Chapter Text
The Asset (Code Name: Winter Soldier) is a very sophisticated tool and must be treated as such. Improper handling may lead to the Asset behaving unpredictably and responding to his keepers with violence. When protocol is followed the Asset has never failed to complete a mission.
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Standard skill loadout for the Asset includes knowledge of all standard weaponry produced in the last eighty years as well as verbal and written comprehension of the world's most common languages. (See Appendix E for a comprehensive list)
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Due to limitations in the behavioral conditioning the Asset is not recommended for missions exceeding 72 hours without supplemental maintenance. Even with these precautions, longer missions necessitate close monitoring. If at any point in his mission the Asset becomes unstable his handlers must take corrective action up to and including a full reboot.
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As part of every mission loadout the Asset is given a homing order. If he becomes separated from his handlers the Asset will be compelled to seek the nearest owner-designated safe house and await retrieval.
- Excerpts from "User Guide: Winter Soldier" Version 11.02
April 2014
A small house in one of DC’s bedroom communities was actually a HYDRA safe house. That was where the Asset went, after he fished Captain America out of the Potomac and left him on the banks for his allies to find. The Asset didn’t know why he had done it, but in the moment there had been no other choice. He had been compelled to save the Captain, even though the Asset had taken considerable personal damage during their encounter.
The house was empty. Protocol dictated that whenever possible a retrieval team would be waiting for him. In their absence, the Asset would need to perform basic maintenance on himself.
The river water had left a stench on his skin and it would compromise the healing of his wounds. Cleaning his skin would allow him to heal faster, but he could barely move the arm that was still flesh. The Captain had dislocated his shoulder and the Asset put it back into place. There was no one to hear him scream.
The hygiene products in the bathroom had instructions and the Asset utilized them in water so hot the room filled with steam and turned his skin pink. As he scrubbed the dirt and discomfort off, the deep ache in his shoulder got easier to bear.
He walked naked through the house to the panic room, leaving wet footprints and drips of water as he went. A well-stocked first aid kit sat prominently on one of the shelves and the Asset took bandages and a sling. He dried off, then sat on the floor to bandage his wounds and placed his arm in the sling.
Without the retrieval team to perform repairs, the Asset would need to rely on his healing factor. The serum was at its most effective when he was well rested so the Asset would need to sleep. He took a pair of loose pants from one of the bins of clothing in the panic room. For some reason, the idea of sleeping naked disturbed him.
Sleeping on the floor was contraindicated when he was injured, so the Asset went into the bedroom. The mattress was bare although there was a stack of linens in one of the closets. He didn’t bother with them, someone would be here for him soon. He curled up in the middle of the bed with a blanket and rested.
He slept, eight hours of perfect blackness, and woke to the light coming through the curtains. His shoulder didn’t hurt anymore and his cuts were healed. He took off the sling and peeled his bandages off.
Protocol dictated he should eat. The pantry had canned foods. The Asset selected one at random and took it to the communications room. He put the HYDRA emergency channel on one screen and a local news station on another. The can contained cut green beans and the Asset ate them while the FBI arrested Senator Stern live on television.
He shouldn’t have saved the Captain. The Asset wasn’t sure where the thought came from, but once it was there he couldn’t get rid of it. He had disobeyed orders. Pierce would be displeased. The Asset’s muscles tensed. He didn’t know why.
On the second day, he had intended to watch the news channels all day again, but the urge to turn off the screens had become unbearable after he saw them carry Pierce’s body out of the wreckage of the Triskelion. The Asset retreated to the panic room and cleaned every weapon in the gun safe. He had no reason to, he had no orders to perform maintenance, but seeing the footage of Pierce’s body made him feel strange. Performing the maintenance made the uncomfortable sensation go away. When he finally went back to the bedroom to sleep, he put the fitted sheet on the mattress.
He woke up the third morning to the sound of birds. He didn’t get out of bed right away. His sleep periods had always been tightly controlled to optimize his performance but now he had no mission, no urgent task he needed to accomplish for his handler, no handler at all with Pierce dead.
With no reason not to stay in bed, the Asset closed his eyes, rolled over and decided to go back to sleep.
When he woke up again, the clock by the side of the bed read 10:00 and the sunlight was falling on his face. He made his way to the kitchen to grab another can at random, but when his hand closed around a can of baked beans he hesitated.
He didn’t want to eat another can of cold food. He required twice the calories an average human man would and there was something unsatisfying about the canned food that made it hard to consume the required amounts. He went to the refrigerator and found it empty except for condiments, but the freezer was full. He took a package of sausage out and read the instructions.
Apparently cooking in a kitchen was very similar to the skills provided in his wilderness survival protocols. It was simple enough to find a frying pan and brown the sausages. As they sizzled and the smell of cooking pork filled the kitchen, he wondered why he’d been eating the food cold in the first place.
The front of the sausage box showed a cup of coffee sitting next to the food. He’d seen coffee in the pantry. Should he have been drinking coffee the past two days? Was coffee important? He’d been told to eat, to hydrate, but maybe there were other rules for longer missions.
When he went to watch the monitors, he used the computer to research coffee. People felt very strongly about it, how it was grown and prepared and whether it should be consumed at all. Since it had been in the pantry, the Asset had to assume HYDRA was in favor of coffee. He found the instruction manual for the safe house’s drip pot and watched it brew. It tasted strong and bitter. He took the cup and sausage back to the panic room.
The news was covering the fall of the Triskelion 24/7 and over the HYDRA emergency channel the Soldier listened as SHIELD bases were retaken by their host nations' armies. HYDRA was on the run. At six, he was still alone in the safe house. They had never waited so long to retrieve him before. He found a can of soup and heated it up for dinner. At midnight, he listened to a lone HYDRA operative beg for help. The Chinese military was breaking into his safe house. No one responded. The Asset turned the equipment off and went to the bedroom. He put a pillowcase on the pillow. It hid the strange brown stains and smelled
On the third night, the Asset dreamed.
Summer of 1939
They had been saving their pennies for a while, until they’d managed to scrape up enough for two tickets and a couple hot dogs. After all that trouble, a crack of thunder woke them up on game day. Rain was blowing in through their open window and the curtains billowed in the strong wind. You couldn’t play baseball in a downpour.
Steve muttered, “Raincheck?”, without even opening his eyes.
“Yeah.” Bucky rolled over so they were practically nose to nose. The rain had cooled off their apartment. Last night it had been too hot to be close. “Already took the day off though. Gonna make it worth my while?”
“Dunno if I can live up to baseball.” Bucky gave him a little shove and Steve went over onto his back. “Come here.”
The low music coming through the wall from Mrs. David’s apartment was a reminder that it was daytime on Sunday, people were home and awake and the walls here were thin. They couldn’t let anyone catch them, but for once they had all the time in the world.
Of course, Steve wasn’t a big fan of taking their time. If Bucky had to describe what Steve was like in bed, the first thing that came to mind was ‘fast.’ Maybe that wasn’t fair, but two years ago they had gone from that first tentative kiss, whiskey making them brave, to hand jobs in about half an hour. It wasn’t desperation or even how badly he wanted Bucky, he was just always in a hurry.
It was only a problem on mornings like this. The sound of the pounding rain against their window always made everything feel more intense. They were both naked already and pressed together, no reason not to go full steam ahead, but he hardly ever got to just make out with Steve.
Steve was rubbing against his hip, trying to speed things up but just this once, they were going to take their time. He caught Steve’s wrists and pinned them to the mattress above his head. “Let me kiss you for a while.”
He could kiss Steve for hours, if he thought he could get away with it. Immobilizing Steve got him five minutes though, until Steve’s squirming took on a desperate quality and his kisses started to have teeth. Bucky reached for the petroleum jelly and Steve pulled away, panting and already impatient. “Bucky, please.”
“Give me a minute to get you ready.” He slid his hand down Steve’s belly to give his cock a few strokes before slicking his fingers. Bucky loved the noises Steve made when he touched him, a sharp exhale of breath like he’d been punched that faded into a low moan of pleasure. He had to hold himself back, though, because Steve had no sense of self-preservation.
“Hurry.” His lips were red and slick and Bucky got a bit sidetracked by them again until Steve was grinding against his fingers. “Come on. Now.” They never quite managed slow, not when Steve was on the bottom. Even when Bucky tried to make it last, Steve fucked like he was running a race. “Want you to fuck me. Please.”
Bucky pressed in and Steve shoved his hips forward with a gasp. “Jesus, Steve. Slow down a bit.”
“I can take it.”
“Why are you always in such a hurry?” He pushed Steve’s hips down against the mattress. “We have all day, it’s not like we’re trying to get done before my wife gets home. Just let me take care of you, okay?”
He let Bucky take the lead and for once they took their time. They ended up with Steve bent in half as they rocked together, his legs hooked on Bucky’s elbows. Bucky pressed a kiss to the crook of Steve’s neck. “See. Sometimes I have good ideas.”
“Shut up.”
Bucky pushed deep and Steve shuddered and came. God, that was the best feeling. He sped up a little and took what he needed, mouth pressed to Steve’s to keep the noises from drifting through the thin walls. When he was done, he pulled away and rolled off to the side since Steve wasn’t a big fan of being crushed post-coital.
He found himself staring at the ceiling as his sweat dried. Nothing he’d ever done, no one else he’d ever been with, could live up to Steve and the way their bodies fit together.
One of Steve’s hands groped for his and Bucky caught it, laced their fingers together. “You don’t need to go easy on me, Bucky. I can keep up.”
“Who says it’s for you?” Bucky gave a tug and Steve shifted close so they could spoon together. He buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck because really, Steve was his world and everyone knew it, everyone but Steve seemed to understand. “Maybe I want to be gentle, show you I love you.”
“Love you too.” They fell back asleep, tangled up with each other.
The Asset woke up alone in an empty bed. He had strict orders to report if anything unusual happened while he slept, but he had no one to report to. Had this been a dream? He’d overheard other men on missions talking about their dreams, about falling and failing and fucking.
It hadn’t felt like a mission. The Asset was not typically sent on seduction missions and if he’d been under orders he would have obeyed the target’s requests instead of pursuing his own desires. There had been something genuine about the affection he’d felt for the other man. It had to have been a dream, something his mind had pieced together from half-remembered missions and details he’d heard from his support teams.
Or maybe it had been a nightmare. The men had talked about those, too. Love was a weakness, a weapon to use against targets. The Asset wasn’t supposed to have weaknesses. He flexed his metal hand and reminded himself what he was, what he did, then he shoved the blankets aside and got out of bed.
He would follow orders, he would obey. Someone would come for him and they would make the dreams go away, things would go back to the way they had always been.
The Asset ran through his hygiene and maintenance routines. Showering took longer than normal, he had to get rid of the erection the dream had given him. He used his cybernetic hand to brace himself against the wall and used the other one to jerk himself off. At first, he was only thinking about the optimal amount of friction to apply, but that led his mind to the dream, to how it had felt to be inside Steve. The sensation from his palm paled in comparison to that, but thinking about it made the job easier.
When he was done showering, the evidence of his strange morning washed down the drain, he carefully dried off his arm and lubricated the joints. He took a shirt and pants in his size from the bin of clothes and wondered why the shirt seemed wrong somehow.
When he slid the clothes on the wrongness of the shirt continued to nag at him. The Asset couldn’t define what was wrong with it. The shirt fit him correctly and wasn’t physically uncomfortable but there was still something wrong with it. The next shirt on the pile, a light blue shirt of an identical style, caused no unpleasant feelings. The Asset changed into it and left the first shirt, lime green, in a puddle on the tile floor.
Something about the empty refrigerator was disturbing, a refrigerator should contain food and its absence was undesirable. He made a pot of coffee and poured himself a cup. Today, he stirred in a spoonful of sugar like he’d seen a woman do in a commercial on the TV yesterday. It tasted better that way. She’d added milk as well, but he didn’t have any.
He toasted a packet of toaster pastries and took them into the panic room so he could eat while he worked. He was running behind schedule, and when he turned on the emergency channel, someone from Garrett’s team was begging for assistance. Someone had broken into Cybertek and liberated all the assets and handlers. He turned the other monitor on and CNN showed people being loaded onto busses for transport to hospitals. A reporter droned on about the unethical human experimentation that had been uncovered.
Winter of 1960
T he doctor tightened the strap across his chest. "We should remove the whole upper plate and replace it. Do I have your permission to proceed? He may be out of commission for a day."
"Go ahead. We need him in peak condition for Tuesday." His new handler was sitting in the corner, watching the procedure while smoking a cigarette. "Wouldn't it be easier for you if he was unconscious?"
"The Asset is highly resistant to sedation. This will be faster." The doctor picked up a blowtorch. "Now lie still. If you move, I may slip."
The Asset jerked back to the present. His stomach was rolling for some reason and he sat still until it seemed to pass.
Still, he had gained valuable information. No one would be coming from Cybertek to repair him.
He drank his coffee and watched the news. He couldn’t give the task his full attention, he couldn’t stop thinking about the refrigerator. It was so clearly wrong for it to be empty. He needed to do something about it. He’d located money in the panic room and a car in the garage. He could go somewhere and buy food, although the exact logistics of the task were unclear.
The internet produced a list of local grocery stores and when he clicked on the first link the store advertised its delivery service. The Soldier spent most of the day going through the catalog of available products, but there were too many choices. The store stocked seventeen kinds of peanut butter.
Another round of searching turned up a blog run by a woman who provided a weekly list of the best deals for the store. He used her blog as a mission briefing and put together a shopping list.
When he was done selecting enough fresh food to power his enhanced metabolism for a week the final total, almost $200, gave him the same sensation the shirt had. He swapped the green apples for red but it didn’t produce a similar sensation of relief so he wasn’t sure how to correct it. He scheduled a delivery for the next morning.
The groceries handled, he turned his mind to his maintenance issues. The Asset had been loaned out to other organizations before, they would have required instructions on his proper use. A check of the secure server in the panic room turned up a manual.
The text gave him an explanation for the strange dreams. He was well outside the optimal time window to run missions. He should have been wiped and put back on ice days ago. Dreams were high on the list of indications his conditioning was breaking down. Erratic behavior would come next. He was hiding, he couldn’t start behaving erratically. The neighbors might notice. He and Steve had had nosey neighbors-
The Asset shook his head. No, that hadn’t been real. He needed to stay focused. He flipped through the rest of the introduction, hoping to find instructions for increasing his operational time. He was out of luck, the suggestion was to wipe him mid-mission if it became necessary.
The first chapter had full color photos of the proper way to restrain and wipe him and the photos produced such a strong sense of discomfort that he had to close the document. His vision blanked out and when it came back he found himself out in the hallway, on his knees and vomiting. He was shivering, even though the hallway was the same ambient temperature it had been before.
The Asset was highly resistant to disease, and nausea wasn’t on the list of side effects from being active too long. He had observed similar behavior in targets, when they slipped into shock, but the Asset wasn’t wounded. Something was very wrong.
He cleaned up the mess and got a notebook from storage. If he was inoperative by the time a retrieval team arrived, they would need information. ‘Dreams began after three days in the safe house. Reading about maintenance procedures induced vomiting...’
Fall of 1938
They were spending the afternoon being bums in the living room, surrounded by stacks of comic books and pulp magazines.
If they’d been at his place, they could have spent the afternoon in bed but Steve had wanted to come over here instead. That was fine, they could still spend time together without having sex. A few weeks couldn’t change the past twelve years of their lives.
Bucky heard a clatter of shoes in the hallway just before Becca burst into the living room. “Steve, you’re here!” His little sister was completely obsessed with Steve. Bucky sympathized. Maybe it ran in the family. She sat down next to him on the couch, so close that if it had been anyone but Steve, Bucky would have had to start defending his sister’s honor. “What are you reading?”
“Astounding Stories.” Steve edged away from her a little. Every other woman on the planet seemed to look right through Steve, but Becca noticed him. Bucky thought it was hilarious how uncomfortable it made him.
She did that thing girls did where they flipped their hair back and gave him a smile. “Would you read to me? You used to read to me all the time.”
“You used to be eight. Read it yourself.” It wasn’t funny, all of a sudden. He wasn’t sharing Steve with Becca, that went too far.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Becca put a hand on Steve’s knee. “How’s your mom, Steve?”
Steve was staring at her hand like it was a shackle. “She’s doing better. I’ll tell her you asked.”
“Becca, you leave your brother and Steve alone.” His mother appeared in the doorway to save Steve. Maybe that ran in the family too. “Steve, you’re staying until dinner. You can take home some pot roast for Sarah and save me a trip.”
“You don’t have to-”
Bucky clapped a hand over Steve’s mouth. They were all sick of hearing Steve say he didn’t need anything. “He’s staying, Ma. He’ll peel all the potatoes for you too.” When Steve had a chore it let him feel like he was paying them back a little.
“That’s what I like to hear.” She patted Steve on the head, like they were still kids. “Becca, you come help me with the groceries so I don’t have to climb the step stool.”
Becca slipped from the couch, a little too slowly. “Bye, Steve. See you later.”
Bucky dropped his hand. “You’re so stubborn.” When Steve didn’t answer, Bucky took a good look at him. He was shaking, a little. “Steve?”
“I shouldn’t need help to take care of my family.” He shoved Bucky away, started gathering up his books. If they left them out, Bucky’s little brothers would steal and ruin them. “I shouldn’t need your mother’s charity.” His breath was already coming too fast.
“It’s not charity.” Bucky dropped next to Steve on the couch and put his arms around him. “It’s dinner for a sick friend. Not everything is about you, Steve.”
Steve made a noise like a wounded animal, head pressed against Bucky’s chest. “I lied. I lied and she’s dying and there’s nothing I can do.” Steve’s words were muffled against his shirt and Bucky looked over his shoulder to see his mother in the doorway. She’d heard. Sarah was a friend and they’d all known, but to hear the words was hard.
“Come on.” He pulled Steve to his feet. He couldn’t just leave the guy here, he didn’t need an audience for his breakdown. He tugged Steve into the room he shared with his brothers. It was empty, thank God, and his bed was a mess, but Steve wasn’t fussy about that. He dropped Steve onto the bed and pulled off his shoes. “You’re okay, it’s okay.”
“It’s really not, Buck.” He was wheezing, damn it.
“Just lie there for a few minutes, okay? I’m going to get you some coffee, see if we can trick your lungs into working.” If that didn’t work, they’d have to put him in the tub.
Steve didn’t answer, just rolled to face the wall, curling up into a little wheezing ball of misery. Relaxing was supposed to help, although it never did much for Steve. Bucky wanted to climb in beside him, lie together and breathe with him, but his siblings were nosey. “I’ll be right back, Steve.”
His mother already had the coffee perk on the stove and she was wiping at her eyes. “You need to start working on him now, get him to agree to move in once Sarah passes.”
If they did that, they’d never get another moment alone. “Sure, Ma. Thank you.” No, what they needed was their own place. Bucky thought he could swing it, if they were careful and Steve managed to work a little.
He grabbed the paring knife from the block and picked up a potato. He could make himself useful, at least, while he waited for the water to boil.
“No.” The Asset opened his eyes and stared blankly at the textured ceiling, the slow loop of the ceiling fan. “No, I don’t believe it. It’s not real.”
He was a weapon. The thought that he had once shared an apartment and bed with a small, thin man named Steve was incredulous enough, but the new dream was far beyond that. Weapons didn’t have mothers or little sisters. They didn’t have friends and lovers.
He had to get up, the grocery truck would be here soon. It was important that he stay on task and not let the dreams distract him. The delivery man was cheerful and tried to make conversation but the Soldier just stared at him and handed him a stack of bills. What was there to talk about? Why should he care that it was sunny?
He tipped the man. People remembered when you didn't tip, the Asset was sure of that even though he didn't know why.
As he put the food away, his mind drifted back to the dream. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Steve curled up in his bed and the way that woman’s kitchen had smelled, like roasting meat and garlic. A simple physical relationship would have been a violation of protocol but comprehensible. Instead, he was dreaming about love and pulp magazines.
Focus. He needed to eat. He started the coffee and while it brewed he made eggs. He cracked two eggs into a frying pan and turned the heat on. Right away, he could tell he’d done something wrong. On the TV, the eggs had sizzled when they’d hit the pan and when he tried to flip them they stuck and started leaking yolk.
The resulting food looked nothing like the fried eggs he’d observed but he ate them anyway, at the kitchen table. That was what it was for, as far as he could tell. He used the salt and pepper shakers in the middle of the table to season the eggs. They tasted fine, better than toaster pastries, even if they looked wrong. He wasn’t sure how to clean the pan. Was it like sanitizing a crime scene or like bathing?
He needed to go monitor the emergency channel, but suddenly he couldn’t see the point. Pierce was dead. Sitwell was dead. Garrett was dead. The only people on the emergency channel were cells reporting in before they went dark, back into the shadows. No one was coming.
The thought produced no anxiety, the eggs stayed in his stomach. He said it again, out loud this time, to the empty house. “No one is coming.”
The Asset gazed down at his empty plate, tiny flakes of yellow on white ceramic. If no one was coming, that meant there would be no more orders. What was he supposed to do without orders?
If Captain America was to be believed, if his own dreams were true, then he had once been a man named James Barnes. He’d been a person, with a mother and a family and… and Steve. Steve was real.
He went and got his notebook. He tore out the page he’d written last night, no one would ever read it anyway, and started a new one. ‘I think a man named Steve loved me once. I think I loved him