Once the Captain’s shoulder is bound, the two assets set off, leaving the base behind without a second thought for their handlers or the agents they’ve killed. As they walk, the Soldier taking point, the Captain puts the shield at their backs, keeps a pistol in his hand and the safety off. His shoulder throbs, but with a task at hand, it’s easy to put the pain out of his head, to focus on keeping his footfalls silent, his breathing even.
Or, at least, it’s easy to put it out of his head at first. The pain is persistent, insidious, and with the bullet lodged the way it is, his body trying to heal around it is painful and inefficient. He tries to move his arm every so often, roll the shoulder, and he’s greeted by a white-hot burst of pain that makes him clench his teeth and wish for the rubber bite guard, sucking in a sharp inhale of breath. But the arm still moves, albeit painfully - no nerve damage, and it will heal around the bullet. When they’re retrieved, he imagines there will be surgery to find the bullet, remove it, make sure the shoulder socket heals properly. Until then, it’s going to heal as best it can, with no heed for the comfort level of the Captain in the meantime.
Except it’s healing slowly, given the constant motion of walking; he does his best to hold his arm and shoulder still, but it’s impossible to really immobilize it when he needs it for balance in the slippery, unfamiliar landscape. Somewhere during their hike, it begins to bleed again, a second slow, warm blossom of blood that he feels soaking into the uniform, the bandages, doesn’t need to look down to confirm visually. Still, the Captain makes no sound but the harsh panting of his breaths, and he doesn’t complain, doesn’t pull them to a halt, simply walks on, though he’s several more feet behind the Winter Soldier than he’d started out when the other asset spots an outcropping and calls a stop to their march. The Captain wants to push on, knows they should keep going, but he can also admit that it’s not tactically sound. It’s a moonless night, too dark for even HYDRA’s most advanced weapons to see well, and slipping and breaking their necks won’t get the information they need to take back to HYDRA.
Together, they climb carefully down into the natural, if cold, shelter provided by the rocks, wedged side by side with their backs to frozen stone as the green of the glow stick flares to life. The Captain considers the two options briefly, but shakes his head almost immediately. “We stay here. Together. This is fine.” It’s the best place to stop that they’ve passed; the village is still several miles away, and he doesn’t imagine they’ll find another shelter quite like this nearby. With the rock at his back and the Winter Soldier against his side and the small, if sickly glow of the glow stick between them, it feels like a good place to spend the night, for all that it’s less than ideal. “We’ll start walking again at first light.”
His left arm throbs, and the way they’re positioned, his uninjured right side to the Soldier’s left, he’s pressed up against the metal prosthesis and he can feel the cold of it seeping through his uniform and into his skin. Unconsciously, the Captain shifts closer, as if trying to share his body heat with it rather than recoiling, even as the Soldier pulls out a familiar vial, uncaps it; again, the Captain considers only a moment before he simply tilts his head to the side, like an obedient dog, and says, simply, “Neck.”
Once the pinprick and hiss of the injection has passed, the Captain simply tilts his head back against the unforgiving rock and closes his eyes. They don’t stay closed long, though, because now that they’ve stopped moving, there is nothing like putting one foot in front of the other to distract him from the pain - nothing except the memory of the scene he woke up to in the compound, that niggling feeling that has been sitting low in his gut since he opened his eyes and that small, scared little man called him “Captain Rogers.” The scene comes flooding back to him now, and he’d rather concentrate on it, turn it over and over in his head and ask his companion his thoughts on it, than focus on the pain. Pain is irrelevant, and it is counterproductive. But the memory of being called by a name… that is still intriguing in a way he can’t describe. And there’s a part of him that needs to know if the Winter Soldier feels the same way, can put a name to the thing the Captain feels about the letters that, when put together, spell out the name “Rogers.”
Because - They are assets, but they are men. Or - no, not exactly, but they might have been men once. Men with names. Names like Rogers and Barnes.
It’s not something the Captain wants now, and it’s not something he’s capable of missing, because you have to know something, remember it, to miss it, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t remember a time before he was the Captain, before he was HYDRA’s asset, and it doesn’t bother him. But the idea - realization? - that there was a time before he was HYDRA’s asset, when he might have had a name and some clumsy sense of self-direction, is at once terrifying and intriguing. It’s like staring in a mirror, and seeing your reflection distorted ever so slightly, something just a hair off, only you can’t tell what it is, what’s changed, where the mirror is flawed.
So he turns his head toward his companion, expression still pinched, but something in it is both curious and derisive at once as he says, simply, “The scientist that woke me in the compound thought I had a name. He thought we both had names.”
If he were a real man, he’d probably say something like, What a load of bullshit, hey, buddy? Instead, the sentiment just hangs flatly in the cold air between them.
Once the drugs in the vial work through his system, he’ll lose interest, most likely, But for all that he metabolizes everything at quadruple speed, he’s still just curious, just hung up enough right now to speak up.
He isn't expecting the Captain to bring up the conversation back at the SSR facility. It happened, they both noted the relevant details for their debriefings and that was it. It's over. It's that easy and to the Winter Soldier, more pliable and easier to control than his partner, it's a non-issue. Whatever he felt back there for a split second he chalks up to a momentary weakness caused by whatever sedatives they pumped him with. That's it, end of story.
The look he shoots the Captain is still blank-faced, mask-like, but there's also the barest hint of surprise fluttering across.
His eyebrows knit. A faint stress line furrows between them to betray his unease.
"I heard," the Winter Soldier says after a split second to register he's been caught off guard more times than he considers acceptable in one day. "Could be an old alias we used that's in their records."
Sloppy of them, but plausible. Hard to tell with the wipe sessions. The Asset has been conditioned not to wonder too much about them, only to feel animal relief when the arc stops humming and he can sag gasping against the chair. Of course there are gaps. Missions he participated in that he can't remember names of operative he worked with, those he sanctioned; not even the year. Sometimes he gets flashes of the penny tang of blood or a hiss of a steel blade against the leather of a knife sheath. Never names. All he has is the gut instinct that both "Barnes" and "Rogers" had sounded familiar. He shifts his head then, hair falling limply across his face in a curtain as he tucks the spent needle into his belt. No point leaving it here where a potential search party could find it.
One look at the Captain and he can see that he wants to talk. Conversations between them have always been borderline monosyllabic - businesslike, to the point. No chit-chat or wasted breath he observed between HYDRA's other operatives or their handlers.
The Asset makes a small sound under his breath, a mix between an almost inaudible grunt and a sigh. Unlike his partner, he doesn't seem as entertained at the idea of them and names being in spitting distance of each other. If the Captain is looking at that mirror head-on and thinking about possibilities, the Winter Soldier flinches away, buries his head ostrich-style and decides he would feel way more comfortable back at HQ getting prepped for the suppression arc. His conditioning has been more than thorough.
His head cocks a fraction, mouth pursed, lips numb from the cold. "He must've been wrong, anyway. The SSR would say anything to get their hands on us."
Intel hasn't pointed to any assets of their own on the field. Easier to acquire HYDRA's best and try to reprogram them instead of starting from scratch.
It's then the Soldier realizes the man next to him is shivering. It's small, but he can feel it even through his left arm. They're super human but unfortunately, they're still human: even they can get hungry, tired, and cold. Without asking, he reaches over and loops his arm around his partner, bringing the man close and shifting his body to give him the maximum amount of body heat he can manage in this position. There's just enough space that they can stretch out if needed. Sleeping will need to happen in shifts this close to the SSR base but he's already decided that he'll take the first one and let the Captain get priority. The green glowstick gets moved to the side, along the edge of the rock wall, still shielded with their bodies. His combat boot scrapes against granite as he shifts his position and he's both watching the trees for signs of human movement and also watching the Captain's face, a ghostly green shadow against the rocky overhang.
Waiting for that moment where slackness sets in, his eyes dim, and he knows for sure that the injection is taking hold. Things will be better once that happens and they can both focus on what's really important.
"Get some rest. Tomorrow we can get to that village and resupply."
The Captain has been trained - as best HYDRA could - to shy away from curiosity, to expect (if not welcome) the clarity of orders, the comfort of obedience that the conditioning sessions in the chair bring. When he has no worries, no past, nothing but the mission, he is most effective, most focused, most efficient. But HYDRA’s grasp on his mind is more tenuous than their hold on the Soldier; it's perhaps part of why they work best as a pair, complementing each other, the Soldier's profound and utter dedication to their organization more easily reflected in the Captain, despite the handlers they give him.
"Could be," the Captain replies, in a tone that betrays the slightest hint of doubt. He knows he's been on past missions, but he doesn't know how many, and rarely remember the details; when he does, it's usually in flashes or disjointed scenes, like a half-forgotten dream. But tools, weapons, don't dream - HYDRA found a way to remove that weakness, to make him stronger. Weapons don't dream because they have no need for dreams. Weapons don't have names, because they have no need for names.
The Captain and the Soldier don't often talk, no - idle banter is useless, a waste of breath at best and a distraction from the mission at worst. But this feels important, somehow. The Captain is intrigued and disturbed all at once, and some part of him craves the opinion of his companion. Neither of them have the answer to the puzzle, but somehow, some sort of agreement, some sort of mutual curiosity, would make him feel... satisfied. But the Soldier is agitated - the Captain can tell in the look on his face, the sound he makes as he exhales that would almost be too soft to hear, for a baseline human. The Captain hears the frustration, as clearly as if the Soldier had voiced it. He's observant, and he knows his companion's moods, such as they are, better than he knows almost anything else. To most people, the Soldier doesn't even have moods, isn't ever fazed or frustrated or amused. But the Captain knows better, knows the moods that escape others' notice, even when he thinks the Soldier doesn't even notice what he's feeling, himself. Maybe the Soldier knows him just as well. He wouldn't be surprised.
Now, the idea of the Soldier's displeasure is... jarring. The Captain's brow furrows and he wonders if he might be wrong - damaged, broken, failing, to be feeling curiosity at the idea of a name. He knows it's likely a side effect of the duration of the mission - they've lost time during their capture and he doesn't know how much, how long it's been since he last sat in the chair, underwent HYDRA's conditioning. He suddenly feels agitated, himself, wanting the aid of the drugs he knows will take effect soon. He knows he needs them, and suddenly, he wonders if he's gone through this before - this withdrawal, after too long out of the chair, and he simply doesn't remember it. He finds himself disliking the idea, disliking the distraction it causes, and the agitation it elicits in his fellow asset. He wants to be good, to be compliant, not for HYDRA, but for his partner. To preserve the partnership that means more to him than he’s ever cared to explore, and more than he’s ever, ever let on, to anyone. He is obedient. He is not stupid.
But the idea of the SSR lying to sway the assets to their side is plausible - more than plausible, and they both know it. And now, the drugs are starting to work their way through his system, the elevated heart rate associated with the adrenaline spike of injury and healing speeding an already speedy process. "Must've been," he finally agrees, after a few moments of silence that might have been mistaken for the end of the conversation, during which his eyes have started to go dull as the niggling importance of those names starts to lose its luster and fades into the background. Something in the Captain almost visibly relaxes, in those few moments of silence, as the concern starts to simply slide away, and the matter at hand, the mission and its priorities, reassert their importance.
After those few moments, he feels... calm. Focused. Satisfied, and with it comes a sense of relief. He isn't too broken to finish the mission, and his technicians will recondition him once they've reported back and received their retrieval orders.
It only makes sense for the Soldier to take the first watch. The Captain would have suggested it if the Soldier hadn't said it first; he simply nods, eyes that have now gone their familiar shade of dull, glazed blue still flicking around the clearing in an ingrained need to check for potential threats, before he closes his eyes and simply says, "Wake me in four hours and I'll take watch until dawn." Then he drops off into sleep easily and almost imperceptibly, head tilted back and pillowed against the hard rock serving as their shelter, while his body stays pressed up against the Soldier’s warmth, as though seeking that warmth even while trying to share his own.
The Captain is the strongest man on the planet - with the Red Skull long gone, it is unarguably the truth. Stronger than the Winter Soldier, even, although the metal prosthesis levels the playing field somewhat, and the differences in their fighting styles would surely make things interesting, if they truly went toe to toe. For all that there’s plenty of interest in seeing that, HYDRA has never pitted the two assets genuinely against each other, for several reasons that included the possibility of permanently damaging one of them, as well as the possibility of disrupting whatever strange rapport exists between them. While there’s no trace of the friendship shared by the two men that have been alternately buried and erased by years of conditioning, mind wipes, and drug therapy, there’s something in the way that the two assets can function like clockwork that HYDRA hasn’t wanted to touch. It’s too valuable, so long as it’s monitored and regulated, and pitting the two men against each other in a genuine battle would be counterproductive.
Regardless, the Captain is not a vulnerable man, nor does he act like one - no, he acts the part he is meant to play, the weapon, the asset, the tool best suited to many of HYDRA’s best-laid plans to insinuate just a little more order into the world, because its residents can’t be trusted to do it themselves. And yet… there are times when the Captain acts - unintentionally, unaware - vulnerable. Times that the handlers have noted he spends long transport flights huddled up asleep against the Winter Soldier, as though trying to burrow back into the shape and size of a smaller man, as though trying to fit himself beside the other asset in a way that will complement him, rather than overpower him. It’s how he sleeps now, and for all the pain and the cold and the hunger, he sleeps well until he’s woken for his watch and takes over without complaint while his partner gets some rest for himself.
The morning dawns bright and crisp and clear; the Captain’s shoulder throbs in time with his heart, stiff but no longer bleeding, a sign that the wound has started to close up, but it's questionable whether it's a benefit or a drawback. With the bullet still lodged against muscle and bone that began to knit overnight, his arm is less mobile and more painful in the morning. Still, he says nothing, only holds it as still as he can as he keeps watch, calculating how he'll need to adjust his movement and balance and strategies to compensate if they're attacked. He can fight one-armed - has fought one-armed, during training sessions and evaluation scenarios, both planned and unplanned - and he refuses to let the injury slow their progress further. They have a goal: reach the village, find a way to contact HYDRA, and remain invisible until extraction. They only have a few days' worth of injections and emergency rations, and further delay is unacceptable.
They set off in the early morning light; now the Captain is hindered only by pain, and not bleeding, and they make better time because of it. The village turns out to be relatively quiet, and the assets choose a ski lodge on the outskirts of town with a large "CLOSED FOR THE SEASON" sign across the doors. There’s a fine layer of dust on the surfaces inside, but a pantry stocked with nonperishable goods, running water, and electricity.
Until the storm hits.
It’s mid-afternoon when the light outside the lodge’s big windows begin to fade. The assets have eaten a full meal (admittedly, of beans and soup, but neither complains, because both know that nutrition outweighs palatability, and the emergency rations should remain for emergencies) and the Captain has fashioned a sling for his aching, stiff arm from strips of bedsheets. They’ve developed a plan to steal down into the village proper after dusk, to break into one of the buildings and send out a signal, because the lodge may have electricity, but its communications - telephone - are dead. Someone apparently forgot to pay the bill. Or perhaps the service was switched off for the season. Either way, it makes the Captain antsy.
But dusk starts falling too soon - and then the assets discover it’s not dusk, but the big, boiling, dark clouds of a snowstorm that’s blocked out the sun and begun sending pelting pellets of ice and snow against the glass of the windows. They're standing several feet away from the windows - both know better than to approach the glass, where a sniper might reach them - when the lights flicker. The wind picks up, the icy sheets assailing the windows intensify, and everything electronic in the lodge goes quiet and dark at once. The assets look at each other and they know - this is going to complicate a complicated mission even further.
Never before has the Winter Soldier felt relief at seeing the suppressant take effect. There hadn't been any reason to.
They move out not long after dawn and it's business as usual, at least on the surface. He takes point – as always – and they travel more or less in single file through the forest, spaced out far enough that they minimize the damage from any traps the SSR might've set out here, but not far enough away that each asset can't come to the other's aid. Breaths come out in little puffs of white fog, the chill slowly trying to sneak through his clothes. While they move, he multi-tasks. Assesses the areas for threats – wildlife, terrain, agents, traps – and the whole time he's running a mental tally of what little supplies they have. Physical and mental stressors aren't new but the idea that the Captain might run out of injections? That's a new one his training hadn't prepared him for. The Winter Soldier wonders as they hit the outskirts of the village if there are contingencies in place. Maybe his partner will go comatose if he doesn't receive the injections to level him out. Maybe he'll go with the worst case scenario and...take himself out of the equation. It's not feasible considering how valuable he is, how unique but still. It's possible. Better dead than wandering lost, torn from HYDRA doctrine.
He's almost glad when the storm darkens the sky. It's an immediate issue, one that distracts the Soldier from the uncharacteristic thoughts of “what if”.
“We should fortify,” the Winter Soldier says, his voice sounding hollow and strange in the dark as if it belongs to another man. “Give it a day.”
Clearly they aren't going anywhere soon. They might be molded to be the best, better, even, but he knows his limits, knows that in the end he's human and going out in a storm like that is suicide even though he knows they haven't bought enough time or distance from the SSR. The Winter Soldier's eyes flick up to the dead lights, wondering about that shed in the back he's fairly sure has a generator. Maybe he hasn't been in this specific lodge but he's been in a few – once, he thinks, for deep cover, before they decided to assign the Captain with his whole body that won't raise questions the way his does. He remembers snow and bumping his back against something metal and plastic and someone (the little fish leading to the big fish, most likely) hugging him and unaware of the knife in the dark. Mostly he remembers disabling the generator to kill the lights and some security grid. This place might have a generator that he'll take a look at once he finds warmer clothes, hopefully a flashlight. It doesn't cross his mind that the Captain should go in his place. Not with his injuries. And maybe it's something more, something he doesn't have words for. Doesn't want the words for.
The lodge is cleared. With the snowstorm, even he has to admit it's unlikely they'll have company for a few hours.
It's then that Soldier steps away from edge of the darkening window, reaching up to shutter the blinds in the unlikely probability there's a sniper out there who could do what two of HYDRA's very best couldn't. He reaches up and undoes the clasp with one hand, the fur-lining of his collar pulling away as he moves from clasp to clasp. He begins to peel off the first layer of his clothes, glancing back at the Captain. He can't help it: he automatically sizes him up, searching for any sign of more questions, more uncharacteristic wondering of “what if”.
“Let's get situated. Clean our kit while we can,” case in point; the fur-lined jacket coated with blood. Most of it isn't his, but he's been taught to respect cleanliness standards when he can, “ - and then assess.”
Assessment usually means finding out where they are on weapons, food, other supplies...and to be honest, that was one of the first things they did. Habit, basically. He falls back on doing it again (he'll call it “thorough” even if it's an excuse) because it's safer than that alien idea of downtime. No handlers. No possibility of trigger words bringing him to heel if he doesn't perform. The Winter Soldier doesn't understand fear in the conventional sense, but he does know when he underperforms. He knows that the Captain hasn't underperformed before and he doesn't want to be there to witness a possible first. So he focuses on what's on front of him, on the living, breathing asset with a sling that could use work, and he shoves the questions about Rogers and Barnes to the back of his mind.
He retreats away from the windows to the bar, folding his jacket and leaving it against the counter before facing the Captain. Old, familiar scar tissue peeps out from under the sleeve of his tank-top – more familiar, even, than his partner, angry red, waxy raised skin from where his metal arm meets his shoulder. He doesn't remember how he got it. But in the last forty eight hours, it's the most predictable thing in the room. When he turns toward the Captain, there's the barest of frowns on his face. Ability to fight isn't the only thing he's assessing his partner for as he asks:
The Captain turns away from the ice and snow pattering against the window as the other asset speaks. The Soldier is right, of course - going out into a storm like this would be pointless. Even with their enhanced senses and stamina, they could easily become turned around, lost, confused. They’ll do HYDRA no good dead, or worse, recaptured by the SSR. As the blinds close out the quickly-darkening sky, the Captain takes a breath, and then a step back from the window. He nods, all that’s needed to show he agrees, and follows his partner away from the glass and back into the interior of the lodge’s main floor.
As the Soldier shucks his coat, the Captain gives what’s become their current safehouse another look. He catalogued everything about their surroundings as they came in, but now, he looks again. It’s unlikely that he missed anything - missing something is not acceptable, so it’s simply been trained and programmed out of him - but now he considers their surroundings as something that will need to support them for more than just a few hours. Possibly more than a day, though that thought sits sour in his gut. His eyes fall on the lodge's large, central fireplace - this village might be small, but this lodge must be successful, because the interior is dusty but modern (which is a funny term, given that he doesn't know what he's comparing it to, can't remember what buildings looked like in the past, only knows that his eyes follow the clean lines, the open spaces, and think, "contemporary." He doesn't know where he learned the term, but it's there in his head nonetheless). The fireplace is huge, and there's even a stack of (similarly dusty) wood beside it, but then his eyes track up to the large stone chimney and he can visualize without trying the plume of smoke a fire would create.
In a snowstorm, the smoke could be lost. But the SSR is likely watching this village as a potential escape route. His eyes flick back to the covered windows, as though he can see the snow and ice he can still hear faintly tap-tapping against the glass from the outside, and - no. A fire would give away the fact that this lodge is occupied when it shouldn't be. They'll camp cold tonight.
The question incites a reaction almost like the Captain has been startled out of his thoughts; his eyes refocus on his companion, noting the frown on his face, the way he’s stripped down to his tank-top already. The Captain assesses his arm, pulls away the makeshift sling, and starts to unzip his own uniform jacket, one-handed. When he tries to slide the fabric off his shoulders, it sticks to the injured arm with the distinct slick pull of tacky blood, even though the shoulder’s been field-dressed. The injury hurts, but he’s been trained to disregard pain, withstand torture, so he grits his teeth and pulls the jacket all the way off, letting it drop to the ground. He flexes the fingers of his injured hand, curls them into a fist - and the motion sends hot stabs of pain through his arm, his fingers moving jerkily, as stiffly as if they were machines, like the Soldier’s, in need of repair.
“It’s fine,” he says, shortly - before he even realizes what he’s saying, or why he’s saying it. It’s not fine, and the assets have been trained into honesty, into complete and utter full disclosure, because an asset hiding a hurt or holding on to information is not an asset, but a liability.
He blinks, shakes his head a little, and this time, he says, “It’s not healing properly. The bullet is preventing the joint from repairing itself.”
The technicians will have to remove it. The technicians should remove it. But this operation is quickly going more FUBAR in each minute than it was the last, and the Captain’s eyes drop down to the Soldier’s steady metal fingers, imagining them gripped around the hilt of a knife. It's not an ideal situation. Digging around in his shoulder joint with a knife could damage it extensively - joints can obviously be replaced, but both the Captain and the Soldier know that one of them is whole, and the other is not. Two assets with metal prostheses is not what HYDRA wants. So he swallows any suggestion he might have made, knowing that although the wound won't heal until the bullet is removed, it will heal cleanly once it is. The pain he'll suffer in the meantime is nothing when compared to his dedication, his importance to HYDRA.
His thoughts settle back on tonight. It’s as the Soldier said - they’ll get situated, clean their kit. Wait a day. Then they’ll reassess. Food and water aren’t a problem - water, least of all, with a snowstorm raging outside - but now the Captain’s eyes drop to the pouch the Soldier is always kitted out with, and his mouth forms the words before he can even really think them. “I need another injection”
There aren’t many left. He should be afraid of what will happen, if they run out. If the mission goes on long enough, they will. He knows he should fear it, just as HYDRA taught him to fear so much else, but - he doesn’t. There’s something strange curling in his gut, at the possibility, and it’s the same strange, foreign feeling associated with those names - Rogers and Barnes. Not fear, not revulsion, but an almost sort of detached curiosity.
Technically it's fine but there's a little voiceless part of the Soldier looking at his partner and thinking to himself that doesn't look fine.
He makes a small sound under his breath, an almost grunt.
The injection is delivered as usual with no questions asked. There is a hint of silent hesitation, however, from the Winter Soldier that is entirely due to the fact that it's too soon. That injection should be good for a few hours more - the fact that his partner looks him in the face and after a honest assessment, says he needs it sooner is...alarming. Maybe it doesn't have enough weight behind the word but it's the closest he has to describe what he's feeling. Enough that he breaks protocol to reach out and steady the other asset, steel hand cold against his shoulder as he places the spent injector on the counter with more care than is necessary. It's deliberate. His handler might have even called it for what it was: stalling for time, unnecessary dragging of his feet because he doesn't know what to say, how to approach this particular scenario.
"If we're out here too long, we'll need to start doing partial doses," the Winter Soldier says.
Even his flat-lined voice can't exactly hide the dread. It's less than ideal but it's better than running out and his partner suddenly going cold turkey. Side effects of partial doses: unknown. It might stretch them out a few more days at best, assuming they have fresh handlers on the way. If not...it's going to be rough. Usually when he looks at the Captain, he sees security, safety. Pure trust, going both ways. He doesn't fear him the way he does the handlers, the techs and their files in the steelbound folders. But that was before, knowing his partner was compliant the way he should be. Now that's gone.
Now he's suddenly reminded about the differences between them, both in their compliance-training and physically.
The Winter Soldier curls his metal fist around the empty injector, crushing it into a useless ball before he lets it drop down the sink's garbage disposal.
"What should we do with our...spare time?" From the faint distaste in his voice, the Soldier isn't a fan of this concept. He finds it threatening in the same way the idea of them having names is: inherently wrong, the kind of thing that leaves a film on the roof of his mouth and his tongue. "We've fortified and assessed. There isn't much we can do but wait."
And he's wired right now, wide-awake, and it's a toss-up of it being the adrenaline and worry about his partner's degrading state. So far he's mostly fine. But the doses losing their potency means the Captain has a constantly ticking timing above him and no data on what happens when it hits zero. If push comes to shove, he has his orders for "asset denial - another term for murdering his partner. The problem is the Winter Soldier has no idea if he can actually carry that order out. It doesn't help that he's sure the other asset knows about the order, or at least must suspect.
The concept of "awkward" doesn't yet exist for the Soldier but it's slowly coming back, this uneasy little twist in his gut that he has no name for. It intensifies as he realizes the silence isn't comfortable anymore and for a moment, he starts experiencing the shades of regret.
The Captain stands quietly while his partner delivers the injection; something in his blood is starting to feel a little wild, and he knows it’s too soon, but he craves the quiet of the medication almost as much as some small, hidden, shunned part of him fears it. He knows it’s for his own good, knows that the quietness that washes over him allows him to do HYDRA’s good work, that he will grow wild and unpredictable, he will break without it.
There’s something in him, as he watches the Soldier silently uncap the needle and inject the contents of the small plastic vial into his neck, that fears for the other asset, if the Captain were to go wild. He can’t remember, exactly, whether he’s ever suffered from withdrawal in the past, although it makes sense to him that HYDRA would have tested it, and tested it extensively. It must be why they’ve warned him so meticulously against it - he does have memories, vague, repetitious, of lab-coated men and women standing in front of him as he’s released from the chair, holding out an injector and explaining he is to use it at regular intervals, that his partner and handlers will carry spares on every mission. It is of vital importance that he stay medicated, but if he’s not…
If he’s not, something terrible must happen. It’s almost enough to push the lingering curiosity about Barnes and Rogers from his mind - or maybe that’s just the injection starting to take effect. He takes a deep breath.
He watches the Soldier crumple the injector like paper in his metal hand, and knows that fearing for the other asset is… a waste of time. Pointless. The Soldier may or may not be as physically strong as the Captain, but he has his own strengths. He is cunning. He can survive on his own.
The Soldier is an asset of HYDRA. He is valuable, but all assets are ultimately expendable.
The Captain has to repeat this to himself, more than once, before it settles, clear in his gut. Now, perhaps, finally, the medication is taking effect. His eyes, duller, flick back up to his partner’s face at the words, and he nods, once - agreement. Partial doses are wiser than the alternative. “I’ll set up a new schedule,” he says, because like the Soldier, the Captain doesn’t like anything approaching free time. His time is always structured, always purposed, and even when he sleeps during transport, it serves the greater purpose of ensuring he is refreshed and clear-headed and ready to further HYDRA’s goals.
But the Soldier is right, too - they’ve done all there is to do here. The Captain considers; then, “We should rest, refuel, and compare our intel,” he decides. “Ensure we both have a clear picture of the base, the personnel who handled us.” Those personnel are dead, of course, but who they were and what they said will be valuable to HYDRA. Writing this intel down would be a mistake, but the assets both have excellent memories. Still, they had different experiences, and what the Captain is really doing is saying, subtly, that if only one of them returns to HYDRA, then both of them should have a full briefing prepared.
Because he knows that the Soldier must have instructions on how to handle him, what to do if the Captain’s medication is unavailable and he becomes a danger to the mission. He holds his partner’s eyes, and perhaps doesn’t really improve on the awkward silence when he asks, in all seriousness, “Are you authorized to tell me your orders regarding my medication withdrawal?”
They both know there are orders. The Captain understands that those orders might be confidential, need-to-know, and he might not need to know.
But it would be - a comfort, to know there is a plan in place to handle him.
For a second he pauses, taken aback, and the next moment it occurs to him that his hesitation is unacceptable. The Winter Soldier's mouth presses into a line before he tilts his head, reaching up to tuck his hair behind his ear. The stare he gives his partner is this side of judging, as if he's wondering why he's asking.
Still. Racking his standing orders, what he read, what was implanted through the chair and through screaming his lungs hoarse, he can't come up with a reason why he can't. Apparently no one thought this would happen - he knows he was one of those.
"SOP," the Asset says after a pregnant, uncomfortable silence where for a split second, his eyes flicker away from his partner's. "If you run out of suppressants and you're...unmanageable, you're to be removed from rotation."
It's a clinical way of saying he'll be killed the second the Winter Soldier has an opening.
Hearing it aloud, though, is different. The words feel wrong in his mouth even though it's the right thing to do, the correct thing. Rolling it over in his mind, the Soldier realizes he doesn't want to talk about SOP anymore than he wants to talk about the SHIELD agents they ran into only a few hours ago. Things had been easier when it was the mission, when his sole goal was to sight down his scope and depress the trigger and confirm the red blossom of his target's skull evaporating. Oddly enough...he misses that. It's another sign that he's starting to become unstable himself, the very thought sending a shudder up his back.
As if to hide it, the asset reluctantly returns to the first order of business: the SHIELD encounter.
"I'm concerned about what they said," he starts. He leans against the counter, arms crossed over his chest, a chrome finger unconsciously tapping. "Those names. We don't know if they're old covers or something else." (He doesn't want to know what that "something else" could be). "If they have these kinds of details, they might have other classified information they're sitting on."
The Winter Soldier dances around the real meat of the problem, instead choosing to focus on HYDRA first, the men who they used to be never. He searches his partner for signs that he's just as worried. There's a part of him dimly aware the Captain is...attractive. It makes sense he would be, considering his undercover work, how close he needs to get to people. He's good looking but there aren't any specific identifying markers like scars, nothing to really pick him out of a line-up. Ideally people will find him attractive and trustworthy and they couldn't put their finger on why. Sometimes, where he's been away from the suppression chair for long periods of time, the Soldier wonders if that's one of the reasons why he's always felt close to the other asset. Maybe he isn't immune to that either.
He hopes it won't impact his ability to carry out his orders.
"Too bad we couldn't get one of them alive. I would've liked to carry out an interrogation."
The Soldier balks, just for a second - it’s maybe the most human behavior the Captain’s ever observed in him, but he’s not really in a place to acknowledge it at the moment. If this were a normal mission, if the Captain were feeling like himself, the cold, focused precision weapon that he is, he would have noted the expression, the way the Soldier hides his hesitation with a small, seemingly innocuous motion. But the assets waste no motion, and they don’t hesitate when they’re asked questions.
Not unless they’ve been compromised - like the Captain is now, so he doesn’t file that information away, instead simply waiting for the answer.
When it comes, he’s not surprised - of course he’s not, of course that’s exactly what would happen. It’s what should happen. The functional asset should be the one to return to HYDRA, they have no use for a broken tool. He knows his own return is to be prioritized, it’s clear in every mission operating procedure, when the Soldier takes point, clears buildings, provides cover. But if it’s just the two of them, and there is information that HYDRA needs… the more reliable source should survive.
He nods, nothing deceptive in his gaze or his voice when he says, “I understand. Good.” It is good. He can’t say why, but… it is good. There’s no guarantee the Soldier will find an opening, and the Captain can’t guarantee that he’ll give him one. But it’s a plan to follow, and it’s enough. That, he does file away, tries to shrug it on like he shrugs on all his other missions, but it’s not like the fluid ease of stepping out of the chair and knowing what needs to be done. It’s less efficient, it’s less sure, but it’s still a plan, and he can try to follow it.
That plan having been established, the Soldier moves on to the Captain’s suggestion, though in a roundabout way. Still, “I’m concerned, too,” the Captain admits, though there’s little concern in his voice; it’s more detached interest. “If SHIELD has knowledge of past missions, they could decipher a pattern.” And he’s not stupid enough to think that all the files would have been destroyed with the base. There would have been backups, on paper or computer, elsewhere. “But that won’t be a mission for us,” he adds, because while they excel in stealth, they are weapons, first and foremost. Even when they need to infiltrate, blend in, deceive, it’s always with a death as the end goal. This will be a mission for another department - and while thinking that soothes him, in a way, as he feels the utter perfection of HYDRA’s smooth workings, the way the departments and pieces fit together to create a stronger whole, there’s still part of him that does, in fact, feel distressed at the thought of leaving that information in the hands of someone else, while he is taken to a chair and those names, Rogers and Barnes, are wiped from his mind forever.
The Soldier goes on, and the Captain’s lips twitch; one corner lifts, in a small, dry expression that some might call the barest hint of a sardonic smile, as he shifts where he’s standing, trying to ease the ache in his shoulder, which has become a constant white-hot spike in the back of his mind. “It would have given us something to do. Idle hands - “
He stops, frowning. Idle hands… idle hands, what? He doesn’t know why those words came from his mouth, and he doesn’t know what comes after them. But something comes after them. It’s… it’s a phrase, he thinks. (He doesn’t have the context to consider it an idiom.) Did he hear a handler utter the phrase? It must have been on this mission, he doesn’t recall past missions clearly enough, only with a vague sense that actions have been completed, that HYDRA has been satisfied.
He shakes his head slightly, as if to clear the words away. “We’ll just have to report fully on what we saw and heard.” And hope it will be enough that they won’t be punished for it; he’s been punished for incomplete reports, for steps missed, for sketchy intel before. He knows that, deep in his bones, just like he knows he doesn’t want it to happen again. “If our handlers hadn’t - ”
He stops himself again; questioning their handlers is not allowed. It’s not their place. Handlers have been punished before, but never on the words of an asset. The tool has no right to judge the actions of the hand that holds it; even so, the Captain glances at the Soldier, wondering if he feels the same way. If he knows just how… how lame-brained the actions their handlers took were.
The Captain blinks. He’s starting to feel fatigued. He’s starting to feel like he’s fighting an uphill battle, just to think straight. He’s starting to feel, in the pit of his stomach, worried.
The Winter Soldier normally would enjoy that little change in expression, how it just barely tugs at the corner of his mouth, so subtle a handler would miss it. Not another fellow asset. Not him. Somehow it used to feel like he was the only one meant to see it.
This time, though, he doesn't feel any closer to his partner. Now it's starting to feel like a sign of the weakness poisoning him.
"They used poor judgment," he finishes for the Captain. "If they aren't dead, they will be once we report their failures."
It's merely culling out the undesirable, the weakest holding the others back. And, and this is something he isn't sure the Captain feels too but he suspects he does, the Winter Soldier might even derive a small amount of pleasure at his old handlers being liquidated. It won't stop the suppression or the chair or the cryofreeze. He might not even remember what happened to them after this, if he's even alive himself. But for now, in this very moment, he dares to indulge himself for all of two seconds. They failed HYDRA, they failed their assets, and
The hesitation from the Captain doesn't go unnoticed. The whole time he stares at his partner, mentally stripping him for other signs of imperfections like he's a faulty rifle, blue eyes flicking across his face, his body.
It's a few hours later after further observation that the Winter Soldier decides to accelerate his plans. The degradation is happening even faster despite the injection and if he wants even a chance to deliver his partner to HYDRA alive, he needs to move fast. Incapacitate him and then, if it continues, he can process him out of rotation and still have a fresh body to deliver. The idea still sits wrong, festers and curdles, and the Soldier is disturbed to admit he almost debates backing out when he glances at his partner, asleep on the couch facing the boarded up windows. It doesn't stop him from slipping out just before dawn to search the ski lodge again, this time it isn't for weapons or for food, water.
He needs something that can sedate an asset.
There isn't much. He can probably poison the Asset long enough to get him restrained but after that, it's touch and go. The man has a higher metabolism than he does, a stronger immune system. If he doesn't hit him hard and fast, there's a strong chance that this won't be as one-sided as he wants it to be, even with the Captain's injuries.
It's the hesitation that costs the Winter Soldier. He collects some bleach to force-feed his partner, some rope to tie him down, but he...stops. Stands there looking down at the man who he's carried out countless missions with. When he's asleep, he looks a little younger, a little relaxed, and it's almost like looking at someone else, someone better. Someone he, for less than a second, feels almost regret for. That moment passes as the Winter Soldier takes in a slow, measured breath, and throws himself at his partner. He sees the other asset's eyes fly open at the last second, too late to pull back.
He commits.
The Winter Soldier plants himself so he can sit on the Captain, straddling his torso even as he snaps a punch at his face and then goes for trying to grip him by the throat, the other hand coming around with the bottle of bleach.
o7 please feel free to fill in anything or let me know if something needs to be changed!
The Captain manages to fight off the fatigue for several hours more but eventually, he’s got to admit that he needs to rest. Even for just a little while, because the pain in his arm is wearing, and the waves crashing against the barriers HYDRA has erected in his mind is wearing, and, although he wouldn’t have been able to put it into words, had he been asked, the way the Winter Soldier is watching him, like an evaluator searching for the chinks in the armor, the cracks in the facade, is most wearing of all.
He can feel, under his skin, that the world is waiting for him to crack. He refuses - HYDRA built him stronger than that - but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice.
He announces he’s going to sleep for a few hours; couches it in terms of the Soldier taking the next sleeping shift, and the Captain standing guard after that. He doesn’t have long to think about whether it’s safe to sleep or not, because it doesn’t take long after he slumps onto the dusty couch that he’s out like a light.
And he stays out, until the Soldier makes his move.
His eyes fly open only seconds before the other asset is on him; the Captain has the ability to snap from sleep to wakefulness in an instant, but the Soldier is fast and in that instant, he's had enough time to land his body on the Captain's, to slam his head back with a punch, to put a hand to his throat and bring up a bottle of -
The smell hits him full in the face. It's bleach, and the Captain's mind works lightning-fast, still at a disadvantage but it doesn't take long to catch up. Bleach won't kill him, but it will incapacitate him, subdue him long enough for the Soldier to neutralize him. Part of the Captain's impressed, maybe even a little proud, in a way that's welling up, so telling of the way the suppression is crumbling inside of him that he feels it at all, at the ingenuity of his partner. It's not a bad idea, pal, but you know I'm not gonna go down easy.
But it's that hesitation on his own part that means he gets a faceful of the stuff. His teeth are clenched, so the amount he ingests is minimal, but the rest of it splashes across his face and into his eyes, burning white-hot before the world starts to fuzz out at the edges, even as the Captain brings up his injured arm in a swinging block that shoots pain through him like a lance, but sends the bottle flying out of the Soldier's grip, somewhere behind the couch. He hears it clatter to the ground, its contents gurgling out over the floor, but it's the least of his worries now. He's still face to face with the other asset, and no matter how fast he blinks, the pain in his eyes only gets worse, and the gauze-like curtain that’s descending on his vision grows thicker.
It'll likely clear up on its own, as the serum in his veins sloughs off the damaged corneal cells, regrows new ones. But it will probably get worse before it gets better, and healing will take time - likely hours - and he doesn't have time right now. He has an asset that will put him down if he doesn't turn the tables first.
His programming says he should go for the kill. His instincts, if that's what they are, balk, and what happens isn't what he's been trained for. If he acted on programming, on training, the Soldier's neck would have been snapped in seconds, the limp, lifeless body pushed to the ground and let cool. There would be a full report made, once he's re-established contact with HYDRA, an explanation, a mission briefing, and complete and utter submission to the chair for reconditioning -
Reconditioning, he must need reconditioning, he must be breaking down, but he's not broken; there's something else coming up through the cracks, and that something else fights like a cornered animal, but an animal that only strikes as much and as far as is needed, and no further. An animal capable of feeling... sympathy ? Remorse? Mercy?
The way it should have gone down, one asset truly against the other, should have left the lodge with only one asset still breathing.
The way it does go down, at the end of it, has the Soldier face-down on the ground, cheek pressed hard into the thin carpet with the Captain pinning him down with his sheer bulk and no small amount of will, panting hard, battered on two fronts now by pain that's starting to scream louder than he has the capacity to tune it out. His injured shoulder feels like it's made of liquid fire, the arm hanging loosely, uselessly at his side almost like it's a prosthetic, like the Winter Soldier might look after a nasty EMP blast took out the metal that replaced flesh on one side. His eyes feel like spikes driving into his skull, his vision largely gone (and a decent swath of his face reddened and burning, making him look like a burn victim) as he twists the Soldier's left arm behind him at an angle that's almost certainly unnatural, in a grip as hard as steel locked around the metal wrist with his one good hand, and his elbow dug dangerously into the Soldier's back at the place where his spine curves up from shoulder to neck, a vulnerable spot that the right amount of pressure, applied in the right way with the force of a super soldier behind it could snap the vertebrae, and paralyze, if not kill.
it's cool! We might need a slight timeksip if you want to knock out Bucky though
The mistake is less than a second but it costs him in the end.
The Captain's cornered and that's when he's most dangerous - the fact he's able to operate like this even when he has a faceful of bleach, his eyes a reddened, ruined mess, says all it needs to about the thoroughness of his training. How their similarities end and he's the inferior model, the expendable one who can't compete against the original. That same training ends up with the Winter Soldier pinned in the worst position possible, his partner's full weight sitting on him as he squirms and struggles and grunts almost angrily under the other man, boots scrapping against the carpet as he tries to find purchase and can't. Not when the other asset's sitting at the perfect location to keep him from bucking him off.
The sound that drags out of the Winter Soldier isn't a whine - it's angrier, desperate; he can't carry out his objective and he knows exactly what that elbow means. He's been on the opposite end before. He might as well be dead. Even if he can somehow shove it off, the Captain's in the perfect position to hook his arm around his throat and roll over, crocodile style, controlling his body with his legs, and apply the right pressure against the carotid arteries. It wouldn't take him long to incapacitate or kill, even hurt as he is. He's superior to any other man but he still needs to breathe, still needs blood to deliver oxygen through his brain. The fact that his partner hasn't committed to either route somehow feels...wrong.
It takes a Soldier a tortured moment to realize this is what frustration must feel like.
His teeth grit against the floor. Carpet fibers dig into his cheek. "Do it or don't!"
For once his voice actually has a shred of emotion as it spikes past the usual monotone they both share. Used to share.
His metal hand twitches against the Captain's grip, the tiny internal pistons inside the chassis groaning in protest as he tries to force himself free. It wasn't built for the force. It shows as tiny sparks flare blue within the seams and his finger spasm as he starts losing control of them, joints dancing before he go limp. The Winter Soldier's face sets in a snarl as he continues to struggle even though self-preservation should've told him to stop, to cool it, to save this fight for another day.
They might not have another day. Not if his partner's already this far gone, despite the injection.
The thought of the Captain running around, free of HYDRA, turns his blood cold. It's wrong. Impossible. The concept of sinful doesn't exist in his world but he still has a deep, curdling sensation of disgust and unbridled fear forming in his gut, knotting, uncurling like a snake about to strike. It takes hold of him, hammers at the cold logical walls of his own conditioning and instead of lying obediently still so he can get another chance, another day, the Winter Soldier instead increases his struggling. At the rate he's going, he might get lucky, might get in the right position so that elbow slips and he can turn the tables.
So much for going down easy.
welp have a knocked-out bucky and a ridiculously long tag
Do it or don’t, the Winter Soldier snarls, and there’s something about the barely-there frustration in his voice that hits the Captain like a punch to the gut. His body flinches - doesn’t let go, doesn’t waver, but still flinches, even as the Soldier’s metal fingers twist in his grip and he grits his own teeth, squeezing the wrist harder, hearing and feeling the give in the metal and mechanics, feeling the instant the mechanism gives out.
He won’t do it. He knows that - he’s known it from the second he got the Soldier in this position, down on the floor under him. He isn’t going to kill the other asset, not even in self-defense, not even when he knows, deep down in this sour knot in his gut, that the Soldier is following orders, the same way he should be. He’s slipping; he can feel it, terrified, shaking, knowing that when HYDRA comes, when they find him, the recalibration will only hurt worse. The pain and the punishment will only last longer for an asset that’s losing its ability to carry out its only function.
And yet, deeper down, past that shaking, desperate thing that wants to know why the injections aren’t working, why his programming is breaking down… there’s something else. There’s something still trying to fight its way to the surface, and that thing… That thing has…
“Mission,” he whispers, almost more to himself, almost for a second as though he’s forgetting the Soldier is there, pinned down and struggling beneath him. “I have a mission,” he says, he promises himself and the Soldier, and he might have said more, might not, but it doesn’t matter, because just then, the body under his jerks and starts struggling, harder than before.
The Captain grits his teeth, and he doesn’t have a choice - lightning-fast, he drops the metal arm and grabs the Soldier by the back of the neck, hand almost a blur. He raises the body under his, and slams it back down onto the floor. He does it again, and then a third time, just to make sure that when the body of the Winter Soldier goes limp, it’s not because he’s faking it.
Even so, he stays where he is for a long, long minute, his own heart pounding and breath coming ragged. There’s the pain, flaring up in his arm, his eyes, his head, and there’s the body under his, now just dead weight, but it won’t stay there for long. And there’s… there’s the mission, this thing he can feel bubbling up from his gut, the parameters foggy, hidden, but they’re there. They’re coming. Like his ruined vision, they’re not something he can grasp right now. But they’ll get there. They’ll slide into focus.
He thinks he saw rope, in the Winter Soldier’s hands, just before he jumped. He has to crawl around like a blind man on the floor, holding his injured arm close and balancing his weight between thighs and abs, but he finds it. He grits his teeth through the pain as he turns the Winter Soldier over by feel, binds his hands and feet, and props him up against the base of the couch.
Then the Captain scoots around and sits, shoulder to shoulder, with the Soldier’s unconscious body. The weight of the Soldier, slumped against his own uninjured shoulder, feels… good. It feels calming, it lets him focus on something other than the burning, white-hot pain from the bullet that won’t let the bones of his shoulder heal around it and the bleach still burning its way through his eyes. Eventually, he can start to see light, shadows, blurred edges. He thinks he can feel his eyes healing, cell by cell, slow going, but doggedly moving forward, rebuilding.
He wonders if that’s what’s happening to his mind, too. He wonders if it’s been damaged, if it’s trying to rebuild. It feels like… like a long-buried, rusty and damaged protocol is surfacing, as the suppression of the drugs and the too-long-ago session in the chair start losing their grip on him. Without the suppression of the drugs keeping it where it belongs -
For a moment, he's terrified - he thinks that he must be broken, that HYDRA had suppressed him for good reason, had kept him on this strict regimen of drugs for a reason, and that this baseline protocol must somehow be so terrible and so strong that it couldn't be wiped, only held at bay, and now it's rearing its ugly head -
Rearing its ugly head, like a hydra. Like a monster that needs to be put down. Like -
"Fuck," he says, his head drooping, back bowing until his forehead's nearly touching the his knees as he draws his legs up, feet flat on the floor. They tried to burn something out of his mind, but they couldn’t. So they tried to bury it, and now it’s awake. “There’s something I have to… do.” He’s not sure what, but he knows, now, that there’s some task left unfinished, some aspect of his original protocols that wasn’t fulfilled. Did he fail, is that why HYDRA wipes him again and again, to eliminate his failure, erase it from existence? Or is it something else? “I’m compromised,” he says - admits, really, to the quiet air around them, to the sleeping - unconscious - Winder Soldier. “But I still have a mission.”
He doesn’t know how long they sit like that, with those words, I still have a mission, echoing over and over again through his head.
you say it like it's a surprise :P also with the right account
The first blow doesn't knock him out. It dazes the Soldier, renders his head ringing and his vision sparking. His teeth split his lip where he cuts against them, but he's still awake long enough to strain his neck for a moment as if that would be enough to stop the Captain from finishing the job.
The second one does him in.
After that the Winter Soldier's unconscious. It's a state that he fears in the lizard part of his brain that that he's never mentioned to anyone, a nothingness that howls with silence just like cryo. It isn't like the moments where he catches some sleep here and there, where sometimes he dreams; categorizes; reports to his handlers. It's pure nothing, unaccountable, and he can't tell exactly when he was restrained or when he started slumping toward his partner, head sagging, close enough that the handlers would've wondered if they remembered how to fraternize and maybe that would've made it into both their files.
He starts to revive after an hour or so, his head thundering and nausea rising, the Soldier automatically forcing down the bile by swallowing. Isn't the first time he's been unconscious. Isn't even the first time he's been knocked out by the Captain, either, because he remembers bits and pieces of their training sessions together, how sometimes he'd end up on the floor and there's be a gap before he wakes up getting dragged down a hall and the first thing he sees is his boots, wobbling, limp, and then he registers the taste of blood hanging metallic in his mouth. The Winter Soldier hadn't been pissed. Mostly he pretended to play dead and he'd enjoyed the sensation, the idea, that the Captain left a piece of him behind. It's that weakness that probably got him where he is now.
The Winter Soldier revives with a shudder and a grunt.
Normally when he wakes it's slow, quiet enough to pretend to be still out so he can access the situation and come up with some escape routes, some ambush points. This time it's uncoordinated like a normal man, losing whatever element of surprise he might've had. His eyes drift open reluctantly. Head hurts. Everything hurts, his arm isn't working - stupid of him to keep trying, in retrospect - and he can't spread his legs. Ankles tied. Arms too. Unacceptable.
His head lifts, the Winter Soldier's dark hair hanging in a tangled curtain in his face. The blood trailing from his nose and mouth has had time to dry into a dark crust he can feel as he scrunches face and wrinkles his nose and asks:
"...Mission?"
It comes out hoarse, a shade of suspicious. What mission? He gets that his partner has turned into the worst kind of liability seeing as the injections aren't holding, but the word "mission" rings a bell inside him. Hits him in the core of his own conditioning. He doubts the Captain's been assigned higher clearance for a mission he isn't part of - not with success record - but it isn't impossible. His ankles shift and bump against his partner as he tests the rope. Good knots. HYDRA good. Not surprising.
"You're compromised. Turn yourself in and HYDRA can help you," the Winter Soldier says quietly, his voice hoarse, his head ringing even as conditioning demands he trot out HYDRA's bottom line like it's from a pamphlet. "Do the right thing, Captain."
Even with his vision swimming he can see his partner isn't at his peak.
It's disturbing. Body language betrays him. The Winter Soldier isn't much for conversation unless he's been conditioned for it, but he can read the physical tells just fine. Everything about his partner sends up red flags: he's biting his lip, staring forward at nothing instead of a target, a point of interest like supplies or a weapon. His posture is in a weakened position, head bowed to rest against his knees instead of held up high.
The body next to him shudders, and the Captain feels both on edge and more relaxed, all at once. He lets the asset next to him claw his way back up into consciousness, taking as long as he likes, even though right now it feels like their time is limited, running thin. The storm outside is still raging, and likely will for hours to come. It could even be days before the snow and the wind abate; he remembers the briefing, the regional weather reports it had included, the instructions on what they and their handlers would do if weather compromised the mission timetable.
But those handlers are dead, and now it’s just him and the Winter Soldier - and his new (old?) mission, still slowly forming, nebulous and murky but growing sharper, clearly, piece by piece inside his head.
The mission that he isn’t sure how to explain, even as the Soldier lifts his head beside him. The Captain’s eyes are still healing, his vision murky but he can see just enough to imagine the rest of the picture, the blood crusting the Soldier’s nostrils, the way it’s scabbed along the top of his mouth, as he asks that simple question. Of course he’s asking - it’s the thing that has turned the Captain against him, in his mind, only what the Soldier doesn’t understand is that the Captain doesn’t want to stand against him. He never has, he knows that now. Every training session, every time he’d knocked the other asset to the ground, beat him into unconsciousness, was like a thorn twisting in his brain, a voice clamoring out of synch with the rest of the chorus telling him to comply. Telling him to follow HYDRA’s path.
HYDRA’s path… there’s something wrong with it. There’s some reason he’s supposed to sidestep off of it. And it has something to do with the Soldier. After an hour alone with his churning, half-buried thoughts, the Captain knows that much for sure, if not a whole lot else. It’s what makes him grit his teeth and shake his head when the Winter Soldier gives him the party line, the words at once hollow and whole, something the Soldier believes in just as much as the Captain no longer can.
HYDRA can’t help him, he thinks, and it’s like a revelation. It’s like that first spark that sets fire to the tinder, ignites what will soon enough become a blaze. It’s what makes him sit up, shoulder sliding against the other asset’s, looking him in the face, even if his gaze is just a little off, like a blind man trying to look you in the eye, only it’s a couple of inches off. He can see the other asset’s face, but it’s like a pale, shining oval set against the darker hair, the can vaguely see the outlines of features, the blue eyes, the blood-encrusted nose and mouth, in the dim light. The blinds are still closed, the sky still dark with the storm outside.
“I am doing the right thing,” he says, slow but sure, quiet but profound. His voice is plain, flat, clear, but there’s a quality underneath it that wasn’t there before. It’s subtle, but it’s steady. “I don’t know why, but I know that I am.”
He knows that won’t be enough to convince the Soldier. Of course it won’t - it’s vague, it’s unclear, it doesn’t comply. He is no longer compliant, and compliance is the foundation from which the assets were built. It’s why this deviation is the source of so much strife.
So he does something that he has learned never, ever to do in front of a handler. He does something that only the Winter Soldier could ever (has ever, maybe, has this happened before? He doesn’t know, can’t remember, and that frightens him, suddenly) bring him to do. He speaks his mind, he lets out a little of the secret he can feel, buried deep inside: “There’s a different protocol. I don’t think it’s HYDRA’s. I don’t think they can help me understand.”
There’s a pause; when he speaks, that thing coloring his voice has gotten stronger. “I want to understand what it is.”
He wants to know what this thing is they’ve buried, and to do that, they both know what needs to happen. He needs time. He needs to not go back in the chair. He can’t comply, or it will be covered up again, hidden from the light, and maybe he’ll never find it again. Or maybe he’s already found it a hundred times before. Maybe he's forgotten it a hundred times more.
The Winter Soldier listens and absorbs. What he picks up from his partner's tone of voice, the brief, still too long pauses? It isn't exactly instilling him with confidence.
"How do you know there's another protocol?" The Soldier's voice softens at the edges even as he stares at his partner like he's trying to bore right into his skull. "Maybe I can help you, if you let me.
Next order of business: if you can't immediately incapacitate a target, try to work your way into his/her good graces until you can. Whatever has contaminated the Captain's programming thankfully hasn't hit his: he's clear-headed, getting more so by the second as the ringing stops and his vision resolves. Parameters snap back into focus. Whatever pain he feels is shoved aside as a distraction, an indulgence that HYDRA won't allow and, therefore, he won't allow. The Winter Soldier's chin lifts as he swallows, jaw working, eyes closing for a second with what looks like a normal man's moment of weakness. The barest hint of blue peeks out as he stares at his partner. His face is ruined, inflamed and swelling and red...but even now he can see the signs that his advanced healing factor is kicking in, doing an even better job than his own. Bleach to the face would've taken him a day to recover from, at the minimum. At his estimate, it's probably been a few hours at most and the Captain's already got his eyes open.
For the first time in his memory, the Soldier experiences regret. If anyone should've gone off the reservation and gone rogue, it should've been him - he would've been easier to remove from rotation, would've been the easier loss for HYDRA to take. They could always make another like him. His partner, though. He's one of a kind, and right now he wishes he wasn't so...unique.
"We could do this together, just me and you," the Soldier adds. To the casual outsider, his voice is flat-lined, a borderline monotone as if he hadn't tried to kill a man who turned things around and introduced his face to the floor, the up-close and personal way. "You don't have to go at this alone."
For now he means it, because his mission requires it and because the naked truth is, he doesn't want to kill the other asset if there's another way. For one thing, the Captain's far more valuable than he is. And - and this is the private part, the one that he would immediately get strapped into the suppression chair for - he wants to keep working with him. Wants to clear rooms, wants to train with him back on base. The word "friend" doesn't exist in their world. If it did, it would've just been a liability. But examining where he failed today, the Winter Soldier comes to the slow, startling conclusion that this is a liability he would've wanted to risk.
He shifts from where he's propped up against his partner, drawing his legs up with a pained hiss, the thick heels of his boots dragging against the floor. He's strong, sure, but the Captain knows his limitations just like he does and naturally he made sure to tie his arms and his ankles together so he can't just snap free. Might be able to saw through if he can rub the rope against the chassis of his arm, but that would still take time. Best he can do is keep his partner talking as he tries to figure out another approach.
The Captain should know better. The Captain would know better than to believe the offer for help, would know it’s only a ploy, it’s practically SOP, to make someone dangerous that you don’t trust, trust you instead. But there’s something - someone? - inside him that hears those words, in that voice, and immediately gives in, takes a breath, relaxes. There’s something inside him that instantly feels better, more at ease, a knot in his gut that loosens, a spark that runs over and through him. His burning eyes flutter closed for a moment in what’s clearly a show of trust, of comfort around the other asset, of vulnerability he should never have been willing to express in the first place. It’s another clear sign of how far his programming has crumbled, even as the broken vestiges of the codes and failsafes and structure HYDRA put inside of him are still trying to hold, keeping whatever it is that he really wants to know at bay.
But while he can’t access the memories, the knowledge he wants, there are other things slipping through - sense-memories, instincts, things that run deeper than conscious thought, and are far harder to wipe away. They’re the first to return: the soft sound of the Soldier’s voice, the feel of his warm body next to his, the comfort he takes in knowing they’re together.
His vision is still too blurry to really assess the Soldier; he hears the asset shift beside him, more than sees it, but what little information he can get from his eyes, coupled with what he’s getting from his other senses, gives him a pretty clear picture. He knows he’s bound the Soldier tightly enough that he won’t be able to escape easily, can’t just snap the bonds. He knows he doesn’t want to leave his partner tied up, that something about that sits uneasily inside of him, and he’s already reaching clumsily for the other’s hands before he catches himself, pauses, fingertips just brushing the metal of the Soldier’s hand, inches from the knots at most.
“I want to do this together,” he says - again, words he would be backhanded, shot, sliced, burned, electrocuted for. Words that he would never have dared to say, should have known better than to say, known better than to even think while HYDRA still held his mind whole and molded in their hands. Now, his ruined eyes flick up, trying to find and hold the Soldier’s, though the gaze is still off, a little too far to the left and not as piercing as it should be, without that clear focus. But there’s still something genuine in it - genuine, and lost. “I think we’re stronger together. I think we belong together. I think my mission,” whatever it is, “needs you.”
His fingers inch closer to the knots binding the Soldier’s wrists, but even as they touch the rope, he doesn’t untie them. He’s still looking the Soldier in the face as best he can, still struggling with his own sense of duty, of reason, of protocol, all three of them screaming, clashing and disharmonious, inside his head loud enough to nearly drown out the sound of the howling wind outside. “I trust you,” he says quietly, eyes narrowing almost as if in confusion, as if he didn’t mean or didn’t expect to have said the words that just slipped from his lips.
Except he does mean them. “We’re partners,” he says… because they are. They’re partners, and… and something else, but he can’t find the word, can’t grasp it long enough to form it. “And partners trust each other.”
It’s a statement, almost as much as it might be a warning, as his fingers finally touch the knots, but then they still. Something in him says he shouldn’t unknot them; something in him balks at the idea that he tied them at all.
Trust. What the Captain says isn't his definition of the word trust. They're only together because HYDRA ordered it. It isn't up to them and that's fine, that's how it's supposed to be. This shouldn't be his partner's call to make all of a sudden.
The Winter Soldier doesn't say the first thing that crosses his mind.
Not if it gets in the way of lowering the other asset's defenses.
"So then we'll do this as partners."
The words feel both right and somehow like decay in his mouth, all at once, the familiar tainted by this bitter feeling that he's somehow being...compromised by going along with the other asset, even for the sake of his own mission. Unlike the Captain, he remembers it, remembers every contingency and remembers, clearly, what it means to carry out a mission to its logical end - HYDRA's will carried out and (preferably) both Assets turning themselves in for debriefing. That's how it's supposed to be. They're supposed to return, injured or not. Turn over their kit. On a good day, he can hear the sounds of the Captain screaming as they wipe him so he can be put back into cryo. Now he wonders if he'll ever hear that again, the certainty of it, that brief thrill where where he can read between the lines as the Captain's voice gives out and his gasps slip away even past the thin walls. It'd felt private, almost for his ears only. Now it sinks in that he might never hear those sounds again. If maybe this was their last mission. Maybe he'd done the unforgivable: maybe he's taken this partnership for granted.
"So what now?"
The Winter Soldier accesses some leftover muscle memory, some deep-cover persona he must have had when he was backing up the Captain. Maybe it wasn't completely scrubbed away. Maybe - and this is the better option, the one he approves of - maybe HYDRA knew this could happen. Maybe they had a contingency plan in his programming for a scenario like this. Where he couldn't just work his way out with his hands and whatever weapons were nearby. Where he had only his voice to work with. His voice and his body language and what he's picking up from his partner's instability, the man seems like he wants someone to...fraternize with. Be physically close to. Whatever it takes to build up that trust until he can get another shot at subduing the Captain.
He shifts pointedly against the other asset, bumping shoulders, his knees drawing up as he tries to dredge up those faint memories of what it was like being another man. He'd been a "James" once on an op. Had smiled, maybe even flirted - carrying out the parameters of some HYDRA tech who knew how to read his fellow man - and he could pass as something other than super-soldier, so long as he kept his arm covered. Now the Winter Soldier is trying to drag those memories back, trying to figure out what he can use to get his partner where he wants him. Physical contact was the first one. Knowing when to stare, when to look away (despite that being a risk), is another. The Soldier tilts his head down, almost as if he's pretending not to see the rope circled tight around his ankles, his tangled, matted hair falling into his face.
One more chance. The Winter Soldier knows he shouldn't even give his partner that much. That they're far past the point of trying to take him in alive and salvageable. But he finds himself hoping that the Captain will give him that opening, give him the chance to drag him back into the fold where they can fix him, where he can continue to run ops with him instead of facing that howling void again without knowing that the other Asset will be on the other side waiting for him.
So what now? It’s a valid question - a good question, a question anyone would ask. And normally, the Captain would have an immediate, effortless answer for him - missions always have parameters, after all, always a clear path to follow, even when there are contingencies branching out like the roots of a tree, racing away in a hundred different directions. Even then, the path is clear - follow the main objective, and if a problem arises, follow the next option to the next, and keep going until the mission is complete.
This mission is murkier - unclear. It’s a gut feeling - if the Captain knew what gut feelings were, could call them by name. He’s had them before - they’re actually part of what makes him valuable as a breathing, reasoning weapon, why they pull him out of cryo again and again - but the understanding of gut feelings and how they work and what they are has been burned from him, and it hasn’t yet returned. All he has is a certainty that this mission trumps all others, that this protocol is vital, and that he needs to drop everything else to pursue it.
So - that’s what now. That’s what they’ll do. The problem is, “We need information,” he says, fingers still poised above the knots holding the Soldier’s hands uncomfortably in place. It seems like the next logical step - you don’t act without intel, that’s just insane, but the problem is - he has the intel, and it’s locked away. The barriers are crumbling, but -
That’s it. “We need time,” he says next, burning eyes flicking to the shuttered windows, to the howling just beyond them. “I need time, to remember. We need to stay here, and you need to stop giving me injections.” It’s the reasonable move, after all - they’re not really working, but they're still slowing things down, barring the way, even though the barriers eventually give way. Stopping them would likely speed the process, let his synapses rebuild ruined pathways, let the burned-out bridges in his mind reroute. His lips twitch into something that’s barely an expression, barely a motion at all, but that the other asset might recognize as the Captain’s equivalent of a wry smile. “The weather seems to be accommodating for right now, at least.”
There’s still no telling how long the storm itself will last, but the longer it does, the more snow their lodge is buried under, and the longer they have before HYDRA comes looking for them. If they sit tight, and if they forego all contact protocols, if they sit and wait and let his mind keep recovering… the Captain is sure that what he needs will bob to the surface, will slough off the mud it’s under, and become clear.
His fingers flex a little, as the Solder’s shoulder bumps his own. Partners. That’s what they are, what they always have been, for the entire existence that he knows (can remember). They work well together, like two moving parts of a whole, like the trigger and the hammer of a gun, one complementing the other. The missions where they’re sent out together always feel the most complete, the most satisfying, and he wants to save that, to preserve it. He hopes, somewhere deep inside himself, that this new, desperate protocol won’t change that. If it does… if it does, he’ll deal with it then. He’ll have a choice to make.
But not right now. His fingers start to loosen the knots by touch, slowly but efficiently. He doesn’t simply remove the rope all at once, but he first gives the Soldier some slack, and then some more, ruined, still hard-to-focus eyes on the other asset’s face, watching for tells, watching for twitches, even as his fingertips feel for tremors in the other’s arms, signs that he’s going to fight back, to fight this. It’s only if he gets none of it that he’ll finally loosen the bonds, because if they’re in this for the long haul, together, then he can’t (he can, he doesn’t want to, he shouldn’t -) leave the Soldier tied and bound.
“We’re good - as partners,” he says, half a statement, half a question, seeking confirmation, agreement. “We always have been.” He can’t remember much, between the screaming and the hot-white-slicing pain of the chair, the beat-downs, the small army of guards it takes to subdue him and drag him into cryo, every time. He can’t remember past missions in detail, but he has enough - enough of those gut feelings, those sense memories - to be sure of what he’s saying. “We’re the best HYDRA has, together. I want to find out what else we can be.” And the answer, he’s so sure, is buried inside him, just beneath the surface, trying to claw its way free.
There's one thing they can agree on: the injections must stop. Clearly they aren't working. Not only that but now his partner knows they're coming, that they'll slow him down even as they do the job they're created for, and he'll be prepared to fight off any future attempts at mandatory medication.
It's times like this that the Winter Soldier catches himself almost...grateful that his own conditioning is simpler. Apparently less moving parts that can break in the field, away from the safety of a controlled environment. He doesn't need injections the way his partner does and his stint with the chair was only a few days ago, so he knows for a fact that it will hold for weeks, if not more, without needing to be revisited. Watching the way the Captain is struggling, how his eyes water behind a swollen, ruined face that his enhanced serum is trying to repair cell by cell, and he knows that what little stability the injections bring won't be worth the risk.
There's a difference between exercising patience on an op, waiting for a target. Doing it with a man he's trusted with his life over and over, and it's harder than he wants to admit.
The Winter Soldier's lips press together in a thin line that brings out the stress lines of his face, hollows his cheeks. His expression turns harsh as he tilts his head, trying to gauge how much of his partner's sight has returned.
"So long as it's together," he grunts, forcing himself to say the words, to act as if there is a life beyond HYDRA. It's harder than he thought it would be, considering his experience with deep cover, and he can feel his back teeth start to ache as he clenches and grinds them. "I don't want to be by myself again."
And that part, that part's true, it's the closest thing he has to deeply personal that he can manage with the conditioning, but it's necessary to feed out that vulnerability to his partner as if it's some olive branch for trying to incapacitate him. As he feels the rope around his wrist - his flesh wrist, not the metal one that's limp, the sensors fritzing on and off - loosen, he resists the immediate urge to break free and close his hand around the Captain's throat, squeeze the fight out of him and then call for backup from the nearest HYDRA cell. His eyes flicker down to the rope, loosening bit by bit, his wrist chaffed red because the Captain, despite his ruined eyes, the gunshot, has done the right thing and tied him up tight, before he glances back up at his face. He has to be looking for any of his usual tells that he's about to turn the tables. Knowing how high the stakes are, how important the Captain is to HYDRA (refusing to admit it's personal, too), the Winter Soldier does his damn best to make sure those tells don't show. For now he's docile, the second as always to his first.
It's only when the rope finally pools in his lap that he flexes his hand, trying to work some feeling in it. The metal one lies limp, the gleaming fingers twitching every now and then as the malfunctioning servos sputter.
"What do you think will happen after this?" the Winter Soldier plays ball and keeps things peaceful as he rotates his hand, curls each finger, his eyes burning judging holes in his partner's face. Once he heard someone describe the Captain as "handsome" - he wouldn't know, but he does know is he had short hair he approved of (less to grab), piercing blue eyes, and symmetrical features that consistently made targets want to like him. Now, with his face washed free of color from the pain, the cold, and the skin around his eyes a mask of angry red from the bleach, he doubts anyone would trust him the way they usually did.
Part of the Captain is… frightened isn’t the right word, but unsure, at the very least - he hasn’t been without his medication that he knows of, can’t remember a mission where it ran out, can’t remember a time before the daily injections he required between trips to the chair. He’s sure, in his gut, that stopping them will let what needs to break through come free, but even given that surety, there are hairline cracks, the last vestiges of his active and dormant programming, telling him that he shouldn’t stop, even when he thinks he should.
He ignores it - he’s made a decision, and he’s not going back on it now. To falter would show weakness, and HYDRA does not tolerate weakness. They built him to be strong, to be unstoppable, and even as he’s crumbling and unsure, he can’t give up the strength he still has, the conviction that this old, deep programming needs to come to light. It makes everything worth it - the excruciating pain in his shoulder, his ruined face, the way he’s tied up the Soldier, even if only temporarily. What little he can see of the expression on the other asset’s face makes him uncomfortable, in this deep, dark place, and he doesn’t like that feeling at all.
But the pit of unhappiness shrinks, when the asset finally speaks. When he confirms that they’ll do this together, that he doesn’t want to be alone. The lines of the Captain’s broad frame relax, as much as they can with the pain, and he nods, leg splaying out just a little, bumping the Soldier’s thigh with his own in this subtle, small gesture that none of their handlers have ever caught. “You won’t,” he says, and his conviction swells as he says it, beats back the unease just a little further. “I won’t let that happen.”
It’s not like the Captain to make empty threats; it’s unclear how he might carry this one out, when he is but a tool, a thing for HYDRA to point and punish and choose to use or lock away, but he means it, nonetheless. He won’t let them be separated, if he has to lie through his teeth when their handlers find them. He’ll deal with that when it happens, when he has the intel slowly shaking loose inside of him, when he can make an informed plan of action.
For now, they’ll wait.
“I don’t know,” he says, aware of the other asset’s gaze on his face, but steadfastly refusing to let anything but surety show on it. “If there’s a mission, we’ll complete it.” If it’s a mission, it will have parameters and an objective and an endpoint and a followup plan, just like all the others. Once he can grasp that information, he’ll feel infinitely better. “If it’s not, we’ll complete this mission, and I’ll handle the consequences.”
It’s clear he means by whatever means necessary, whether it’s lying or telling the truth. It’s clear that he means to handle those consequences himself, to ensure that no harm comes to his partner, nothing worse than the usual end-of-mission protocol. “We’ll stay together,” he promises. “We’re too valuable for them to split apart. I know how to make sure of that.”
For now, though, “Being knocked unconscious isn’t rest,” he points out. “And you had watch last night. Get some rest. You probably have a concussion. I can keep watch.” Even with eyes that aren't yet clear and sharp, his other senses are good enough to do as he proposes. And in a few hours, at most, his face and eyes will have healed enough that, while he still won't look as "handsome" as usual, he'll be fully operational - at least, in that respect. His arm still aches sharply, deep in the ruined joint, and he will endure it forever if he has to, but he doesn't like the idea of the injured arm slowing them down, if what he digs up from inside of himself doesn't include returning to HYDRA.
He'll deal with it then, though. Just like everything else.
That's what the Winter Soldier will tell himself, more than once. He's regained enough shreds of trust that he's fairly sure his partner won't walk off, grab one of the perfectly good steak knives on the kitchen counter, and slice open an artery while he's still bound. SOP says that's the best approach. But it doesn't happen, the Captain insists on a conversation, on indulging on these sentiments as if they aren't massive defects. Right now he's not sure what he means by "stay together". His immediate conditioned response is to assume that he's indeed a prisoner, no matter how the Captain dresses it up. If he were to take the other asset on in a fair fight? Truth is, he isn't sure he could win. The other man is the original, the one with the stronger serum burning in his system. Considering that, and what he can remember of those combat sessions they had against each other back on base, and he isn't sure he could win if it was just their naked fists.
"Fine," he says. At this point he'll probably be awake if he relaxes, if he dozes off. Concussions to them are inconveniences at most - his head pounds with a pressure from all sides and there's a few moments where he wonders if he'll throw up what little rations must still be in his gut.
At some point he supposes he doses off. When he opens his eyes, he'll see the Captain leaning over him a few times, eyes still red-rimmed but aimed his way with more focus, as if checking to make sure his healing factor is chugging along and that the concussion isn't suddenly a "complication".
When he wakes up again, he'll realize that the ropes around his wrists, ankles and legs are loosened enough that he can easily shake himself loose.
The knives on the counter are gone.
Getting up, the Winter Soldier winces, sore, but functional, and tries to make the best of this as he levers himself up. The ropes pool to the ground. His directive is the same. The Captain must either be incapacitated or killed when the opportunity presents itself. Doesn't matter what he said, or what he even told his partner. It has to happen and if he believed in a higher power than HYDRA, he'd be crossing his fingers and hoping he can aim for incapacitate instead of liquidate. First thing he does is assume that if he looks for weapons, opening and closing shelves and drawers, that the Captain will hear. It limits him to just a visual inspection and he can see that the Captain has used his own recovering eye sight to sanitize the room. Anything remotely lethal is missing. Whatever is bolted in place would require that he's already got the Captain tired and barely struggling.
The Winter Soldier huffs out a barely audible sigh. Long haul it is.
He finds his partner by the back entrance, already standing up straight with hardly any pained hunch to his frame and it looks like he swapped out the bandage around his torso's bullet wound. Damn. So much for hoping that any blood poisoning from the infection might've slowed him down. The Winter Soldier makes a mask of his face as he leans against the door frame, his malfunctioning arm hanging down by his side as it whirs uselessly, fingers twitching and spasming minutely every now and then.
"Storm still strong?" The Soldier doesn't circle things back to last night, to the whole part where he tried to cripple the closest thing he has to a friend. Instead he focuses on the now, on what he can control and assess, and hope, desperately, that his partner will give him an opening. With how the other Asset's shoulders square, and his red rimmed eyes rove, he isn't sure about his chances just yet. "The SHIELD agents might have risked it for all we know."
If he can't get to the Captain physically, he can at least try to seed in doubt psychologically. Try to plant something, make him second-guess (although he can't say for sure if SHIELD maybe did want them bad enough). The Winter Soldier remains propped against the door frame with his eyes burning holes in his partner. Maybe they're working together for now. But he can't shut off that instinct to look for hints of weakness, of aberration, in the other asset, and so he doesn't bother looking away as if he'll be embarrassed if caught.
The Winter Soldier sleeps, and the Captain feels something akin to relief. Not because the other is unconscious, but because he’s… being taken care of, getting what he needs to rest and recuperate. Neither of them is at peak operating capacity, the Captain least of all, and they both know it. He’s going to have to lean on the other asset for some things, given his own injury, and that’s exactly how it should be. They’re trained to work as a pair, complementary, giving over tasks to one or other other when one of them isn’t suited to it. This is how it should be… and yet the Captain finds himself rejecting that idea, the concept that he has to ask the other asset for help, that he can’t manage on his own. He’s a super soldier, HYDRA’s very best, and even down an arm, with his shoulder throbbing and stinging and still sluggishly bleeding, when he changes the dressing and has to grit his teeth and almost bites through his own tongue from the pain, he can manage on his own. It’s a foreign concept, worming its way in through the years of programming, but it’s strong and it’s persistent and it’s why he’s cleaned up and set the bleach-stained couch to rights and checked and double-checked their supplies. He goes out into the storm for a few buckets of snow, brings them inside where at least the temperature is above freezing and they’ll melt for fresh water. He cleans his shield and his uniform as best he can, and he cleans the Winter Soldier’s rifles and knives for the moment when he can give them back. There’s no point in letting good equipment go bad because of blood or rust or dirt.
But he doesn’t leave the weapons - or anything else that can be used as a weapon - in the same room as the other asset. He’s not stupid, and he knows the Winter Soldier’s orders, now, if he thinks the Captain is unsalvageable.
He’s not - he’s fine, he’s salvageable, he’s good - but he doesn’t want to leave room for uncertainty. Not in that respect, when he’s still not sure of what’s trying to grow and bloom inside his own head.
He hears the other asset wake and move, even over the sound of the storm; by now, his vision has returned almost to normal, even if his face is still a little blotchy, and some of his hair is a little discolored, damaged where the liquid splashed into it. He’s standing tall, not giving away any sign of pain, but his face looks worn and drawn, even under the new, pink skin around his eyes. He glances over, as the Soldier approaches, as he speaks, and the Captain’s smile is a grim, barely-there twitch of his lips, just like always. “It’s the same,” he says, indicating the storm - the snow is piling up against the side of the building, and the wind has barely let up, if at all. The sky is still an unbroken ceiling of darkness, and if there’s an end, he hasn’t been able to spot it approaching.
He considers what the Soldier suggests - that SHIELD is still looking for them, and… it seems reasonable enough. They are valuable assets, of course. He watches the Soldier watching him, and he tilts his head - a question between them. “Do you think we should move?”
His dry, steady tone of voice communicates clearly that he thinks any answer other than no would be a mistake. The storm is too strong, the terrain is too unfamiliar, and their would-be captors are an unknown that gnaws at his gut. This entire thing has been a mess, and clearly their intel was incorrect. That means SHIELD is now largely an unknown factor, and he doesn’t like that - just like the programming inside his head, an unknown factor all its own.
They have the advantage here, what little of it they have. They can fortify, they can learn this place quickly and determine all its strengths and weaknesses, they can mount a defense that SHIELD won’t expect. He’d rather go down in a hail of bullets than freeze to death in a snowdrift on a mountaintop. And he doesn’t want that end for the Soldier, either. It’s weak, it’s not what they were built for.
And something about that idea, that notion specifically, curls so cold and frightening in his gut that even his animal fear of the chair and his handlers and every punishment HYDRA has ever inflicted on him pales in comparison. He will never die in the ice and snow, and he will never let the Winter Soldier die that way, either.
“What’s the status of your arm?” he asks, instead, as though he isn’t the one who’d disabled it during their fight. As though he isn’t the one who feels like every thought he has is like stepping on thin ice, never sure where his foot is going to break through and take him, screaming, beneath the surface. He can feel the very last vestiges of his last injection wearing away, and it’s making him antsy, uncomfortable. He’s still fighting for control of his mind, his mission, and grasping at his training and his partner as those last familiar failsafes. He knows he wanted to stop the injections. He just knows that doesn’t make the idea of it any more appealing.
Moving would be a poor idea in this weather. Maybe it would've been worth the risk if the Captain was more injured, enough to keep him pliable and easier to control what he does until HYDRA backup arrives. But he's already healed the worst of the bleach damage; what remains is just cosmetic, and so it isn't worth the risk going out there. The Winter Soldier shakes his head, his lips pressed into a thin line as he files away the option of going back into the unforgiving cold and the snow under "unlikely". At least until he can try again with the other asset and establish a line of communication with the nearest HYDRA cell.
"Poor," the Winter Soldier opts for being truthful. After failing to incapacitate his partner, he'll need to work on buying enough of that trust back so he can get another opening. If it means being upfront about his weaknesses, then so be it. "It'll lower my effectiveness once we leave if it's left non-functional."
He can operate without it if needed. There had been plenty of exercises with it detached, both against the Captain and against select trainees fast-tracked to rise in the ranks. Some of them had found that no matter their skill level, their background - they couldn't last even a minute when he was one-handed and they thought he wouldn't kill because of their background, their contacts, the fact they were too prideful to surrender. The Captain, though. He'd always lasted. Always knew to go for his weak spot, use the missing limb to his advantage in any exercises, and he knew how to disable him using pain, location, and bone breaks on the flesh side. There had always been an immediacy about his approach. The Winter Soldier remembers respecting that, even if most of the actual details were only faint impressions of pain and smell and sound. Glancing at his partner, the Soldier studies him and he has to assume that part hasn't change. The injections may not have worked...but his sense of tactics, of taking advantage of a perceived weakness? Those are still fresh and he can't assume those will degrade too.
The Winter Soldier touches his damaged arm. It's non-functional from the elbow joint down to the wrist, where most of the damage was done. His face feels tender, as if he'd run headfirst into a tinder block, and there's no doubt some swelling from the Captain smashing his face into the floor as hard as he did. There's a vague memory that he hadn't settled for hitting him just the once. He'd done in multiple times, to be thorough. To be exact. Good to know that some instincts haven't degraded like his mental conditioning has.
It's a small comfort.
"You need to decide what to do about my arm," the Winter Soldier plunks that into his partner's lap. While he has his SOP to carry out, for now the Captain still has higher rank...and he must know that if he really wants the two of them to walk out of here, he can't have his partner crippled. It's weighing the odds, the pros and cons. How far he's willing to go to drag someone with him in this. "Either it needs to be repaired or you can leave me here."
The snow will die down, eventually. Probably can make his way out, contact the nearest cell. Take his chances dodging the SSR. Not ideal scenarios. But there's a choice, and now it's laid out in front of Rogers to choose how much he wants to risk for this unspoken, impossible mission of his. Things won't be the same between them. They can't be; not when the Winter Soldier has that new order brimming to the surface, feeling like it's somehow pulling at his nerve endings and his very bones and skin. Not when the Captain is acting like he'll go AWOL. Not when he speaks as if this invisible mission of his supersedes HYDRA itself.
The Captain looks at the Soldier for a long moment, at the way he touches the arm, at the damage he himself inflicted. He can remember, vividly, the feel of the metal giving under his grip, the sound it made, the way he felt dealing out the damage. It didn’t feel good. It felt like a mission he didn’t want to complete, a mission that made him sick to his stomach, despite the fact that he knew it had to be done. And when the Winter Soldier points out, bluntly, that he’s going to have to make a decision - he’s right.
So the Captain makes the call, because that’s what he does. He has been honed and trained to evaluate every single situation, take in all the information, and make the right call. “I’ll repair it,” he says, just as bluntly, just as confidently and with no room for argument. He isn’t a tech, of course, doesn’t possess the specialized skills for significant repairs. But he’s well versed in the arm’s workings and on the most basic ways to repair it, the best workarounds and solutions for the field, because he’s got to be. HYDRA had planned for every contingency (or, at least, so they thought): for the Captain’s time in the chair to wear off, and for the Soldier’s arm to become damaged. Of course, HYDRA always planned to ensure their super soldiers were accompanied by handlers, and that’s no longer true, but that never meant they didn’t give their most valuable assets the tools and skills they needed to keep each other going.
It’s… good, knowing he can do something about the arm. Of course, he’s the one who damaged it in the first place, but he can still undo it. He can make the Solider functional again, give him what he needs to survive, and even though the Captain knows it’s a gamble against his own survival, he doesn’t hesitate to make that call.
“I’ll repair your arm,” he repeats, not because he doesn’t think it was understood, but because now he’s using it as a jumping-off point, now it’s the basis of their new plan. “And then we’re going to lay out all the intel we have on the SSR, and what we heard there. I want to know more about Rogers and Barnes.” And this time, he won’t let the Soldier shy away from the names, from what he might know. They’re going to go digging, and it might not be pleasant, but it’s going to yield results. He’s sure of it.
In fact… he considers for only a moment before he decides that they can do both at once, really. He can repair the arm and they can talk at the same time. He glances out the windows, at the grey skies and the blowing snow, and makes a third call: “We can afford a fire,” he decides, because the lodge has a nice big fireplace and plenty that will burn and any smoke will be blown away quickly, lost in the gale still raging outside. He’s cold and stiff, his shoulder aching fiercely, and the Soldier can’t be feeling much better, with a damaged arm. They could both do to warm up, and there’s no reason to stay in these less-than-optimal conditions, with the storm blowing enough to dissipate any sign of their presence. “Help me gather kindling.” They sure make a pair, each with a damaged arm, but between the two of them, they can start a fire easily enough, and sit down by it so the Captain can pull out the repair kit he keeps in his belt and get to work on the Soldier’s arm. And then they can talk about Rogers and Barnes.
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o7
Or, at least, it’s easy to put it out of his head at first. The pain is persistent, insidious, and with the bullet lodged the way it is, his body trying to heal around it is painful and inefficient. He tries to move his arm every so often, roll the shoulder, and he’s greeted by a white-hot burst of pain that makes him clench his teeth and wish for the rubber bite guard, sucking in a sharp inhale of breath. But the arm still moves, albeit painfully - no nerve damage, and it will heal around the bullet. When they’re retrieved, he imagines there will be surgery to find the bullet, remove it, make sure the shoulder socket heals properly. Until then, it’s going to heal as best it can, with no heed for the comfort level of the Captain in the meantime.
Except it’s healing slowly, given the constant motion of walking; he does his best to hold his arm and shoulder still, but it’s impossible to really immobilize it when he needs it for balance in the slippery, unfamiliar landscape. Somewhere during their hike, it begins to bleed again, a second slow, warm blossom of blood that he feels soaking into the uniform, the bandages, doesn’t need to look down to confirm visually. Still, the Captain makes no sound but the harsh panting of his breaths, and he doesn’t complain, doesn’t pull them to a halt, simply walks on, though he’s several more feet behind the Winter Soldier than he’d started out when the other asset spots an outcropping and calls a stop to their march. The Captain wants to push on, knows they should keep going, but he can also admit that it’s not tactically sound. It’s a moonless night, too dark for even HYDRA’s most advanced weapons to see well, and slipping and breaking their necks won’t get the information they need to take back to HYDRA.
Together, they climb carefully down into the natural, if cold, shelter provided by the rocks, wedged side by side with their backs to frozen stone as the green of the glow stick flares to life. The Captain considers the two options briefly, but shakes his head almost immediately. “We stay here. Together. This is fine.” It’s the best place to stop that they’ve passed; the village is still several miles away, and he doesn’t imagine they’ll find another shelter quite like this nearby. With the rock at his back and the Winter Soldier against his side and the small, if sickly glow of the glow stick between them, it feels like a good place to spend the night, for all that it’s less than ideal. “We’ll start walking again at first light.”
His left arm throbs, and the way they’re positioned, his uninjured right side to the Soldier’s left, he’s pressed up against the metal prosthesis and he can feel the cold of it seeping through his uniform and into his skin. Unconsciously, the Captain shifts closer, as if trying to share his body heat with it rather than recoiling, even as the Soldier pulls out a familiar vial, uncaps it; again, the Captain considers only a moment before he simply tilts his head to the side, like an obedient dog, and says, simply, “Neck.”
Once the pinprick and hiss of the injection has passed, the Captain simply tilts his head back against the unforgiving rock and closes his eyes. They don’t stay closed long, though, because now that they’ve stopped moving, there is nothing like putting one foot in front of the other to distract him from the pain - nothing except the memory of the scene he woke up to in the compound, that niggling feeling that has been sitting low in his gut since he opened his eyes and that small, scared little man called him “Captain Rogers.” The scene comes flooding back to him now, and he’d rather concentrate on it, turn it over and over in his head and ask his companion his thoughts on it, than focus on the pain. Pain is irrelevant, and it is counterproductive. But the memory of being called by a name… that is still intriguing in a way he can’t describe. And there’s a part of him that needs to know if the Winter Soldier feels the same way, can put a name to the thing the Captain feels about the letters that, when put together, spell out the name “Rogers.”
Because - They are assets, but they are men. Or - no, not exactly, but they might have been men once. Men with names. Names like Rogers and Barnes.
It’s not something the Captain wants now, and it’s not something he’s capable of missing, because you have to know something, remember it, to miss it, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t remember a time before he was the Captain, before he was HYDRA’s asset, and it doesn’t bother him. But the idea - realization? - that there was a time before he was HYDRA’s asset, when he might have had a name and some clumsy sense of self-direction, is at once terrifying and intriguing. It’s like staring in a mirror, and seeing your reflection distorted ever so slightly, something just a hair off, only you can’t tell what it is, what’s changed, where the mirror is flawed.
So he turns his head toward his companion, expression still pinched, but something in it is both curious and derisive at once as he says, simply, “The scientist that woke me in the compound thought I had a name. He thought we both had names.”
If he were a real man, he’d probably say something like, What a load of bullshit, hey, buddy? Instead, the sentiment just hangs flatly in the cold air between them.
Once the drugs in the vial work through his system, he’ll lose interest, most likely, But for all that he metabolizes everything at quadruple speed, he’s still just curious, just hung up enough right now to speak up.
no subject
The look he shoots the Captain is still blank-faced, mask-like, but there's also the barest hint of surprise fluttering across.
His eyebrows knit. A faint stress line furrows between them to betray his unease.
"I heard," the Winter Soldier says after a split second to register he's been caught off guard more times than he considers acceptable in one day. "Could be an old alias we used that's in their records."
Sloppy of them, but plausible. Hard to tell with the wipe sessions. The Asset has been conditioned not to wonder too much about them, only to feel animal relief when the arc stops humming and he can sag gasping against the chair. Of course there are gaps. Missions he participated in that he can't remember names of operative he worked with, those he sanctioned; not even the year. Sometimes he gets flashes of the penny tang of blood or a hiss of a steel blade against the leather of a knife sheath. Never names. All he has is the gut instinct that both "Barnes" and "Rogers" had sounded familiar. He shifts his head then, hair falling limply across his face in a curtain as he tucks the spent needle into his belt. No point leaving it here where a potential search party could find it.
One look at the Captain and he can see that he wants to talk. Conversations between them have always been borderline monosyllabic - businesslike, to the point. No chit-chat or wasted breath he observed between HYDRA's other operatives or their handlers.
The Asset makes a small sound under his breath, a mix between an almost inaudible grunt and a sigh. Unlike his partner, he doesn't seem as entertained at the idea of them and names being in spitting distance of each other. If the Captain is looking at that mirror head-on and thinking about possibilities, the Winter Soldier flinches away, buries his head ostrich-style and decides he would feel way more comfortable back at HQ getting prepped for the suppression arc. His conditioning has been more than thorough.
His head cocks a fraction, mouth pursed, lips numb from the cold. "He must've been wrong, anyway. The SSR would say anything to get their hands on us."
Intel hasn't pointed to any assets of their own on the field. Easier to acquire HYDRA's best and try to reprogram them instead of starting from scratch.
It's then the Soldier realizes the man next to him is shivering. It's small, but he can feel it even through his left arm. They're super human but unfortunately, they're still human: even they can get hungry, tired, and cold. Without asking, he reaches over and loops his arm around his partner, bringing the man close and shifting his body to give him the maximum amount of body heat he can manage in this position. There's just enough space that they can stretch out if needed. Sleeping will need to happen in shifts this close to the SSR base but he's already decided that he'll take the first one and let the Captain get priority. The green glowstick gets moved to the side, along the edge of the rock wall, still shielded with their bodies. His combat boot scrapes against granite as he shifts his position and he's both watching the trees for signs of human movement and also watching the Captain's face, a ghostly green shadow against the rocky overhang.
Waiting for that moment where slackness sets in, his eyes dim, and he knows for sure that the injection is taking hold. Things will be better once that happens and they can both focus on what's really important.
"Get some rest. Tomorrow we can get to that village and resupply."
no subject
"Could be," the Captain replies, in a tone that betrays the slightest hint of doubt. He knows he's been on past missions, but he doesn't know how many, and rarely remember the details; when he does, it's usually in flashes or disjointed scenes, like a half-forgotten dream. But tools, weapons, don't dream - HYDRA found a way to remove that weakness, to make him stronger. Weapons don't dream because they have no need for dreams. Weapons don't have names, because they have no need for names.
The Captain and the Soldier don't often talk, no - idle banter is useless, a waste of breath at best and a distraction from the mission at worst. But this feels important, somehow. The Captain is intrigued and disturbed all at once, and some part of him craves the opinion of his companion. Neither of them have the answer to the puzzle, but somehow, some sort of agreement, some sort of mutual curiosity, would make him feel... satisfied. But the Soldier is agitated - the Captain can tell in the look on his face, the sound he makes as he exhales that would almost be too soft to hear, for a baseline human. The Captain hears the frustration, as clearly as if the Soldier had voiced it. He's observant, and he knows his companion's moods, such as they are, better than he knows almost anything else. To most people, the Soldier doesn't even have moods, isn't ever fazed or frustrated or amused. But the Captain knows better, knows the moods that escape others' notice, even when he thinks the Soldier doesn't even notice what he's feeling, himself. Maybe the Soldier knows him just as well. He wouldn't be surprised.
Now, the idea of the Soldier's displeasure is... jarring. The Captain's brow furrows and he wonders if he might be wrong - damaged, broken, failing, to be feeling curiosity at the idea of a name. He knows it's likely a side effect of the duration of the mission - they've lost time during their capture and he doesn't know how much, how long it's been since he last sat in the chair, underwent HYDRA's conditioning. He suddenly feels agitated, himself, wanting the aid of the drugs he knows will take effect soon. He knows he needs them, and suddenly, he wonders if he's gone through this before - this withdrawal, after too long out of the chair, and he simply doesn't remember it. He finds himself disliking the idea, disliking the distraction it causes, and the agitation it elicits in his fellow asset. He wants to be good, to be compliant, not for HYDRA, but for his partner. To preserve the partnership that means more to him than he’s ever cared to explore, and more than he’s ever, ever let on, to anyone. He is obedient. He is not stupid.
But the idea of the SSR lying to sway the assets to their side is plausible - more than plausible, and they both know it. And now, the drugs are starting to work their way through his system, the elevated heart rate associated with the adrenaline spike of injury and healing speeding an already speedy process. "Must've been," he finally agrees, after a few moments of silence that might have been mistaken for the end of the conversation, during which his eyes have started to go dull as the niggling importance of those names starts to lose its luster and fades into the background. Something in the Captain almost visibly relaxes, in those few moments of silence, as the concern starts to simply slide away, and the matter at hand, the mission and its priorities, reassert their importance.
After those few moments, he feels... calm. Focused. Satisfied, and with it comes a sense of relief. He isn't too broken to finish the mission, and his technicians will recondition him once they've reported back and received their retrieval orders.
It only makes sense for the Soldier to take the first watch. The Captain would have suggested it if the Soldier hadn't said it first; he simply nods, eyes that have now gone their familiar shade of dull, glazed blue still flicking around the clearing in an ingrained need to check for potential threats, before he closes his eyes and simply says, "Wake me in four hours and I'll take watch until dawn." Then he drops off into sleep easily and almost imperceptibly, head tilted back and pillowed against the hard rock serving as their shelter, while his body stays pressed up against the Soldier’s warmth, as though seeking that warmth even while trying to share his own.
The Captain is the strongest man on the planet - with the Red Skull long gone, it is unarguably the truth. Stronger than the Winter Soldier, even, although the metal prosthesis levels the playing field somewhat, and the differences in their fighting styles would surely make things interesting, if they truly went toe to toe. For all that there’s plenty of interest in seeing that, HYDRA has never pitted the two assets genuinely against each other, for several reasons that included the possibility of permanently damaging one of them, as well as the possibility of disrupting whatever strange rapport exists between them. While there’s no trace of the friendship shared by the two men that have been alternately buried and erased by years of conditioning, mind wipes, and drug therapy, there’s something in the way that the two assets can function like clockwork that HYDRA hasn’t wanted to touch. It’s too valuable, so long as it’s monitored and regulated, and pitting the two men against each other in a genuine battle would be counterproductive.
Regardless, the Captain is not a vulnerable man, nor does he act like one - no, he acts the part he is meant to play, the weapon, the asset, the tool best suited to many of HYDRA’s best-laid plans to insinuate just a little more order into the world, because its residents can’t be trusted to do it themselves. And yet… there are times when the Captain acts - unintentionally, unaware - vulnerable. Times that the handlers have noted he spends long transport flights huddled up asleep against the Winter Soldier, as though trying to burrow back into the shape and size of a smaller man, as though trying to fit himself beside the other asset in a way that will complement him, rather than overpower him. It’s how he sleeps now, and for all the pain and the cold and the hunger, he sleeps well until he’s woken for his watch and takes over without complaint while his partner gets some rest for himself.
The morning dawns bright and crisp and clear; the Captain’s shoulder throbs in time with his heart, stiff but no longer bleeding, a sign that the wound has started to close up, but it's questionable whether it's a benefit or a drawback. With the bullet still lodged against muscle and bone that began to knit overnight, his arm is less mobile and more painful in the morning. Still, he says nothing, only holds it as still as he can as he keeps watch, calculating how he'll need to adjust his movement and balance and strategies to compensate if they're attacked. He can fight one-armed - has fought one-armed, during training sessions and evaluation scenarios, both planned and unplanned - and he refuses to let the injury slow their progress further. They have a goal: reach the village, find a way to contact HYDRA, and remain invisible until extraction. They only have a few days' worth of injections and emergency rations, and further delay is unacceptable.
They set off in the early morning light; now the Captain is hindered only by pain, and not bleeding, and they make better time because of it. The village turns out to be relatively quiet, and the assets choose a ski lodge on the outskirts of town with a large "CLOSED FOR THE SEASON" sign across the doors. There’s a fine layer of dust on the surfaces inside, but a pantry stocked with nonperishable goods, running water, and electricity.
Until the storm hits.
It’s mid-afternoon when the light outside the lodge’s big windows begin to fade. The assets have eaten a full meal (admittedly, of beans and soup, but neither complains, because both know that nutrition outweighs palatability, and the emergency rations should remain for emergencies) and the Captain has fashioned a sling for his aching, stiff arm from strips of bedsheets. They’ve developed a plan to steal down into the village proper after dusk, to break into one of the buildings and send out a signal, because the lodge may have electricity, but its communications - telephone - are dead. Someone apparently forgot to pay the bill. Or perhaps the service was switched off for the season. Either way, it makes the Captain antsy.
But dusk starts falling too soon - and then the assets discover it’s not dusk, but the big, boiling, dark clouds of a snowstorm that’s blocked out the sun and begun sending pelting pellets of ice and snow against the glass of the windows. They're standing several feet away from the windows - both know better than to approach the glass, where a sniper might reach them - when the lights flicker. The wind picks up, the icy sheets assailing the windows intensify, and everything electronic in the lodge goes quiet and dark at once. The assets look at each other and they know - this is going to complicate a complicated mission even further.
no subject
They move out not long after dawn and it's business as usual, at least on the surface. He takes point – as always – and they travel more or less in single file through the forest, spaced out far enough that they minimize the damage from any traps the SSR might've set out here, but not far enough away that each asset can't come to the other's aid. Breaths come out in little puffs of white fog, the chill slowly trying to sneak through his clothes. While they move, he multi-tasks. Assesses the areas for threats – wildlife, terrain, agents, traps – and the whole time he's running a mental tally of what little supplies they have. Physical and mental stressors aren't new but the idea that the Captain might run out of injections? That's a new one his training hadn't prepared him for. The Winter Soldier wonders as they hit the outskirts of the village if there are contingencies in place. Maybe his partner will go comatose if he doesn't receive the injections to level him out. Maybe he'll go with the worst case scenario and...take himself out of the equation. It's not feasible considering how valuable he is, how unique but still. It's possible. Better dead than wandering lost, torn from HYDRA doctrine.
He's almost glad when the storm darkens the sky. It's an immediate issue, one that distracts the Soldier from the uncharacteristic thoughts of “what if”.
“We should fortify,” the Winter Soldier says, his voice sounding hollow and strange in the dark as if it belongs to another man. “Give it a day.”
Clearly they aren't going anywhere soon. They might be molded to be the best, better, even, but he knows his limits, knows that in the end he's human and going out in a storm like that is suicide even though he knows they haven't bought enough time or distance from the SSR. The Winter Soldier's eyes flick up to the dead lights, wondering about that shed in the back he's fairly sure has a generator. Maybe he hasn't been in this specific lodge but he's been in a few – once, he thinks, for deep cover, before they decided to assign the Captain with his whole body that won't raise questions the way his does. He remembers snow and bumping his back against something metal and plastic and someone (the little fish leading to the big fish, most likely) hugging him and unaware of the knife in the dark. Mostly he remembers disabling the generator to kill the lights and some security grid. This place might have a generator that he'll take a look at once he finds warmer clothes, hopefully a flashlight. It doesn't cross his mind that the Captain should go in his place. Not with his injuries. And maybe it's something more, something he doesn't have words for. Doesn't want the words for.
The lodge is cleared. With the snowstorm, even he has to admit it's unlikely they'll have company for a few hours.
It's then that Soldier steps away from edge of the darkening window, reaching up to shutter the blinds in the unlikely probability there's a sniper out there who could do what two of HYDRA's very best couldn't. He reaches up and undoes the clasp with one hand, the fur-lining of his collar pulling away as he moves from clasp to clasp. He begins to peel off the first layer of his clothes, glancing back at the Captain. He can't help it: he automatically sizes him up, searching for any sign of more questions, more uncharacteristic wondering of “what if”.
“Let's get situated. Clean our kit while we can,” case in point; the fur-lined jacket coated with blood. Most of it isn't his, but he's been taught to respect cleanliness standards when he can, “ - and then assess.”
Assessment usually means finding out where they are on weapons, food, other supplies...and to be honest, that was one of the first things they did. Habit, basically. He falls back on doing it again (he'll call it “thorough” even if it's an excuse) because it's safer than that alien idea of downtime. No handlers. No possibility of trigger words bringing him to heel if he doesn't perform. The Winter Soldier doesn't understand fear in the conventional sense, but he does know when he underperforms. He knows that the Captain hasn't underperformed before and he doesn't want to be there to witness a possible first. So he focuses on what's on front of him, on the living, breathing asset with a sling that could use work, and he shoves the questions about Rogers and Barnes to the back of his mind.
He retreats away from the windows to the bar, folding his jacket and leaving it against the counter before facing the Captain. Old, familiar scar tissue peeps out from under the sleeve of his tank-top – more familiar, even, than his partner, angry red, waxy raised skin from where his metal arm meets his shoulder. He doesn't remember how he got it. But in the last forty eight hours, it's the most predictable thing in the room. When he turns toward the Captain, there's the barest of frowns on his face. Ability to fight isn't the only thing he's assessing his partner for as he asks:
“How's the injury?”
no subject
As the Soldier shucks his coat, the Captain gives what’s become their current safehouse another look. He catalogued everything about their surroundings as they came in, but now, he looks again. It’s unlikely that he missed anything - missing something is not acceptable, so it’s simply been trained and programmed out of him - but now he considers their surroundings as something that will need to support them for more than just a few hours. Possibly more than a day, though that thought sits sour in his gut. His eyes fall on the lodge's large, central fireplace - this village might be small, but this lodge must be successful, because the interior is dusty but modern (which is a funny term, given that he doesn't know what he's comparing it to, can't remember what buildings looked like in the past, only knows that his eyes follow the clean lines, the open spaces, and think, "contemporary." He doesn't know where he learned the term, but it's there in his head nonetheless). The fireplace is huge, and there's even a stack of (similarly dusty) wood beside it, but then his eyes track up to the large stone chimney and he can visualize without trying the plume of smoke a fire would create.
In a snowstorm, the smoke could be lost. But the SSR is likely watching this village as a potential escape route. His eyes flick back to the covered windows, as though he can see the snow and ice he can still hear faintly tap-tapping against the glass from the outside, and - no. A fire would give away the fact that this lodge is occupied when it shouldn't be. They'll camp cold tonight.
The question incites a reaction almost like the Captain has been startled out of his thoughts; his eyes refocus on his companion, noting the frown on his face, the way he’s stripped down to his tank-top already. The Captain assesses his arm, pulls away the makeshift sling, and starts to unzip his own uniform jacket, one-handed. When he tries to slide the fabric off his shoulders, it sticks to the injured arm with the distinct slick pull of tacky blood, even though the shoulder’s been field-dressed. The injury hurts, but he’s been trained to disregard pain, withstand torture, so he grits his teeth and pulls the jacket all the way off, letting it drop to the ground. He flexes the fingers of his injured hand, curls them into a fist - and the motion sends hot stabs of pain through his arm, his fingers moving jerkily, as stiffly as if they were machines, like the Soldier’s, in need of repair.
“It’s fine,” he says, shortly - before he even realizes what he’s saying, or why he’s saying it. It’s not fine, and the assets have been trained into honesty, into complete and utter full disclosure, because an asset hiding a hurt or holding on to information is not an asset, but a liability.
He blinks, shakes his head a little, and this time, he says, “It’s not healing properly. The bullet is preventing the joint from repairing itself.”
The technicians will have to remove it. The technicians should remove it. But this operation is quickly going more FUBAR in each minute than it was the last, and the Captain’s eyes drop down to the Soldier’s steady metal fingers, imagining them gripped around the hilt of a knife. It's not an ideal situation. Digging around in his shoulder joint with a knife could damage it extensively - joints can obviously be replaced, but both the Captain and the Soldier know that one of them is whole, and the other is not. Two assets with metal prostheses is not what HYDRA wants. So he swallows any suggestion he might have made, knowing that although the wound won't heal until the bullet is removed, it will heal cleanly once it is. The pain he'll suffer in the meantime is nothing when compared to his dedication, his importance to HYDRA.
His thoughts settle back on tonight. It’s as the Soldier said - they’ll get situated, clean their kit. Wait a day. Then they’ll reassess. Food and water aren’t a problem - water, least of all, with a snowstorm raging outside - but now the Captain’s eyes drop to the pouch the Soldier is always kitted out with, and his mouth forms the words before he can even really think them. “I need another injection”
There aren’t many left. He should be afraid of what will happen, if they run out. If the mission goes on long enough, they will. He knows he should fear it, just as HYDRA taught him to fear so much else, but - he doesn’t. There’s something strange curling in his gut, at the possibility, and it’s the same strange, foreign feeling associated with those names - Rogers and Barnes. Not fear, not revulsion, but an almost sort of detached curiosity.
no subject
He makes a small sound under his breath, an almost grunt.
The injection is delivered as usual with no questions asked. There is a hint of silent hesitation, however, from the Winter Soldier that is entirely due to the fact that it's too soon. That injection should be good for a few hours more - the fact that his partner looks him in the face and after a honest assessment, says he needs it sooner is...alarming. Maybe it doesn't have enough weight behind the word but it's the closest he has to describe what he's feeling. Enough that he breaks protocol to reach out and steady the other asset, steel hand cold against his shoulder as he places the spent injector on the counter with more care than is necessary. It's deliberate. His handler might have even called it for what it was: stalling for time, unnecessary dragging of his feet because he doesn't know what to say, how to approach this particular scenario.
"If we're out here too long, we'll need to start doing partial doses," the Winter Soldier says.
Even his flat-lined voice can't exactly hide the dread. It's less than ideal but it's better than running out and his partner suddenly going cold turkey. Side effects of partial doses: unknown. It might stretch them out a few more days at best, assuming they have fresh handlers on the way. If not...it's going to be rough. Usually when he looks at the Captain, he sees security, safety. Pure trust, going both ways. He doesn't fear him the way he does the handlers, the techs and their files in the steelbound folders. But that was before, knowing his partner was compliant the way he should be. Now that's gone.
Now he's suddenly reminded about the differences between them, both in their compliance-training and physically.
The Winter Soldier curls his metal fist around the empty injector, crushing it into a useless ball before he lets it drop down the sink's garbage disposal.
"What should we do with our...spare time?" From the faint distaste in his voice, the Soldier isn't a fan of this concept. He finds it threatening in the same way the idea of them having names is: inherently wrong, the kind of thing that leaves a film on the roof of his mouth and his tongue. "We've fortified and assessed. There isn't much we can do but wait."
And he's wired right now, wide-awake, and it's a toss-up of it being the adrenaline and worry about his partner's degrading state. So far he's mostly fine. But the doses losing their potency means the Captain has a constantly ticking timing above him and no data on what happens when it hits zero. If push comes to shove, he has his orders for "asset denial - another term for murdering his partner. The problem is the Winter Soldier has no idea if he can actually carry that order out. It doesn't help that he's sure the other asset knows about the order, or at least must suspect.
The concept of "awkward" doesn't yet exist for the Soldier but it's slowly coming back, this uneasy little twist in his gut that he has no name for. It intensifies as he realizes the silence isn't comfortable anymore and for a moment, he starts experiencing the shades of regret.
no subject
There’s something in him, as he watches the Soldier silently uncap the needle and inject the contents of the small plastic vial into his neck, that fears for the other asset, if the Captain were to go wild. He can’t remember, exactly, whether he’s ever suffered from withdrawal in the past, although it makes sense to him that HYDRA would have tested it, and tested it extensively. It must be why they’ve warned him so meticulously against it - he does have memories, vague, repetitious, of lab-coated men and women standing in front of him as he’s released from the chair, holding out an injector and explaining he is to use it at regular intervals, that his partner and handlers will carry spares on every mission. It is of vital importance that he stay medicated, but if he’s not…
If he’s not, something terrible must happen. It’s almost enough to push the lingering curiosity about Barnes and Rogers from his mind - or maybe that’s just the injection starting to take effect. He takes a deep breath.
He watches the Soldier crumple the injector like paper in his metal hand, and knows that fearing for the other asset is… a waste of time. Pointless. The Soldier may or may not be as physically strong as the Captain, but he has his own strengths. He is cunning. He can survive on his own.
The Soldier is an asset of HYDRA. He is valuable, but all assets are ultimately expendable.
The Captain has to repeat this to himself, more than once, before it settles, clear in his gut. Now, perhaps, finally, the medication is taking effect. His eyes, duller, flick back up to his partner’s face at the words, and he nods, once - agreement. Partial doses are wiser than the alternative. “I’ll set up a new schedule,” he says, because like the Soldier, the Captain doesn’t like anything approaching free time. His time is always structured, always purposed, and even when he sleeps during transport, it serves the greater purpose of ensuring he is refreshed and clear-headed and ready to further HYDRA’s goals.
But the Soldier is right, too - they’ve done all there is to do here. The Captain considers; then, “We should rest, refuel, and compare our intel,” he decides. “Ensure we both have a clear picture of the base, the personnel who handled us.” Those personnel are dead, of course, but who they were and what they said will be valuable to HYDRA. Writing this intel down would be a mistake, but the assets both have excellent memories. Still, they had different experiences, and what the Captain is really doing is saying, subtly, that if only one of them returns to HYDRA, then both of them should have a full briefing prepared.
Because he knows that the Soldier must have instructions on how to handle him, what to do if the Captain’s medication is unavailable and he becomes a danger to the mission. He holds his partner’s eyes, and perhaps doesn’t really improve on the awkward silence when he asks, in all seriousness, “Are you authorized to tell me your orders regarding my medication withdrawal?”
They both know there are orders. The Captain understands that those orders might be confidential, need-to-know, and he might not need to know.
But it would be - a comfort, to know there is a plan in place to handle him.
no subject
Still. Racking his standing orders, what he read, what was implanted through the chair and through screaming his lungs hoarse, he can't come up with a reason why he can't. Apparently no one thought this would happen - he knows he was one of those.
"SOP," the Asset says after a pregnant, uncomfortable silence where for a split second, his eyes flicker away from his partner's. "If you run out of suppressants and you're...unmanageable, you're to be removed from rotation."
It's a clinical way of saying he'll be killed the second the Winter Soldier has an opening.
Hearing it aloud, though, is different. The words feel wrong in his mouth even though it's the right thing to do, the correct thing. Rolling it over in his mind, the Soldier realizes he doesn't want to talk about SOP anymore than he wants to talk about the SHIELD agents they ran into only a few hours ago. Things had been easier when it was the mission, when his sole goal was to sight down his scope and depress the trigger and confirm the red blossom of his target's skull evaporating. Oddly enough...he misses that. It's another sign that he's starting to become unstable himself, the very thought sending a shudder up his back.
As if to hide it, the asset reluctantly returns to the first order of business: the SHIELD encounter.
"I'm concerned about what they said," he starts. He leans against the counter, arms crossed over his chest, a chrome finger unconsciously tapping. "Those names. We don't know if they're old covers or something else." (He doesn't want to know what that "something else" could be). "If they have these kinds of details, they might have other classified information they're sitting on."
The Winter Soldier dances around the real meat of the problem, instead choosing to focus on HYDRA first, the men who they used to be never. He searches his partner for signs that he's just as worried. There's a part of him dimly aware the Captain is...attractive. It makes sense he would be, considering his undercover work, how close he needs to get to people. He's good looking but there aren't any specific identifying markers like scars, nothing to really pick him out of a line-up. Ideally people will find him attractive and trustworthy and they couldn't put their finger on why. Sometimes, where he's been away from the suppression chair for long periods of time, the Soldier wonders if that's one of the reasons why he's always felt close to the other asset. Maybe he isn't immune to that either.
He hopes it won't impact his ability to carry out his orders.
"Too bad we couldn't get one of them alive. I would've liked to carry out an interrogation."
no subject
Not unless they’ve been compromised - like the Captain is now, so he doesn’t file that information away, instead simply waiting for the answer.
When it comes, he’s not surprised - of course he’s not, of course that’s exactly what would happen. It’s what should happen. The functional asset should be the one to return to HYDRA, they have no use for a broken tool. He knows his own return is to be prioritized, it’s clear in every mission operating procedure, when the Soldier takes point, clears buildings, provides cover. But if it’s just the two of them, and there is information that HYDRA needs… the more reliable source should survive.
He nods, nothing deceptive in his gaze or his voice when he says, “I understand. Good.” It is good. He can’t say why, but… it is good. There’s no guarantee the Soldier will find an opening, and the Captain can’t guarantee that he’ll give him one. But it’s a plan to follow, and it’s enough. That, he does file away, tries to shrug it on like he shrugs on all his other missions, but it’s not like the fluid ease of stepping out of the chair and knowing what needs to be done. It’s less efficient, it’s less sure, but it’s still a plan, and he can try to follow it.
That plan having been established, the Soldier moves on to the Captain’s suggestion, though in a roundabout way. Still, “I’m concerned, too,” the Captain admits, though there’s little concern in his voice; it’s more detached interest. “If SHIELD has knowledge of past missions, they could decipher a pattern.” And he’s not stupid enough to think that all the files would have been destroyed with the base. There would have been backups, on paper or computer, elsewhere. “But that won’t be a mission for us,” he adds, because while they excel in stealth, they are weapons, first and foremost. Even when they need to infiltrate, blend in, deceive, it’s always with a death as the end goal. This will be a mission for another department - and while thinking that soothes him, in a way, as he feels the utter perfection of HYDRA’s smooth workings, the way the departments and pieces fit together to create a stronger whole, there’s still part of him that does, in fact, feel distressed at the thought of leaving that information in the hands of someone else, while he is taken to a chair and those names, Rogers and Barnes, are wiped from his mind forever.
The Soldier goes on, and the Captain’s lips twitch; one corner lifts, in a small, dry expression that some might call the barest hint of a sardonic smile, as he shifts where he’s standing, trying to ease the ache in his shoulder, which has become a constant white-hot spike in the back of his mind. “It would have given us something to do. Idle hands - “
He stops, frowning. Idle hands… idle hands, what? He doesn’t know why those words came from his mouth, and he doesn’t know what comes after them. But something comes after them. It’s… it’s a phrase, he thinks. (He doesn’t have the context to consider it an idiom.) Did he hear a handler utter the phrase? It must have been on this mission, he doesn’t recall past missions clearly enough, only with a vague sense that actions have been completed, that HYDRA has been satisfied.
He shakes his head slightly, as if to clear the words away. “We’ll just have to report fully on what we saw and heard.” And hope it will be enough that they won’t be punished for it; he’s been punished for incomplete reports, for steps missed, for sketchy intel before. He knows that, deep in his bones, just like he knows he doesn’t want it to happen again. “If our handlers hadn’t - ”
He stops himself again; questioning their handlers is not allowed. It’s not their place. Handlers have been punished before, but never on the words of an asset. The tool has no right to judge the actions of the hand that holds it; even so, the Captain glances at the Soldier, wondering if he feels the same way. If he knows just how… how lame-brained the actions their handlers took were.
The Captain blinks. He’s starting to feel fatigued. He’s starting to feel like he’s fighting an uphill battle, just to think straight. He’s starting to feel, in the pit of his stomach, worried.
go ahead and godmode him failing at his attempt!
This time, though, he doesn't feel any closer to his partner. Now it's starting to feel like a sign of the weakness poisoning him.
"They used poor judgment," he finishes for the Captain. "If they aren't dead, they will be once we report their failures."
It's merely culling out the undesirable, the weakest holding the others back. And, and this is something he isn't sure the Captain feels too but he suspects he does, the Winter Soldier might even derive a small amount of pleasure at his old handlers being liquidated. It won't stop the suppression or the chair or the cryofreeze. He might not even remember what happened to them after this, if he's even alive himself. But for now, in this very moment, he dares to indulge himself for all of two seconds. They failed HYDRA, they failed their assets, and
The hesitation from the Captain doesn't go unnoticed. The whole time he stares at his partner, mentally stripping him for other signs of imperfections like he's a faulty rifle, blue eyes flicking across his face, his body.
It's a few hours later after further observation that the Winter Soldier decides to accelerate his plans. The degradation is happening even faster despite the injection and if he wants even a chance to deliver his partner to HYDRA alive, he needs to move fast. Incapacitate him and then, if it continues, he can process him out of rotation and still have a fresh body to deliver. The idea still sits wrong, festers and curdles, and the Soldier is disturbed to admit he almost debates backing out when he glances at his partner, asleep on the couch facing the boarded up windows. It doesn't stop him from slipping out just before dawn to search the ski lodge again, this time it isn't for weapons or for food, water.
He needs something that can sedate an asset.
There isn't much. He can probably poison the Asset long enough to get him restrained but after that, it's touch and go. The man has a higher metabolism than he does, a stronger immune system. If he doesn't hit him hard and fast, there's a strong chance that this won't be as one-sided as he wants it to be, even with the Captain's injuries.
It's the hesitation that costs the Winter Soldier. He collects some bleach to force-feed his partner, some rope to tie him down, but he...stops. Stands there looking down at the man who he's carried out countless missions with. When he's asleep, he looks a little younger, a little relaxed, and it's almost like looking at someone else, someone better. Someone he, for less than a second, feels almost regret for. That moment passes as the Winter Soldier takes in a slow, measured breath, and throws himself at his partner. He sees the other asset's eyes fly open at the last second, too late to pull back.
He commits.
The Winter Soldier plants himself so he can sit on the Captain, straddling his torso even as he snaps a punch at his face and then goes for trying to grip him by the throat, the other hand coming around with the bottle of bleach.
o7 please feel free to fill in anything or let me know if something needs to be changed!
He can feel, under his skin, that the world is waiting for him to crack. He refuses - HYDRA built him stronger than that - but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice.
He announces he’s going to sleep for a few hours; couches it in terms of the Soldier taking the next sleeping shift, and the Captain standing guard after that. He doesn’t have long to think about whether it’s safe to sleep or not, because it doesn’t take long after he slumps onto the dusty couch that he’s out like a light.
And he stays out, until the Soldier makes his move.
His eyes fly open only seconds before the other asset is on him; the Captain has the ability to snap from sleep to wakefulness in an instant, but the Soldier is fast and in that instant, he's had enough time to land his body on the Captain's, to slam his head back with a punch, to put a hand to his throat and bring up a bottle of -
The smell hits him full in the face. It's bleach, and the Captain's mind works lightning-fast, still at a disadvantage but it doesn't take long to catch up. Bleach won't kill him, but it will incapacitate him, subdue him long enough for the Soldier to neutralize him. Part of the Captain's impressed, maybe even a little proud, in a way that's welling up, so telling of the way the suppression is crumbling inside of him that he feels it at all, at the ingenuity of his partner. It's not a bad idea, pal, but you know I'm not gonna go down easy.
But it's that hesitation on his own part that means he gets a faceful of the stuff. His teeth are clenched, so the amount he ingests is minimal, but the rest of it splashes across his face and into his eyes, burning white-hot before the world starts to fuzz out at the edges, even as the Captain brings up his injured arm in a swinging block that shoots pain through him like a lance, but sends the bottle flying out of the Soldier's grip, somewhere behind the couch. He hears it clatter to the ground, its contents gurgling out over the floor, but it's the least of his worries now. He's still face to face with the other asset, and no matter how fast he blinks, the pain in his eyes only gets worse, and the gauze-like curtain that’s descending on his vision grows thicker.
It'll likely clear up on its own, as the serum in his veins sloughs off the damaged corneal cells, regrows new ones. But it will probably get worse before it gets better, and healing will take time - likely hours - and he doesn't have time right now. He has an asset that will put him down if he doesn't turn the tables first.
His programming says he should go for the kill. His instincts, if that's what they are, balk, and what happens isn't what he's been trained for. If he acted on programming, on training, the Soldier's neck would have been snapped in seconds, the limp, lifeless body pushed to the ground and let cool. There would be a full report made, once he's re-established contact with HYDRA, an explanation, a mission briefing, and complete and utter submission to the chair for reconditioning -
Reconditioning, he must need reconditioning, he must be breaking down, but he's not broken; there's something else coming up through the cracks, and that something else fights like a cornered animal, but an animal that only strikes as much and as far as is needed, and no further. An animal capable of feeling... sympathy ? Remorse? Mercy?
The way it should have gone down, one asset truly against the other, should have left the lodge with only one asset still breathing.
The way it does go down, at the end of it, has the Soldier face-down on the ground, cheek pressed hard into the thin carpet with the Captain pinning him down with his sheer bulk and no small amount of will, panting hard, battered on two fronts now by pain that's starting to scream louder than he has the capacity to tune it out. His injured shoulder feels like it's made of liquid fire, the arm hanging loosely, uselessly at his side almost like it's a prosthetic, like the Winter Soldier might look after a nasty EMP blast took out the metal that replaced flesh on one side. His eyes feel like spikes driving into his skull, his vision largely gone (and a decent swath of his face reddened and burning, making him look like a burn victim) as he twists the Soldier's left arm behind him at an angle that's almost certainly unnatural, in a grip as hard as steel locked around the metal wrist with his one good hand, and his elbow dug dangerously into the Soldier's back at the place where his spine curves up from shoulder to neck, a vulnerable spot that the right amount of pressure, applied in the right way with the force of a super soldier behind it could snap the vertebrae, and paralyze, if not kill.
it's cool! We might need a slight timeksip if you want to knock out Bucky though
The Captain's cornered and that's when he's most dangerous - the fact he's able to operate like this even when he has a faceful of bleach, his eyes a reddened, ruined mess, says all it needs to about the thoroughness of his training. How their similarities end and he's the inferior model, the expendable one who can't compete against the original. That same training ends up with the Winter Soldier pinned in the worst position possible, his partner's full weight sitting on him as he squirms and struggles and grunts almost angrily under the other man, boots scrapping against the carpet as he tries to find purchase and can't. Not when the other asset's sitting at the perfect location to keep him from bucking him off.
The sound that drags out of the Winter Soldier isn't a whine - it's angrier, desperate; he can't carry out his objective and he knows exactly what that elbow means. He's been on the opposite end before. He might as well be dead. Even if he can somehow shove it off, the Captain's in the perfect position to hook his arm around his throat and roll over, crocodile style, controlling his body with his legs, and apply the right pressure against the carotid arteries. It wouldn't take him long to incapacitate or kill, even hurt as he is. He's superior to any other man but he still needs to breathe, still needs blood to deliver oxygen through his brain. The fact that his partner hasn't committed to either route somehow feels...wrong.
It takes a Soldier a tortured moment to realize this is what frustration must feel like.
His teeth grit against the floor. Carpet fibers dig into his cheek. "Do it or don't!"
For once his voice actually has a shred of emotion as it spikes past the usual monotone they both share. Used to share.
His metal hand twitches against the Captain's grip, the tiny internal pistons inside the chassis groaning in protest as he tries to force himself free. It wasn't built for the force. It shows as tiny sparks flare blue within the seams and his finger spasm as he starts losing control of them, joints dancing before he go limp. The Winter Soldier's face sets in a snarl as he continues to struggle even though self-preservation should've told him to stop, to cool it, to save this fight for another day.
They might not have another day. Not if his partner's already this far gone, despite the injection.
The thought of the Captain running around, free of HYDRA, turns his blood cold. It's wrong. Impossible. The concept of sinful doesn't exist in his world but he still has a deep, curdling sensation of disgust and unbridled fear forming in his gut, knotting, uncurling like a snake about to strike. It takes hold of him, hammers at the cold logical walls of his own conditioning and instead of lying obediently still so he can get another chance, another day, the Winter Soldier instead increases his struggling. At the rate he's going, he might get lucky, might get in the right position so that elbow slips and he can turn the tables.
So much for going down easy.
welp have a knocked-out bucky and a ridiculously long tag
He won’t do it. He knows that - he’s known it from the second he got the Soldier in this position, down on the floor under him. He isn’t going to kill the other asset, not even in self-defense, not even when he knows, deep down in this sour knot in his gut, that the Soldier is following orders, the same way he should be. He’s slipping; he can feel it, terrified, shaking, knowing that when HYDRA comes, when they find him, the recalibration will only hurt worse. The pain and the punishment will only last longer for an asset that’s losing its ability to carry out its only function.
And yet, deeper down, past that shaking, desperate thing that wants to know why the injections aren’t working, why his programming is breaking down… there’s something else. There’s something still trying to fight its way to the surface, and that thing… That thing has…
“Mission,” he whispers, almost more to himself, almost for a second as though he’s forgetting the Soldier is there, pinned down and struggling beneath him. “I have a mission,” he says, he promises himself and the Soldier, and he might have said more, might not, but it doesn’t matter, because just then, the body under his jerks and starts struggling, harder than before.
The Captain grits his teeth, and he doesn’t have a choice - lightning-fast, he drops the metal arm and grabs the Soldier by the back of the neck, hand almost a blur. He raises the body under his, and slams it back down onto the floor. He does it again, and then a third time, just to make sure that when the body of the Winter Soldier goes limp, it’s not because he’s faking it.
Even so, he stays where he is for a long, long minute, his own heart pounding and breath coming ragged. There’s the pain, flaring up in his arm, his eyes, his head, and there’s the body under his, now just dead weight, but it won’t stay there for long. And there’s… there’s the mission, this thing he can feel bubbling up from his gut, the parameters foggy, hidden, but they’re there. They’re coming. Like his ruined vision, they’re not something he can grasp right now. But they’ll get there. They’ll slide into focus.
He thinks he saw rope, in the Winter Soldier’s hands, just before he jumped. He has to crawl around like a blind man on the floor, holding his injured arm close and balancing his weight between thighs and abs, but he finds it. He grits his teeth through the pain as he turns the Winter Soldier over by feel, binds his hands and feet, and props him up against the base of the couch.
Then the Captain scoots around and sits, shoulder to shoulder, with the Soldier’s unconscious body. The weight of the Soldier, slumped against his own uninjured shoulder, feels… good. It feels calming, it lets him focus on something other than the burning, white-hot pain from the bullet that won’t let the bones of his shoulder heal around it and the bleach still burning its way through his eyes. Eventually, he can start to see light, shadows, blurred edges. He thinks he can feel his eyes healing, cell by cell, slow going, but doggedly moving forward, rebuilding.
He wonders if that’s what’s happening to his mind, too. He wonders if it’s been damaged, if it’s trying to rebuild. It feels like… like a long-buried, rusty and damaged protocol is surfacing, as the suppression of the drugs and the too-long-ago session in the chair start losing their grip on him. Without the suppression of the drugs keeping it where it belongs -
For a moment, he's terrified - he thinks that he must be broken, that HYDRA had suppressed him for good reason, had kept him on this strict regimen of drugs for a reason, and that this baseline protocol must somehow be so terrible and so strong that it couldn't be wiped, only held at bay, and now it's rearing its ugly head -
Rearing its ugly head, like a hydra. Like a monster that needs to be put down. Like -
"Fuck," he says, his head drooping, back bowing until his forehead's nearly touching the his knees as he draws his legs up, feet flat on the floor. They tried to burn something out of his mind, but they couldn’t. So they tried to bury it, and now it’s awake. “There’s something I have to… do.” He’s not sure what, but he knows, now, that there’s some task left unfinished, some aspect of his original protocols that wasn’t fulfilled. Did he fail, is that why HYDRA wipes him again and again, to eliminate his failure, erase it from existence? Or is it something else? “I’m compromised,” he says - admits, really, to the quiet air around them, to the sleeping - unconscious - Winder Soldier. “But I still have a mission.”
He doesn’t know how long they sit like that, with those words, I still have a mission, echoing over and over again through his head.
you say it like it's a surprise :P also with the right account
The second one does him in.
After that the Winter Soldier's unconscious. It's a state that he fears in the lizard part of his brain that that he's never mentioned to anyone, a nothingness that howls with silence just like cryo. It isn't like the moments where he catches some sleep here and there, where sometimes he dreams; categorizes; reports to his handlers. It's pure nothing, unaccountable, and he can't tell exactly when he was restrained or when he started slumping toward his partner, head sagging, close enough that the handlers would've wondered if they remembered how to fraternize and maybe that would've made it into both their files.
He starts to revive after an hour or so, his head thundering and nausea rising, the Soldier automatically forcing down the bile by swallowing. Isn't the first time he's been unconscious. Isn't even the first time he's been knocked out by the Captain, either, because he remembers bits and pieces of their training sessions together, how sometimes he'd end up on the floor and there's be a gap before he wakes up getting dragged down a hall and the first thing he sees is his boots, wobbling, limp, and then he registers the taste of blood hanging metallic in his mouth. The Winter Soldier hadn't been pissed. Mostly he pretended to play dead and he'd enjoyed the sensation, the idea, that the Captain left a piece of him behind. It's that weakness that probably got him where he is now.
The Winter Soldier revives with a shudder and a grunt.
Normally when he wakes it's slow, quiet enough to pretend to be still out so he can access the situation and come up with some escape routes, some ambush points. This time it's uncoordinated like a normal man, losing whatever element of surprise he might've had. His eyes drift open reluctantly. Head hurts. Everything hurts, his arm isn't working - stupid of him to keep trying, in retrospect - and he can't spread his legs. Ankles tied. Arms too. Unacceptable.
His head lifts, the Winter Soldier's dark hair hanging in a tangled curtain in his face. The blood trailing from his nose and mouth has had time to dry into a dark crust he can feel as he scrunches face and wrinkles his nose and asks:
"...Mission?"
It comes out hoarse, a shade of suspicious. What mission? He gets that his partner has turned into the worst kind of liability seeing as the injections aren't holding, but the word "mission" rings a bell inside him. Hits him in the core of his own conditioning. He doubts the Captain's been assigned higher clearance for a mission he isn't part of - not with success record - but it isn't impossible. His ankles shift and bump against his partner as he tests the rope. Good knots. HYDRA good. Not surprising.
"You're compromised. Turn yourself in and HYDRA can help you," the Winter Soldier says quietly, his voice hoarse, his head ringing even as conditioning demands he trot out HYDRA's bottom line like it's from a pamphlet. "Do the right thing, Captain."
Even with his vision swimming he can see his partner isn't at his peak.
It's disturbing. Body language betrays him. The Winter Soldier isn't much for conversation unless he's been conditioned for it, but he can read the physical tells just fine. Everything about his partner sends up red flags: he's biting his lip, staring forward at nothing instead of a target, a point of interest like supplies or a weapon. His posture is in a weakened position, head bowed to rest against his knees instead of held up high.
no subject
But those handlers are dead, and now it’s just him and the Winter Soldier - and his new (old?) mission, still slowly forming, nebulous and murky but growing sharper, clearly, piece by piece inside his head.
The mission that he isn’t sure how to explain, even as the Soldier lifts his head beside him. The Captain’s eyes are still healing, his vision murky but he can see just enough to imagine the rest of the picture, the blood crusting the Soldier’s nostrils, the way it’s scabbed along the top of his mouth, as he asks that simple question. Of course he’s asking - it’s the thing that has turned the Captain against him, in his mind, only what the Soldier doesn’t understand is that the Captain doesn’t want to stand against him. He never has, he knows that now. Every training session, every time he’d knocked the other asset to the ground, beat him into unconsciousness, was like a thorn twisting in his brain, a voice clamoring out of synch with the rest of the chorus telling him to comply. Telling him to follow HYDRA’s path.
HYDRA’s path… there’s something wrong with it. There’s some reason he’s supposed to sidestep off of it. And it has something to do with the Soldier. After an hour alone with his churning, half-buried thoughts, the Captain knows that much for sure, if not a whole lot else. It’s what makes him grit his teeth and shake his head when the Winter Soldier gives him the party line, the words at once hollow and whole, something the Soldier believes in just as much as the Captain no longer can.
HYDRA can’t help him, he thinks, and it’s like a revelation. It’s like that first spark that sets fire to the tinder, ignites what will soon enough become a blaze. It’s what makes him sit up, shoulder sliding against the other asset’s, looking him in the face, even if his gaze is just a little off, like a blind man trying to look you in the eye, only it’s a couple of inches off. He can see the other asset’s face, but it’s like a pale, shining oval set against the darker hair, the can vaguely see the outlines of features, the blue eyes, the blood-encrusted nose and mouth, in the dim light. The blinds are still closed, the sky still dark with the storm outside.
“I am doing the right thing,” he says, slow but sure, quiet but profound. His voice is plain, flat, clear, but there’s a quality underneath it that wasn’t there before. It’s subtle, but it’s steady. “I don’t know why, but I know that I am.”
He knows that won’t be enough to convince the Soldier. Of course it won’t - it’s vague, it’s unclear, it doesn’t comply. He is no longer compliant, and compliance is the foundation from which the assets were built. It’s why this deviation is the source of so much strife.
So he does something that he has learned never, ever to do in front of a handler. He does something that only the Winter Soldier could ever (has ever, maybe, has this happened before? He doesn’t know, can’t remember, and that frightens him, suddenly) bring him to do. He speaks his mind, he lets out a little of the secret he can feel, buried deep inside: “There’s a different protocol. I don’t think it’s HYDRA’s. I don’t think they can help me understand.”
There’s a pause; when he speaks, that thing coloring his voice has gotten stronger. “I want to understand what it is.”
He wants to know what this thing is they’ve buried, and to do that, they both know what needs to happen. He needs time. He needs to not go back in the chair. He can’t comply, or it will be covered up again, hidden from the light, and maybe he’ll never find it again. Or maybe he’s already found it a hundred times before. Maybe he's forgotten it a hundred times more.
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"How do you know there's another protocol?" The Soldier's voice softens at the edges even as he stares at his partner like he's trying to bore right into his skull. "Maybe I can help you, if you let me.
Next order of business: if you can't immediately incapacitate a target, try to work your way into his/her good graces until you can. Whatever has contaminated the Captain's programming thankfully hasn't hit his: he's clear-headed, getting more so by the second as the ringing stops and his vision resolves. Parameters snap back into focus. Whatever pain he feels is shoved aside as a distraction, an indulgence that HYDRA won't allow and, therefore, he won't allow. The Winter Soldier's chin lifts as he swallows, jaw working, eyes closing for a second with what looks like a normal man's moment of weakness. The barest hint of blue peeks out as he stares at his partner. His face is ruined, inflamed and swelling and red...but even now he can see the signs that his advanced healing factor is kicking in, doing an even better job than his own. Bleach to the face would've taken him a day to recover from, at the minimum. At his estimate, it's probably been a few hours at most and the Captain's already got his eyes open.
For the first time in his memory, the Soldier experiences regret. If anyone should've gone off the reservation and gone rogue, it should've been him - he would've been easier to remove from rotation, would've been the easier loss for HYDRA to take. They could always make another like him. His partner, though. He's one of a kind, and right now he wishes he wasn't so...unique.
"We could do this together, just me and you," the Soldier adds. To the casual outsider, his voice is flat-lined, a borderline monotone as if he hadn't tried to kill a man who turned things around and introduced his face to the floor, the up-close and personal way. "You don't have to go at this alone."
For now he means it, because his mission requires it and because the naked truth is, he doesn't want to kill the other asset if there's another way. For one thing, the Captain's far more valuable than he is. And - and this is the private part, the one that he would immediately get strapped into the suppression chair for - he wants to keep working with him. Wants to clear rooms, wants to train with him back on base. The word "friend" doesn't exist in their world. If it did, it would've just been a liability. But examining where he failed today, the Winter Soldier comes to the slow, startling conclusion that this is a liability he would've wanted to risk.
He shifts from where he's propped up against his partner, drawing his legs up with a pained hiss, the thick heels of his boots dragging against the floor. He's strong, sure, but the Captain knows his limitations just like he does and naturally he made sure to tie his arms and his ankles together so he can't just snap free. Might be able to saw through if he can rub the rope against the chassis of his arm, but that would still take time. Best he can do is keep his partner talking as he tries to figure out another approach.
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But while he can’t access the memories, the knowledge he wants, there are other things slipping through - sense-memories, instincts, things that run deeper than conscious thought, and are far harder to wipe away. They’re the first to return: the soft sound of the Soldier’s voice, the feel of his warm body next to his, the comfort he takes in knowing they’re together.
His vision is still too blurry to really assess the Soldier; he hears the asset shift beside him, more than sees it, but what little information he can get from his eyes, coupled with what he’s getting from his other senses, gives him a pretty clear picture. He knows he’s bound the Soldier tightly enough that he won’t be able to escape easily, can’t just snap the bonds. He knows he doesn’t want to leave his partner tied up, that something about that sits uneasily inside of him, and he’s already reaching clumsily for the other’s hands before he catches himself, pauses, fingertips just brushing the metal of the Soldier’s hand, inches from the knots at most.
“I want to do this together,” he says - again, words he would be backhanded, shot, sliced, burned, electrocuted for. Words that he would never have dared to say, should have known better than to say, known better than to even think while HYDRA still held his mind whole and molded in their hands. Now, his ruined eyes flick up, trying to find and hold the Soldier’s, though the gaze is still off, a little too far to the left and not as piercing as it should be, without that clear focus. But there’s still something genuine in it - genuine, and lost. “I think we’re stronger together. I think we belong together. I think my mission,” whatever it is, “needs you.”
His fingers inch closer to the knots binding the Soldier’s wrists, but even as they touch the rope, he doesn’t untie them. He’s still looking the Soldier in the face as best he can, still struggling with his own sense of duty, of reason, of protocol, all three of them screaming, clashing and disharmonious, inside his head loud enough to nearly drown out the sound of the howling wind outside. “I trust you,” he says quietly, eyes narrowing almost as if in confusion, as if he didn’t mean or didn’t expect to have said the words that just slipped from his lips.
Except he does mean them. “We’re partners,” he says… because they are. They’re partners, and… and something else, but he can’t find the word, can’t grasp it long enough to form it. “And partners trust each other.”
It’s a statement, almost as much as it might be a warning, as his fingers finally touch the knots, but then they still. Something in him says he shouldn’t unknot them; something in him balks at the idea that he tied them at all.
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The Winter Soldier doesn't say the first thing that crosses his mind.
Not if it gets in the way of lowering the other asset's defenses.
"So then we'll do this as partners."
The words feel both right and somehow like decay in his mouth, all at once, the familiar tainted by this bitter feeling that he's somehow being...compromised by going along with the other asset, even for the sake of his own mission. Unlike the Captain, he remembers it, remembers every contingency and remembers, clearly, what it means to carry out a mission to its logical end - HYDRA's will carried out and (preferably) both Assets turning themselves in for debriefing. That's how it's supposed to be. They're supposed to return, injured or not. Turn over their kit. On a good day, he can hear the sounds of the Captain screaming as they wipe him so he can be put back into cryo. Now he wonders if he'll ever hear that again, the certainty of it, that brief thrill where where he can read between the lines as the Captain's voice gives out and his gasps slip away even past the thin walls. It'd felt private, almost for his ears only. Now it sinks in that he might never hear those sounds again. If maybe this was their last mission. Maybe he'd done the unforgivable: maybe he's taken this partnership for granted.
"So what now?"
The Winter Soldier accesses some leftover muscle memory, some deep-cover persona he must have had when he was backing up the Captain. Maybe it wasn't completely scrubbed away. Maybe - and this is the better option, the one he approves of - maybe HYDRA knew this could happen. Maybe they had a contingency plan in his programming for a scenario like this. Where he couldn't just work his way out with his hands and whatever weapons were nearby. Where he had only his voice to work with. His voice and his body language and what he's picking up from his partner's instability, the man seems like he wants someone to...fraternize with. Be physically close to. Whatever it takes to build up that trust until he can get another shot at subduing the Captain.
He shifts pointedly against the other asset, bumping shoulders, his knees drawing up as he tries to dredge up those faint memories of what it was like being another man. He'd been a "James" once on an op. Had smiled, maybe even flirted - carrying out the parameters of some HYDRA tech who knew how to read his fellow man - and he could pass as something other than super-soldier, so long as he kept his arm covered. Now the Winter Soldier is trying to drag those memories back, trying to figure out what he can use to get his partner where he wants him. Physical contact was the first one. Knowing when to stare, when to look away (despite that being a risk), is another. The Soldier tilts his head down, almost as if he's pretending not to see the rope circled tight around his ankles, his tangled, matted hair falling into his face.
One more chance. The Winter Soldier knows he shouldn't even give his partner that much. That they're far past the point of trying to take him in alive and salvageable. But he finds himself hoping that the Captain will give him that opening, give him the chance to drag him back into the fold where they can fix him, where he can continue to run ops with him instead of facing that howling void again without knowing that the other Asset will be on the other side waiting for him.
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This mission is murkier - unclear. It’s a gut feeling - if the Captain knew what gut feelings were, could call them by name. He’s had them before - they’re actually part of what makes him valuable as a breathing, reasoning weapon, why they pull him out of cryo again and again - but the understanding of gut feelings and how they work and what they are has been burned from him, and it hasn’t yet returned. All he has is a certainty that this mission trumps all others, that this protocol is vital, and that he needs to drop everything else to pursue it.
So - that’s what now. That’s what they’ll do. The problem is, “We need information,” he says, fingers still poised above the knots holding the Soldier’s hands uncomfortably in place. It seems like the next logical step - you don’t act without intel, that’s just insane, but the problem is - he has the intel, and it’s locked away. The barriers are crumbling, but -
That’s it. “We need time,” he says next, burning eyes flicking to the shuttered windows, to the howling just beyond them. “I need time, to remember. We need to stay here, and you need to stop giving me injections.” It’s the reasonable move, after all - they’re not really working, but they're still slowing things down, barring the way, even though the barriers eventually give way. Stopping them would likely speed the process, let his synapses rebuild ruined pathways, let the burned-out bridges in his mind reroute. His lips twitch into something that’s barely an expression, barely a motion at all, but that the other asset might recognize as the Captain’s equivalent of a wry smile. “The weather seems to be accommodating for right now, at least.”
There’s still no telling how long the storm itself will last, but the longer it does, the more snow their lodge is buried under, and the longer they have before HYDRA comes looking for them. If they sit tight, and if they forego all contact protocols, if they sit and wait and let his mind keep recovering… the Captain is sure that what he needs will bob to the surface, will slough off the mud it’s under, and become clear.
His fingers flex a little, as the Solder’s shoulder bumps his own. Partners. That’s what they are, what they always have been, for the entire existence that he knows (can remember). They work well together, like two moving parts of a whole, like the trigger and the hammer of a gun, one complementing the other. The missions where they’re sent out together always feel the most complete, the most satisfying, and he wants to save that, to preserve it. He hopes, somewhere deep inside himself, that this new, desperate protocol won’t change that. If it does… if it does, he’ll deal with it then. He’ll have a choice to make.
But not right now. His fingers start to loosen the knots by touch, slowly but efficiently. He doesn’t simply remove the rope all at once, but he first gives the Soldier some slack, and then some more, ruined, still hard-to-focus eyes on the other asset’s face, watching for tells, watching for twitches, even as his fingertips feel for tremors in the other’s arms, signs that he’s going to fight back, to fight this. It’s only if he gets none of it that he’ll finally loosen the bonds, because if they’re in this for the long haul, together, then he can’t (he can, he doesn’t want to, he shouldn’t -) leave the Soldier tied and bound.
“We’re good - as partners,” he says, half a statement, half a question, seeking confirmation, agreement. “We always have been.” He can’t remember much, between the screaming and the hot-white-slicing pain of the chair, the beat-downs, the small army of guards it takes to subdue him and drag him into cryo, every time. He can’t remember past missions in detail, but he has enough - enough of those gut feelings, those sense memories - to be sure of what he’s saying. “We’re the best HYDRA has, together. I want to find out what else we can be.” And the answer, he’s so sure, is buried inside him, just beneath the surface, trying to claw its way free.
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It's times like this that the Winter Soldier catches himself almost...grateful that his own conditioning is simpler. Apparently less moving parts that can break in the field, away from the safety of a controlled environment. He doesn't need injections the way his partner does and his stint with the chair was only a few days ago, so he knows for a fact that it will hold for weeks, if not more, without needing to be revisited. Watching the way the Captain is struggling, how his eyes water behind a swollen, ruined face that his enhanced serum is trying to repair cell by cell, and he knows that what little stability the injections bring won't be worth the risk.
There's a difference between exercising patience on an op, waiting for a target. Doing it with a man he's trusted with his life over and over, and it's harder than he wants to admit.
The Winter Soldier's lips press together in a thin line that brings out the stress lines of his face, hollows his cheeks. His expression turns harsh as he tilts his head, trying to gauge how much of his partner's sight has returned.
"So long as it's together," he grunts, forcing himself to say the words, to act as if there is a life beyond HYDRA. It's harder than he thought it would be, considering his experience with deep cover, and he can feel his back teeth start to ache as he clenches and grinds them. "I don't want to be by myself again."
And that part, that part's true, it's the closest thing he has to deeply personal that he can manage with the conditioning, but it's necessary to feed out that vulnerability to his partner as if it's some olive branch for trying to incapacitate him. As he feels the rope around his wrist - his flesh wrist, not the metal one that's limp, the sensors fritzing on and off - loosen, he resists the immediate urge to break free and close his hand around the Captain's throat, squeeze the fight out of him and then call for backup from the nearest HYDRA cell. His eyes flicker down to the rope, loosening bit by bit, his wrist chaffed red because the Captain, despite his ruined eyes, the gunshot, has done the right thing and tied him up tight, before he glances back up at his face. He has to be looking for any of his usual tells that he's about to turn the tables. Knowing how high the stakes are, how important the Captain is to HYDRA (refusing to admit it's personal, too), the Winter Soldier does his damn best to make sure those tells don't show. For now he's docile, the second as always to his first.
It's only when the rope finally pools in his lap that he flexes his hand, trying to work some feeling in it. The metal one lies limp, the gleaming fingers twitching every now and then as the malfunctioning servos sputter.
"What do you think will happen after this?" the Winter Soldier plays ball and keeps things peaceful as he rotates his hand, curls each finger, his eyes burning judging holes in his partner's face. Once he heard someone describe the Captain as "handsome" - he wouldn't know, but he does know is he had short hair he approved of (less to grab), piercing blue eyes, and symmetrical features that consistently made targets want to like him. Now, with his face washed free of color from the pain, the cold, and the skin around his eyes a mask of angry red from the bleach, he doubts anyone would trust him the way they usually did.
maybe timeskip a little to the next day or so?
He ignores it - he’s made a decision, and he’s not going back on it now. To falter would show weakness, and HYDRA does not tolerate weakness. They built him to be strong, to be unstoppable, and even as he’s crumbling and unsure, he can’t give up the strength he still has, the conviction that this old, deep programming needs to come to light. It makes everything worth it - the excruciating pain in his shoulder, his ruined face, the way he’s tied up the Soldier, even if only temporarily. What little he can see of the expression on the other asset’s face makes him uncomfortable, in this deep, dark place, and he doesn’t like that feeling at all.
But the pit of unhappiness shrinks, when the asset finally speaks. When he confirms that they’ll do this together, that he doesn’t want to be alone. The lines of the Captain’s broad frame relax, as much as they can with the pain, and he nods, leg splaying out just a little, bumping the Soldier’s thigh with his own in this subtle, small gesture that none of their handlers have ever caught. “You won’t,” he says, and his conviction swells as he says it, beats back the unease just a little further. “I won’t let that happen.”
It’s not like the Captain to make empty threats; it’s unclear how he might carry this one out, when he is but a tool, a thing for HYDRA to point and punish and choose to use or lock away, but he means it, nonetheless. He won’t let them be separated, if he has to lie through his teeth when their handlers find them. He’ll deal with that when it happens, when he has the intel slowly shaking loose inside of him, when he can make an informed plan of action.
For now, they’ll wait.
“I don’t know,” he says, aware of the other asset’s gaze on his face, but steadfastly refusing to let anything but surety show on it. “If there’s a mission, we’ll complete it.” If it’s a mission, it will have parameters and an objective and an endpoint and a followup plan, just like all the others. Once he can grasp that information, he’ll feel infinitely better. “If it’s not, we’ll complete this mission, and I’ll handle the consequences.”
It’s clear he means by whatever means necessary, whether it’s lying or telling the truth. It’s clear that he means to handle those consequences himself, to ensure that no harm comes to his partner, nothing worse than the usual end-of-mission protocol. “We’ll stay together,” he promises. “We’re too valuable for them to split apart. I know how to make sure of that.”
For now, though, “Being knocked unconscious isn’t rest,” he points out. “And you had watch last night. Get some rest. You probably have a concussion. I can keep watch.” Even with eyes that aren't yet clear and sharp, his other senses are good enough to do as he proposes. And in a few hours, at most, his face and eyes will have healed enough that, while he still won't look as "handsome" as usual, he'll be fully operational - at least, in that respect. His arm still aches sharply, deep in the ruined joint, and he will endure it forever if he has to, but he doesn't like the idea of the injured arm slowing them down, if what he digs up from inside of himself doesn't include returning to HYDRA.
He'll deal with it then, though. Just like everything else.
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That's what the Winter Soldier will tell himself, more than once. He's regained enough shreds of trust that he's fairly sure his partner won't walk off, grab one of the perfectly good steak knives on the kitchen counter, and slice open an artery while he's still bound. SOP says that's the best approach. But it doesn't happen, the Captain insists on a conversation, on indulging on these sentiments as if they aren't massive defects. Right now he's not sure what he means by "stay together". His immediate conditioned response is to assume that he's indeed a prisoner, no matter how the Captain dresses it up. If he were to take the other asset on in a fair fight? Truth is, he isn't sure he could win. The other man is the original, the one with the stronger serum burning in his system. Considering that, and what he can remember of those combat sessions they had against each other back on base, and he isn't sure he could win if it was just their naked fists.
"Fine," he says. At this point he'll probably be awake if he relaxes, if he dozes off. Concussions to them are inconveniences at most - his head pounds with a pressure from all sides and there's a few moments where he wonders if he'll throw up what little rations must still be in his gut.
At some point he supposes he doses off. When he opens his eyes, he'll see the Captain leaning over him a few times, eyes still red-rimmed but aimed his way with more focus, as if checking to make sure his healing factor is chugging along and that the concussion isn't suddenly a "complication".
When he wakes up again, he'll realize that the ropes around his wrists, ankles and legs are loosened enough that he can easily shake himself loose.
The knives on the counter are gone.
Getting up, the Winter Soldier winces, sore, but functional, and tries to make the best of this as he levers himself up. The ropes pool to the ground. His directive is the same. The Captain must either be incapacitated or killed when the opportunity presents itself. Doesn't matter what he said, or what he even told his partner. It has to happen and if he believed in a higher power than HYDRA, he'd be crossing his fingers and hoping he can aim for incapacitate instead of liquidate. First thing he does is assume that if he looks for weapons, opening and closing shelves and drawers, that the Captain will hear. It limits him to just a visual inspection and he can see that the Captain has used his own recovering eye sight to sanitize the room. Anything remotely lethal is missing. Whatever is bolted in place would require that he's already got the Captain tired and barely struggling.
The Winter Soldier huffs out a barely audible sigh. Long haul it is.
He finds his partner by the back entrance, already standing up straight with hardly any pained hunch to his frame and it looks like he swapped out the bandage around his torso's bullet wound. Damn. So much for hoping that any blood poisoning from the infection might've slowed him down. The Winter Soldier makes a mask of his face as he leans against the door frame, his malfunctioning arm hanging down by his side as it whirs uselessly, fingers twitching and spasming minutely every now and then.
"Storm still strong?" The Soldier doesn't circle things back to last night, to the whole part where he tried to cripple the closest thing he has to a friend. Instead he focuses on the now, on what he can control and assess, and hope, desperately, that his partner will give him an opening. With how the other Asset's shoulders square, and his red rimmed eyes rove, he isn't sure about his chances just yet. "The SHIELD agents might have risked it for all we know."
If he can't get to the Captain physically, he can at least try to seed in doubt psychologically. Try to plant something, make him second-guess (although he can't say for sure if SHIELD maybe did want them bad enough). The Winter Soldier remains propped against the door frame with his eyes burning holes in his partner. Maybe they're working together for now. But he can't shut off that instinct to look for hints of weakness, of aberration, in the other asset, and so he doesn't bother looking away as if he'll be embarrassed if caught.
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But he doesn’t leave the weapons - or anything else that can be used as a weapon - in the same room as the other asset. He’s not stupid, and he knows the Winter Soldier’s orders, now, if he thinks the Captain is unsalvageable.
He’s not - he’s fine, he’s salvageable, he’s good - but he doesn’t want to leave room for uncertainty. Not in that respect, when he’s still not sure of what’s trying to grow and bloom inside his own head.
He hears the other asset wake and move, even over the sound of the storm; by now, his vision has returned almost to normal, even if his face is still a little blotchy, and some of his hair is a little discolored, damaged where the liquid splashed into it. He’s standing tall, not giving away any sign of pain, but his face looks worn and drawn, even under the new, pink skin around his eyes. He glances over, as the Soldier approaches, as he speaks, and the Captain’s smile is a grim, barely-there twitch of his lips, just like always. “It’s the same,” he says, indicating the storm - the snow is piling up against the side of the building, and the wind has barely let up, if at all. The sky is still an unbroken ceiling of darkness, and if there’s an end, he hasn’t been able to spot it approaching.
He considers what the Soldier suggests - that SHIELD is still looking for them, and… it seems reasonable enough. They are valuable assets, of course. He watches the Soldier watching him, and he tilts his head - a question between them. “Do you think we should move?”
His dry, steady tone of voice communicates clearly that he thinks any answer other than no would be a mistake. The storm is too strong, the terrain is too unfamiliar, and their would-be captors are an unknown that gnaws at his gut. This entire thing has been a mess, and clearly their intel was incorrect. That means SHIELD is now largely an unknown factor, and he doesn’t like that - just like the programming inside his head, an unknown factor all its own.
They have the advantage here, what little of it they have. They can fortify, they can learn this place quickly and determine all its strengths and weaknesses, they can mount a defense that SHIELD won’t expect. He’d rather go down in a hail of bullets than freeze to death in a snowdrift on a mountaintop. And he doesn’t want that end for the Soldier, either. It’s weak, it’s not what they were built for.
And something about that idea, that notion specifically, curls so cold and frightening in his gut that even his animal fear of the chair and his handlers and every punishment HYDRA has ever inflicted on him pales in comparison. He will never die in the ice and snow, and he will never let the Winter Soldier die that way, either.
“What’s the status of your arm?” he asks, instead, as though he isn’t the one who’d disabled it during their fight. As though he isn’t the one who feels like every thought he has is like stepping on thin ice, never sure where his foot is going to break through and take him, screaming, beneath the surface. He can feel the very last vestiges of his last injection wearing away, and it’s making him antsy, uncomfortable. He’s still fighting for control of his mind, his mission, and grasping at his training and his partner as those last familiar failsafes. He knows he wanted to stop the injections. He just knows that doesn’t make the idea of it any more appealing.
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"Poor," the Winter Soldier opts for being truthful. After failing to incapacitate his partner, he'll need to work on buying enough of that trust back so he can get another opening. If it means being upfront about his weaknesses, then so be it. "It'll lower my effectiveness once we leave if it's left non-functional."
He can operate without it if needed. There had been plenty of exercises with it detached, both against the Captain and against select trainees fast-tracked to rise in the ranks. Some of them had found that no matter their skill level, their background - they couldn't last even a minute when he was one-handed and they thought he wouldn't kill because of their background, their contacts, the fact they were too prideful to surrender. The Captain, though. He'd always lasted. Always knew to go for his weak spot, use the missing limb to his advantage in any exercises, and he knew how to disable him using pain, location, and bone breaks on the flesh side. There had always been an immediacy about his approach. The Winter Soldier remembers respecting that, even if most of the actual details were only faint impressions of pain and smell and sound. Glancing at his partner, the Soldier studies him and he has to assume that part hasn't change. The injections may not have worked...but his sense of tactics, of taking advantage of a perceived weakness? Those are still fresh and he can't assume those will degrade too.
The Winter Soldier touches his damaged arm. It's non-functional from the elbow joint down to the wrist, where most of the damage was done. His face feels tender, as if he'd run headfirst into a tinder block, and there's no doubt some swelling from the Captain smashing his face into the floor as hard as he did. There's a vague memory that he hadn't settled for hitting him just the once. He'd done in multiple times, to be thorough. To be exact. Good to know that some instincts haven't degraded like his mental conditioning has.
It's a small comfort.
"You need to decide what to do about my arm," the Winter Soldier plunks that into his partner's lap. While he has his SOP to carry out, for now the Captain still has higher rank...and he must know that if he really wants the two of them to walk out of here, he can't have his partner crippled. It's weighing the odds, the pros and cons. How far he's willing to go to drag someone with him in this. "Either it needs to be repaired or you can leave me here."
The snow will die down, eventually. Probably can make his way out, contact the nearest cell. Take his chances dodging the SSR. Not ideal scenarios. But there's a choice, and now it's laid out in front of Rogers to choose how much he wants to risk for this unspoken, impossible mission of his. Things won't be the same between them. They can't be; not when the Winter Soldier has that new order brimming to the surface, feeling like it's somehow pulling at his nerve endings and his very bones and skin. Not when the Captain is acting like he'll go AWOL. Not when he speaks as if this invisible mission of his supersedes HYDRA itself.
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So the Captain makes the call, because that’s what he does. He has been honed and trained to evaluate every single situation, take in all the information, and make the right call. “I’ll repair it,” he says, just as bluntly, just as confidently and with no room for argument. He isn’t a tech, of course, doesn’t possess the specialized skills for significant repairs. But he’s well versed in the arm’s workings and on the most basic ways to repair it, the best workarounds and solutions for the field, because he’s got to be. HYDRA had planned for every contingency (or, at least, so they thought): for the Captain’s time in the chair to wear off, and for the Soldier’s arm to become damaged. Of course, HYDRA always planned to ensure their super soldiers were accompanied by handlers, and that’s no longer true, but that never meant they didn’t give their most valuable assets the tools and skills they needed to keep each other going.
It’s… good, knowing he can do something about the arm. Of course, he’s the one who damaged it in the first place, but he can still undo it. He can make the Solider functional again, give him what he needs to survive, and even though the Captain knows it’s a gamble against his own survival, he doesn’t hesitate to make that call.
“I’ll repair your arm,” he repeats, not because he doesn’t think it was understood, but because now he’s using it as a jumping-off point, now it’s the basis of their new plan. “And then we’re going to lay out all the intel we have on the SSR, and what we heard there. I want to know more about Rogers and Barnes.” And this time, he won’t let the Soldier shy away from the names, from what he might know. They’re going to go digging, and it might not be pleasant, but it’s going to yield results. He’s sure of it.
In fact… he considers for only a moment before he decides that they can do both at once, really. He can repair the arm and they can talk at the same time. He glances out the windows, at the grey skies and the blowing snow, and makes a third call: “We can afford a fire,” he decides, because the lodge has a nice big fireplace and plenty that will burn and any smoke will be blown away quickly, lost in the gale still raging outside. He’s cold and stiff, his shoulder aching fiercely, and the Soldier can’t be feeling much better, with a damaged arm. They could both do to warm up, and there’s no reason to stay in these less-than-optimal conditions, with the storm blowing enough to dissipate any sign of their presence. “Help me gather kindling.” They sure make a pair, each with a damaged arm, but between the two of them, they can start a fire easily enough, and sit down by it so the Captain can pull out the repair kit he keeps in his belt and get to work on the Soldier’s arm. And then they can talk about Rogers and Barnes.
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had some slight godmoding, lemme know if I should change anything
THE LATEST TAG holy crap /o\
maybe I matched you in late tags - had trouble with Bucky's writing voice
No worries at alllll
apologies, shorter post
Not at all!
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I figure we can skip ahead over the next tag or two if needed?
light timeskip
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let me know if finding a body doesn't work for you and I can change that!
all cool! I'm game if Bucky keeps side-eyeing Steve.
o7 I figure they can get to the infirmary shortly
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Lemme know if any of this isn't okay!
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