[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.]
[Follow him. The single order would have been enough, except that this mission was not the usual silent pursuit. And watch him, they added.
And so the Soldier follows the Captain by walking at his side. He watches him with a tilt of his head and is in all other ways obedient to the methods in which he chooses to follow the higher level of their commands. They will go to New York, eliminate the target sparing no prejudice, and return to their extraction point on the date and at the hour given. That is one mission.
But the Captain is a mission of his own, and the Soldier carries a gun loaded with bullets designed for him. (They will not risk their asset, but they will flood his system with enough quick acting poison to leave him comatose for a week, and this is what the bullets are loaded with, waiting for the wrong move).
There are files, and the Captains are messy while the Soldiers debriefs have been neat and clear and precise. He is precision where the Captain is blunt force.
In combination, they tell him, the perfect weapon.]
I know it. [James Barnes tells Steve Rogers, and he doesn't think to question why he should. It's just as he doesn't think to question why he knows the lines and planes of the man's face. This is his mission. He knows what he needs.] London, Paris and New York.
[That latter: he knows what it was. They tell him the city has changed, that there are scars across its face. And he doesn't, quite, know what that means.]
[He is capable of subtlety that is difficult to predict, but the result is the same. He chooses his strategies on the spot, thinking better on his feet than in advance, not willing to muster that long patience to sit on a roof, fingers frozen, watching through the scope.
The Winter Soldier does the job, but the Captain sends a message. They both shape the world.]
This is my first time abroad.
[Maybe that's why they didn't send him alone, or maybe they would not have sent him alone after the wreckage he trailed behind him in Vladimir. They met him at the extraction point, the lines on his face harder than usual, more frightening.]
Are you going to spend the entire trip scowling at me?
[He says it in smooth, unaccented French. They're far enough away from anyone that they probably won't be overheard, but there's no sense in risking it.]
[He doesn't do so, often. The muscles for it are almost confused by the tug, as though atrophy's set in, but the effort shows for a flicker of a moment before he looks across at the Captain with a grin that would be called cocky if it got halfway to his eyes.
Looking across, there is an instant when it comes close.]
This accent's the safest, [He goes on, switching easily out into American.] Anywhere but Russia.
[America came out of the war bloodied but unbowed. The remaining allies still remember their aid and their loss (and their young men with chocolate rations and lazy accents) and welcome them in.]
[Almost to his eyes seems to be enough, because the smile that is returned to him is just this side of genuine. He's better at faking emotions, or maybe at tapping some part of him that was genuine once, they say. Because without a doubt, there is nothing that he feels that is genuine anymore, except maybe his loyalty, and that is even put into question.
(Some people want to decommission him. They think he is too much of a risk, that it outweighs the benefits. This mission is as much of a test as anything, although he doesn't know that.)]
I hear everywhere is safe, these days.
[He says it with a touch of irony in his voice, a certain humor that he retains. But he says it in English, comfortably]
[The Soldier's mind was gone when they found him. Brain damage from the fall and the burn of the cold. He was an animal, they said, nothing left to him but the basest instincts.
(He killed four medics the day they woke him. He retained, then, his instinct for what counted as a threat).
He makes the finest of canvases now, repainted and washed out in different colours every time, and when they tell him the stories of the glorious freedom he fights for (freedom through pain, order through chaos, they will remake the world as it should be) he absorbs it into himself, his flag to follow. There's instinct to that, too, whether they've missed it or not.]
As houses.
[The smile is smaller, more wry, but still something real enough. The access details to their safehouse for the night are written into the lines of code he calls memory.
The reasons the Captain would like his smile aren't. (Like his mouth, that he might have a guess for).]
Your requests are as good as commands. Did they not say?
[He is second on this mission, in every way but one. So far, the Captain retains control.]
That's what they told me. But I hardly think that extends to your moods or your face.
[His smile fades, he leans back a bit. They're clear with his parameters, they're clear with how he should treat his soldier - his is not how they phrased it, but it's how he thinks of it, because if they are on foreign soil then he has to remember how his loyalties lie, he has to think about it more than he usually does, and the Winter Soldier is a good touchstone.]
Better yet: if you want to scowl at me, scowl, but know I'll go out of my way to make you stop.
[Those emotional synapses, they're still in place, it makes him excellent at getting by, at passing for more human.]
[Strange. The Soldier tries for a moment to settle on a definition of that word that makes sense to him. He's asked to blend with the crowds more often than not, but that requires the right dress and accent, little effort. There have been overlays placed on him in the past, false memories pressed into the gaps where he only has a lack.
But the mission ends and they're gone. He's made clean again and set into the ice.
What is normal, in that context. The Soldier thinks of the others he's trained through Project Zephyr. The loyalist. The zealot. None are quite the same beyond their loyalty. They do all have one thing in common.]
If you were conventional you'd be expendable. [Canon fodder. He's been given plenty of that under his command, and never missed the ones who don't return. But there's a question still ticking over in his mind.] How would you make me?
[The Captain blends in different ways. He knows what he looks like, it's been clearly defined as an advantage - not his height but his face, the kindness in his smile, the way his features have been placed. He does not blend in but he stands out only in positive ways. People want to help him. They want him to succeed, even if they don't know what he's doing. He inspires it in people.
He looks over at him, for a long moment, and there's an expression on his face that's hard to read. It's like he's searching for something.]
Don't think it would be so easy. I've seen the standards in training.
[Few of them come close enough to be a challenge, let alone a threat. The department would suffer without him, and - he's heard - the Captain is his superior in the field. He's not certain how he feels about that.
Willing to be impressed.]
Perhaps we shouldn't turn so easily on each other.
[There's a dryness to that tone - it's not literal, that would be unthinkable, but something in him wants his answer. How would you make me. The same thing that issues the challenge of letting his mouth narrow back to a line.]
(He breeds loyalty too easily, he makes it hard for people to keep their priorities straight. He was Captain America, their superiors say with shrugs, that is what he did for years. Part of it is inherent.)]
But it's interesting you say so.
[He watches the other man's face settle into a frown, and he tries a smile of his own.]
Come on, Yashenka. When you scowl you make it look like the entire world is disappointing you by refusing to light itself on fire.
[Yashenka, how familiar, how casual. But this man makes him feel casual.]
[He holds out against it, but there is a familiarity (and overfamiliarity given what they should be together) in that light test of the Captain's will. And there can't be so much wrong with it. If the man couldn't take the slightest of pushes he'd never be woken from the frost.]
That's when I seem as though I'm watching the world burn?
[He looks away for a moment, to formulate words. He does not mind the push, and he does not mind the conversation. It's been a long time since he's had one even half as familiar, half as casual. It's not bad.]
No, when you smile, I think that perhaps you've discovered that there is something in the world worth saving from that fire, and you've decided to spare it after all.
You're a romantic, comrade. [There's a pause before the Soldier says so, a moment's appraisal of the sentiment (and it is sentimental, what he says). His eyebrows lift, amused.
He still doesn't smile.]
That is strange.
[The street they walk is tree-lined and pretty, the leaves just beginning to fall. Lights glow behind closed curtains. This is a place where the people have weath, and luxury, and with these things they feel safe. Expensive cars fill the driveways and line the pavement.
He reaches out, as they walk. Just one hand, a scrape of metal, and the lock comes away.]
[Expensive things, expensive cars, it all makes him bristle a bit as the ostentation of it. He feels awkward around expensive things, because he does not believe them to be inherently better than the things that he has for free, provided for him by the state.
He watches. The metal hand is holding a lock now, and he reaches for it with his own gloved one.]
[They did him, once. Too much time and he took advantage of the fact. He took advantage of more. Since then the wipes have been harsher, left him with fewer fragments of each life before (he remembers red hair, red lips, both dragging across his skin, but only sometimes).
And there is not much given to him in the way of time.
There again, reading has never been what he's used it for. What use are stories.
He's holding the door open now, raising his eyes to the Captain as to who drives. It's an expensive car and he at least has some appreciation of that. It will be a shame to leave it in a ditch.]
How should I know what is too much? They give me time, I read books.
[He slips into the drivers seat. If someone is going to kill them, it should be the one in charge. But he won't kill them.
(They don't give him too much time. Less time, almost, than anyone else. But what time he does have, they don't allow him to spend with others, and so it amounts to time alone).]
[He walks to the other side, letting himself in as easily as before. Settles into the passenger seat with an appreciation for its comforts, just as willingly as he forgoes such things when missions call for it.]
Romances.
[There, something low and teasing under the word.
He reels off the address that they need to reach, the point at which they should abandon the car (just abandon it, flames draw too much attention. They'll leave nothing behind.]
[That's almost a dirty word for them. The Captain handles the car - it's an old skill, familiar and fast - and begins to drive, smoothly. He has a map in his head, they'll get there with little delay.]
All kinds of things. Romances. War stories. Tales of the Revolution. Poetry, if you'll believe it.
[He smiles when the Captain isn't looking, turning his head to the open window. Perhaps it's just the feel of the wind rushing past, over and through him, blowing off the chill.]
[The car drives so smoothly, with almost no noise, compared to the cars they usually are given to burn back home. Maybe there is something to this Capitalism. Better cars.]
Romantic ideals are a good way to find yourself in Siberia. [He tips his head back, the motion of it less still than usual, a test.]
Ears everywhere.
[They call it paranoia, in England. The Russian suspicion of their neighbours, their children. Eyes everywhere. Ears. In America something they call McCarthyism is taking off and it seems that the land of the free has taken lessons at the USSR's knee. Trust no one.]
What's left to win?
[He'll follow commands without question. What else of him is there to be won.]
[Siberia is better than a full wipe, he thinks sometimes, but he would never say, so he shrugs and finally nods in agreement. Yes. Romantic ideals are a way to find oneself on a long train ride. There is no gulag that could hold either of them for long, though.]
I'm only your Captain.
[Meaning the Winter Soldier's loyalty is only his insomuch as it doesn't contradict superior orders.]
[The only is unnecessary. This man is his Captain and that is all, and that is everything (save in that saferoom in his mind, the small bricked up part that's supposed to be ready to override this loyalty, to bring him down).]
I wouldn't follow someone who still needed to win me.
[No matter the programming. He's killed inefficient subordinates on the training grounds rather than wait to see them die in combat. It earns him reprimands but it makes the others work harder to win his respect.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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.]
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And so the Soldier follows the Captain by walking at his side. He watches him with a tilt of his head and is in all other ways obedient to the methods in which he chooses to follow the higher level of their commands. They will go to New York, eliminate the target sparing no prejudice, and return to their extraction point on the date and at the hour given. That is one mission.
But the Captain is a mission of his own, and the Soldier carries a gun loaded with bullets designed for him. (They will not risk their asset, but they will flood his system with enough quick acting poison to leave him comatose for a week, and this is what the bullets are loaded with, waiting for the wrong move).
There are files, and the Captains are messy while the Soldiers debriefs have been neat and clear and precise. He is precision where the Captain is blunt force.
In combination, they tell him, the perfect weapon.]
I know it. [James Barnes tells Steve Rogers, and he doesn't think to question why he should. It's just as he doesn't think to question why he knows the lines and planes of the man's face. This is his mission. He knows what he needs.] London, Paris and New York.
[That latter: he knows what it was. They tell him the city has changed, that there are scars across its face. And he doesn't, quite, know what that means.]
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The Winter Soldier does the job, but the Captain sends a message. They both shape the world.]
This is my first time abroad.
[Maybe that's why they didn't send him alone, or maybe they would not have sent him alone after the wreckage he trailed behind him in Vladimir. They met him at the extraction point, the lines on his face harder than usual, more frightening.]
Are you going to spend the entire trip scowling at me?
[He says it in smooth, unaccented French. They're far enough away from anyone that they probably won't be overheard, but there's no sense in risking it.]
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[He doesn't do so, often. The muscles for it are almost confused by the tug, as though atrophy's set in, but the effort shows for a flicker of a moment before he looks across at the Captain with a grin that would be called cocky if it got halfway to his eyes.
Looking across, there is an instant when it comes close.]
This accent's the safest, [He goes on, switching easily out into American.] Anywhere but Russia.
[America came out of the war bloodied but unbowed. The remaining allies still remember their aid and their loss (and their young men with chocolate rations and lazy accents) and welcome them in.]
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(Some people want to decommission him. They think he is too much of a risk, that it outweighs the benefits. This mission is as much of a test as anything, although he doesn't know that.)]
I hear everywhere is safe, these days.
[He says it with a touch of irony in his voice, a certain humor that he retains. But he says it in English, comfortably]
No requirement, just a request.
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(He killed four medics the day they woke him. He retained, then, his instinct for what counted as a threat).
He makes the finest of canvases now, repainted and washed out in different colours every time, and when they tell him the stories of the glorious freedom he fights for (freedom through pain, order through chaos, they will remake the world as it should be) he absorbs it into himself, his flag to follow. There's instinct to that, too, whether they've missed it or not.]
As houses.
[The smile is smaller, more wry, but still something real enough. The access details to their safehouse for the night are written into the lines of code he calls memory.
The reasons the Captain would like his smile aren't. (Like his mouth, that he might have a guess for).]
Your requests are as good as commands. Did they not say?
[He is second on this mission, in every way but one. So far, the Captain retains control.]
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[His smile fades, he leans back a bit. They're clear with his parameters, they're clear with how he should treat his soldier - his is not how they phrased it, but it's how he thinks of it, because if they are on foreign soil then he has to remember how his loyalties lie, he has to think about it more than he usually does, and the Winter Soldier is a good touchstone.]
Better yet: if you want to scowl at me, scowl, but know I'll go out of my way to make you stop.
[Those emotional synapses, they're still in place, it makes him excellent at getting by, at passing for more human.]
You can say I'm strange, I've heard it before.
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[Strange. The Soldier tries for a moment to settle on a definition of that word that makes sense to him. He's asked to blend with the crowds more often than not, but that requires the right dress and accent, little effort. There have been overlays placed on him in the past, false memories pressed into the gaps where he only has a lack.
But the mission ends and they're gone. He's made clean again and set into the ice.
What is normal, in that context. The Soldier thinks of the others he's trained through Project Zephyr. The loyalist. The zealot. None are quite the same beyond their loyalty. They do all have one thing in common.]
If you were conventional you'd be expendable. [Canon fodder. He's been given plenty of that under his command, and never missed the ones who don't return. But there's a question still ticking over in his mind.] How would you make me?
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[The Captain blends in different ways. He knows what he looks like, it's been clearly defined as an advantage - not his height but his face, the kindness in his smile, the way his features have been placed. He does not blend in but he stands out only in positive ways. People want to help him. They want him to succeed, even if they don't know what he's doing. He inspires it in people.
He looks over at him, for a long moment, and there's an expression on his face that's hard to read. It's like he's searching for something.]
I don't know yet.
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[Few of them come close enough to be a challenge, let alone a threat. The department would suffer without him, and - he's heard - the Captain is his superior in the field. He's not certain how he feels about that.
Willing to be impressed.]
Perhaps we shouldn't turn so easily on each other.
[There's a dryness to that tone - it's not literal, that would be unthinkable, but something in him wants his answer. How would you make me. The same thing that issues the challenge of letting his mouth narrow back to a line.]
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[For whatever reason.
(He breeds loyalty too easily, he makes it hard for people to keep their priorities straight. He was Captain America, their superiors say with shrugs, that is what he did for years. Part of it is inherent.)]
But it's interesting you say so.
[He watches the other man's face settle into a frown, and he tries a smile of his own.]
Come on, Yashenka. When you scowl you make it look like the entire world is disappointing you by refusing to light itself on fire.
[Yashenka, how familiar, how casual. But this man makes him feel casual.]
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[He holds out against it, but there is a familiarity (and overfamiliarity given what they should be together) in that light test of the Captain's will. And there can't be so much wrong with it. If the man couldn't take the slightest of pushes he'd never be woken from the frost.]
That's when I seem as though I'm watching the world burn?
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[He looks away for a moment, to formulate words. He does not mind the push, and he does not mind the conversation. It's been a long time since he's had one even half as familiar, half as casual. It's not bad.]
No, when you smile, I think that perhaps you've discovered that there is something in the world worth saving from that fire, and you've decided to spare it after all.
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He still doesn't smile.]
That is strange.
[The street they walk is tree-lined and pretty, the leaves just beginning to fall. Lights glow behind closed curtains. This is a place where the people have weath, and luxury, and with these things they feel safe. Expensive cars fill the driveways and line the pavement.
He reaches out, as they walk. Just one hand, a scrape of metal, and the lock comes away.]
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[Expensive things, expensive cars, it all makes him bristle a bit as the ostentation of it. He feels awkward around expensive things, because he does not believe them to be inherently better than the things that he has for free, provided for him by the state.
He watches. The metal hand is holding a lock now, and he reaches for it with his own gloved one.]
I think I read too much.
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[They did him, once. Too much time and he took advantage of the fact. He took advantage of more. Since then the wipes have been harsher, left him with fewer fragments of each life before (he remembers red hair, red lips, both dragging across his skin, but only sometimes).
And there is not much given to him in the way of time.
There again, reading has never been what he's used it for. What use are stories.
He's holding the door open now, raising his eyes to the Captain as to who drives. It's an expensive car and he at least has some appreciation of that. It will be a shame to leave it in a ditch.]
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[He slips into the drivers seat. If someone is going to kill them, it should be the one in charge. But he won't kill them.
(They don't give him too much time. Less time, almost, than anyone else. But what time he does have, they don't allow him to spend with others, and so it amounts to time alone).]
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Romances.
[There, something low and teasing under the word.
He reels off the address that they need to reach, the point at which they should abandon the car (just abandon it, flames draw too much attention. They'll leave nothing behind.]
And what do you do with what you read?
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[That's almost a dirty word for them. The Captain handles the car - it's an old skill, familiar and fast - and begins to drive, smoothly. He has a map in his head, they'll get there with little delay.]
All kinds of things. Romances. War stories. Tales of the Revolution. Poetry, if you'll believe it.
[He shakes his head.]
Soviet poetry lacks something.
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No, what do you do with your romantic ideals.
[What use do you put this romance to.]
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[The car drives so smoothly, with almost no noise, compared to the cars they usually are given to burn back home. Maybe there is something to this Capitalism. Better cars.]
Am I winning you over?
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Ears everywhere.
[They call it paranoia, in England. The Russian suspicion of their neighbours, their children. Eyes everywhere. Ears. In America something they call McCarthyism is taking off and it seems that the land of the free has taken lessons at the USSR's knee. Trust no one.]
What's left to win?
[He'll follow commands without question. What else of him is there to be won.]
I don't want your poems.
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[Siberia is better than a full wipe, he thinks sometimes, but he would never say, so he shrugs and finally nods in agreement. Yes. Romantic ideals are a way to find oneself on a long train ride. There is no gulag that could hold either of them for long, though.]
I'm only your Captain.
[Meaning the Winter Soldier's loyalty is only his insomuch as it doesn't contradict superior orders.]
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[The only is unnecessary. This man is his Captain and that is all, and that is everything (save in that saferoom in his mind, the small bricked up part that's supposed to be ready to override this loyalty, to bring him down).]
I wouldn't follow someone who still needed to win me.
[No matter the programming. He's killed inefficient subordinates on the training grounds rather than wait to see them die in combat. It earns him reprimands but it makes the others work harder to win his respect.]
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Then you should smile, comrade, to be so certain.
[Yes, right back to that.]
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