't prone to wishful thinking.
But they are so much more than HYDRA's assets, he's starting to believe. And that's why they're here at all. To learn what else they are, or were. Or could become.
It's clear the agents here left in a hurry. And that bodes well for finding more, he thinks, scanning the dim rooms slowly as his eyes acclimate, following the beam of the flashlight once the Winter Soldier flicks it on. There's a faint smile that wants to tug at the corners of his lips, at that gesture; he knows whatever truce they have is tenuous, and even calling it a truce might be too generous. The Winter Soldier is observing him, just as closely as they're scouring this base. They're no longer an unshakable team. Now, the Captain is nothing more than an unknown quantity. He knows it must chafe at the Soldier; the widening divide that feels like it's opened between them chafes at the Captain, too. He misses trusting his partner. He misses the rock-solid foundation they'd once had. He believes they can have that again. And maybe it doesn't have to be through HYDRA.
But he needs to know more.
"Together," he says, and his voice is wry as he says it. Of course it would make more sense to move separately. But neither can trust the other. And without orders, they have all the time they need. There's no rush. They're as safe and secure in this abandoned base as they are anywhere. "I want to find the infirmary. Where they kept us." It seems like a good place to start, a place where there might be records on them that are easy to access.
They come across the first body down a long hallway; it's a handler, one of their handlers, dressed in black tac gear and sprawled face-down in a long-congealed pool of her own blood. There's something about seeing a handler, dead, harmless, that feels strangely good. Like a relief. The Captain glances to the Soldier, wondering if he feels the same way. If he'll even be able to read anything off his face. "What a stupid way to die," the Captain mutters, because the whole mission by that point was a mess. He's not sure if he regrets the loss so much as feels disdain for the poor planning. Maybe both. "Do you want to check her for a radio?"
The question is almost a dare; he'd bet anything the answer is yes, but he wonders if the Soldier will actually say it.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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.
no subject
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?
"Then we go together," he confirms, because that's the preferred plan for so many reasons, even if he would have gone alone, if the other asset had truly balked.
The thing is, he knows what the Winter Soldier wants him to do. It's been trained into him nearly — although clearly not quite — as hard as the other: If the programming breaks down, if the drugs stop working, abort the mission and return to base. Return to HYDRA. Submit to recalibration. You are damaged and need to be repaired.
He'd believed that for so long, believed it like so much of the other training, the other procedures and protocols. He'd just never anticipated that being broken would feel so much better, even if it's in a strange, roundabout, backwards way. He feels like he's in the dark, feeling his way through a maze of spiderwebs and molasses, but he needs to keep going, keep wading through. There are answers, if he can just stay here long enough to look for them. Old protocols that he needs to know.
Just like needs to get back to that SSR base, to find whatever's there for him to find. For them to find.
He squints out the windows, frowns a little at the light, but, "Soon." The longer they stay here, the less stable things become. They've broken the trust between them, he can acknowledge that. But the longer they sit here and stew in it, the worse, he thinks. Action won't fix this, but it might stave off the rot that's seeping between them. Maybe something they find at that base will even repair it, somehow, even if he doesn't know how. He just knows that he thinks — hopes — that might be the case.
That's a foreign feeling. It almost makes him feel sick, the weird sharp stab of it: hope.
"I think we should go soon," he repeats. He picks up the next piece of the radio; there are precious few left on the table in front of him now. It's almost all back together. "Once I finish this, we can scan for communications. Give them a few hours. After that… we should go before it gets dark." The weather could turn again, and while they're both designed to survive much worse, neither is running at optimal capacity. His shoulder aches and grinds, stabs if he rotates it the wrong way. And the Soldier's arm might not get worse, now that it's been repaired, but it certainly won't get better. He doesn't want to waste much more time waiting for orders that, he thinks, will never come.
And even if they do… part of him knows he might not follow them.
"We should get cleaned up. Gather as much gear as is reasonable to carry. We might not come back here."
light timeskip
He knows this in his gut, his core; in some part of him that feels right and true. If it wasn't the Captain, if it had been anyone else at all in HYDRA, even a handler, he knows what he would've done: sanction the weakness immediately and with extreme prejudice, an excision that would be quick as it was merciful, and he wouldn't have to think at all about the logistics of following a faulty asset back to the SSR facility. What might happen if they did/didn't find anything of note. The only reason he agrees is because the Captain's life is elevated above his in HYDRA's base protocol. A superior serum; a superior man. What the Winter Soldier is can be eventually replicated; perfected. His partner, however...now that is another thing entirely.
Maiming him was acceptable. Killing him, however? No. This asset is even more rare than he is.
The Captain issues new orders and the Winter Soldier pauses and then averts his eyes, looking at his feet so that he may steel himself for this...unorthodox change in plans.
By dawn they set out with what supplies they scrounged up from the mountain resort.
The supplies are respectable, actually, because even two injured super soldiers can easily carry more than the common man. As they work their way down the snow-covered road and divert into the wall of trees, the Winter Soldier isn't surprised to find that he is placed up front. That isn't out of the ordinary. Given that he is classed as less valuable than the Captain, it would make sense that he take point...under normal circumstances. Now he suspects that he takes point because the Captain wants to keep eyes on him and doesn't trust him to walk behind where he can't see. (A valid point).
The trip back to the SSR facility is mostly silent aside from the occasional crunch of boots against rock, snow and dead branches, the rasping whisper or grunt of two assets communicating. Loose rock here, the Winter Soldier grunts. Yeah, the Captain rumbles from behind him (out of arm's reach, he notices: as if he's keeping out of range of a possible knife or sharp object in the Winter Soldier's hand). Picking their way back takes time, but it is still quicker than their escape not long before. The Captain has had some time to recover from his gunshot, and he sets the pace, calls the shots. A reminder that the Winter Soldier now must be more mindful of that pull of rank, that voice of command, because the other asset is compromised and his usual rock-solid judgment can no longer be trusted. For once, to better HYDRA doesn't mean he has to follow his partner's orders.
Dusk looms as the Winter Soldier crouches down at the ridge, peering at the compound. They'd approached it from a different angle when he had sniped the guards and the Captain went in to get the rest. Somehow it seemed like a lifetime ago, although he knows it was only a day or two at most.
"No visible guards," the Soldier mutters, his eyelashes speckled with frost, his head tucked down as he grips against a hunk of rock and resists the urge to glance at his partner for guidance. "Maybe they cleared out."
no subject
So the Soldier goes first, as they walk. The Captain stays out of arms' reach. the shield carried on his bad arm, no matter the ache. He has to be ready for anything. And he has to hope that whatever they find at the base will bring the other asset around.
He steps silently up beside the Soldier, on his right side, the shield feeling like an impenetrable wall between them. But ahead lies something that feels like a beacon. He nods at the Soldier's assessment; he's correct, there are no guards in sight, no sounds or other signs of life coming from the building. That's good. The Captain doesn't believe in luck (does he?) but it seems to be on their side, nonetheless. An empty base is far better for infiltration and intel gathering than an occupied one. The would have had to clear out in a hurry, if it's truly deserted. That means they'd have had to prioritize what came with, and what didn't. That means they could have made mistakes.
Both bode well for learning more.
"Only one way to find out," the Captain says, after a moment of tense silence between them. He starts forward, footfalls still silent on the snow; whatever's affecting him, his training hasn't suffered for it. He's slow, steady, deliberate, and silent as a ghost, even with the ache and pull and occasional sharp grinding of his damaged shoulder socket. If anything, the pain serves to focus his attention, sharpen his senses, as he makes it up to the exterior wall of the building, slides along it to the closed blast doors, expecting that either the Soldier will follow, or he won't. They've come this far, though. He wants to believe his partner will appear, even if he knows he can't count on the Soldier to watch his back the way he might once have.
He hopes that will change, based on what they find inside.
He could simply smash the controls with the shield, but that would alert anyone left inside. Instead, he reaches for the handle depressed into one of the doors with his right hand and puts his back into it, something in his gut telling him that if power is down, the doors won't be sealed. His recollection of the base blueprints they studied ahead of time tells him these doors are normally electronically sealed. There's a second set of doors inside with a physical lock, but if this one gives, then they can smash the second ones without worrying.
It takes a moment, but the door gives under his strength, even as he feels the strain in his arm, his shoulder, his back. It gives, and slides smoothly, silently open. The compound beyond is silent and dark.
Now he looks over his shoulder to see whether the Soldier will actually follow him inside.
no subject
Not yet.
Maybe not for awhile.
The Winter Soldier has made a conscious effort to smooth his face more than usual on the trip here. The Captain is able to read him like no one else can and before that had been a benefit, something that had yielded favorable results. Now it can be turned against him. Suddenly he catches himself missing that mask muzzling him, the same one that had always been hot and muggy. It had, at least, helped to mask the micro-expressions that even a super soldier can't hide. Now with the Captain watching him and searching for clues of his cooperation running its course...well. Suddenly he has begun to wonder if that silent, secret language between them is such a good thing after all. Surely it isn't helping HYDRA.
With the door open, he has no choice but to follow the Captain inside.
They switch positions as their eyes acclimate to dim light filtering through the door that was forced open, the Winter Soldier leading as always. Chairs are overturned or scooted away from desks; filing cabinets with some drawers not entirely shut. There is a faint pull of some latent conditioning that he can feel in the back of his mind. HYDRA could find whatever's left useful, he thinks, and then he has to bodily force that down because the priority is the Captain. Nothing else matters as much as wrangling the other super soldier and getting him and the invaluable serum running through him back to base.
The Winter Soldier does find an abandoned flashlight sitting on one of the desks. Flicking it on, the Winter Soldier holds up his other hand, the silver dull with dust and faint scuff marks as he stiffly spreads his fingers to show that he is, indeed, unarmed. (He didn't grab that screwdriver half-hidden by the typewriter, that the Captain surely saw as well).
Still cooperating, the gesture says.
"Phone's dead," the Winter Soldier says after he stops and tests one, the receiver against his ear as he turns toward his partner's shadow. "Two options: clear the place together or separate."
Normally they would do this separately. But that was before the degradation of the Captain's programming and he assumes (knows) that the other asset won't allow him to wander off and accumulate weapons and resources, to have time to himself to booby-trap the place. If he was, especially in a place like this, it wouldn't be just bleach to the face. Someone like the Captain heals quickly and that's before HYDRA's best medical teams come into play. Still, a shame the phones don't work.
He can't ambush the Captain, yet, but if he can find a way of getting a message out, maybe it'd be possible to call in reinforcements to subdue him.
let me know if finding a body doesn't work for you and I can change that!
But they are so much more than HYDRA's assets, he's starting to believe. And that's why they're here at all. To learn what else they are, or were. Or could become.
It's clear the agents here left in a hurry. And that bodes well for finding more, he thinks, scanning the dim rooms slowly as his eyes acclimate, following the beam of the flashlight once the Winter Soldier flicks it on. There's a faint smile that wants to tug at the corners of his lips, at that gesture; he knows whatever truce they have is tenuous, and even calling it a truce might be too generous. The Winter Soldier is observing him, just as closely as they're scouring this base. They're no longer an unshakable team. Now, the Captain is nothing more than an unknown quantity. He knows it must chafe at the Soldier; the widening divide that feels like it's opened between them chafes at the Captain, too. He misses trusting his partner. He misses the rock-solid foundation they'd once had. He believes they can have that again. And maybe it doesn't have to be through HYDRA.
But he needs to know more.
"Together," he says, and his voice is wry as he says it. Of course it would make more sense to move separately. But neither can trust the other. And without orders, they have all the time they need. There's no rush. They're as safe and secure in this abandoned base as they are anywhere. "I want to find the infirmary. Where they kept us." It seems like a good place to start, a place where there might be records on them that are easy to access.
They come across the first body down a long hallway; it's a handler, one of their handlers, dressed in black tac gear and sprawled face-down in a long-congealed pool of her own blood. There's something about seeing a handler, dead, harmless, that feels strangely good. Like a relief. The Captain glances to the Soldier, wondering if he feels the same way. If he'll even be able to read anything off his face. "What a stupid way to die," the Captain mutters, because the whole mission by that point was a mess. He's not sure if he regrets the loss so much as feels disdain for the poor planning. Maybe both. "Do you want to check her for a radio?"
The question is almost a dare; he'd bet anything the answer is yes, but he wonders if the Soldier will actually say it.
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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