[When New York fell and America rebuilt it, slowly, bringing the streets of Manhattan and Queens and Brooklyn back with the help of the great industrialists of the age and not the communist hand that the Soviet Union offered, it was more than just a blow.
And then people started fleeing there, political refugees.
Some of them more important than others.
He's been scrubbed clean.
They tried. They thought that they had cleared out everything, all the remnants of his patriotism, all the remnants of his morals. They found him wrapped around his best friend, both of them alive, somehow, miraculously, tied together. The other man, his arm had suffered irreparable damage, so they took off the bulk, and replaced it, but the good captain was almost whole when they dragged them back.
Steve Rogers, the great American hero, Captain America, wiped clean of all of that, loyal to the bone. They could not wipe away his loyalty but they could reroute it. And James Barnes, equally deadly. This is their first mission together since they found them, the first time they woke them up at the same time, and they're sending them to New York through a circuitous route: Paris then England, then back to New York to find their target and take them out. They speak English flawlessly. The pass for Americans. They don't even really have names for each other, because everything they are has been implanted.
It's been a few days when they finally reach London, and the larger of the two men finally speaks to say more than just confirmation of actions. The silence has given him time to think, which is never comfortable. He feels protective in a strange way to the man who is with him. He can't imagine why. He has no illusions about who he is. He's read the files.]
Have you been to London?
[He does not know his circumstances. He doesn't know anything except that the shape his face takes when he's sleeping is familiar.]
no subject
And then people started fleeing there, political refugees.
Some of them more important than others.
He's been scrubbed clean.
They tried. They thought that they had cleared out everything, all the remnants of his patriotism, all the remnants of his morals. They found him wrapped around his best friend, both of them alive, somehow, miraculously, tied together. The other man, his arm had suffered irreparable damage, so they took off the bulk, and replaced it, but the good captain was almost whole when they dragged them back.
Steve Rogers, the great American hero, Captain America, wiped clean of all of that, loyal to the bone. They could not wipe away his loyalty but they could reroute it. And James Barnes, equally deadly. This is their first mission together since they found them, the first time they woke them up at the same time, and they're sending them to New York through a circuitous route: Paris then England, then back to New York to find their target and take them out. They speak English flawlessly. The pass for Americans. They don't even really have names for each other, because everything they are has been implanted.
It's been a few days when they finally reach London, and the larger of the two men finally speaks to say more than just confirmation of actions. The silence has given him time to think, which is never comfortable. He feels protective in a strange way to the man who is with him. He can't imagine why. He has no illusions about who he is. He's read the files.]
Have you been to London?
[He does not know his circumstances. He doesn't know anything except that the shape his face takes when he's sleeping is familiar.]