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1.
Rumlow hears about the video with the soldier long before he ever sees it. Hears that it’s in color, a single static shot, like a security camera. Good quality, but not so good that you don’t still want to lean in a little bit because you’re curious. He hears that the video is something that they show the new people who doubt the soldier, who make the wrong comments.
There are a lot of those people.
The man who tells Rumlow about it, who is not quite as new as Rumlow is, emphasizes certain parts of the video, repeats them over and over whenever he can, like the details of it have not yet quite sunk into his brain.
“I thought it would be hot to watch her killing, you know?” the not-as-new-as-him guy says. “Like maybe she’d kick him with high heels, or strangle him with her thighs or something. But it wasn't. It wasn't hot at all.”
Then the man always stumbles his way through describing the rest of it: how it is slow, how the victim is a man wearing a uniform just like theirs, how the soldier is not smiling, or even smirking like they always do in the movies, how her face is blank like she isn’t even there, how the man just keeps begging and begging, and it isn’t slow—
Rumlow is looking forward to seeing the video.
When he does finally get to watch it, it is not because he has made the wrong type of comment about the soldier—she is frozen, and has been since Rumlow joined—it is because he asks. And asks again, and then again, until finally someone caves in and agrees to show him just to shut him up.
“It’s not as fun as you think it is,” says the tech who sets it up. He looks tired as he fiddles with the remote. The screen in front of them lights up, showing a bright pale room with two dark human shapes.
“I knew that guy,” the tech says, tilting his head in the direction of the male figure on the screen. “Yeah, he fucked up.”
Rumlow already isn’t listening. He’s watching the other figure.
When he gets home that evening, he takes off his gear—still mostly new and unused—and his clothes and his boots and goes straight to the shower, and he is still in there when the water is freezing cold.
His commander brings it up again the night before their first mission with the soldier, when the commander is already drunk.
Rumlow is not drunk. He sits and holds the first glass of expensive liquor he has been given. It seems the wrong location to drink, here in the corner of some meeting room with uncomfortable low couches and bottles retrieved from people’s lockers, and he would rather be at home thinking about tomorrow.
“Ah yeah, everyone sees the video,” the commander says. “But they don’t tell you that that poor motherfucker on the tape was someone that the soldier was ordered to kill. If there are no orders to kill you or hurt you, she doesn’t care.” He stops to take another drink.
The guy sitting on the other side of the commander, a blond kid who Rumlow knows has already been here a few years but who looks about eighteen, leans forward. “…doesn’t care?” he prompts.
“She’ll let you,” the commander says and smiles in the most unsubtle way possible for a person to smile.
The blond guy lowers his voice, as if there’s anyone around to keep a secret from. “She’ll let you have sex with her?”
“No, she’ll let you paint her fucking toenails. Yes she’ll let you have sex with her.”
The blond guy doesn’t seem able to talk: his eyes are suddenly far-off and hungry, his hand tight around the empty glass he’s holding. Rumlow keeps silent.
“Honestly?” the commander says after taking another long drink and wiping his mouth. “It’s nothing to write home about. She can’t get pregnant, so you can go in raw. That’s the only upside. But there are pillows out there that are more responsive.”
The blond man next to him looks even hungrier at this news. Rumlow sits still and does not say anything. He is still new. The glass in his hand is very cold against his skin.
2.
These parts of her missions have been happening for a long time.
The soldier remembers, although she does not know how she remembers, that these activities have ebbed and flowed over the years but have somehow remained constant: they repeat softly and steadily throughout her memories, like the clunking sound of train wheels passing over joints on a track, nothing in particular standing out.
One man years ago was very loud and heavy, she remembers that. The soldier had broken his wrist, just as a warning. The man had not wanted to continue after.
But mostly the memories are smooth and unvaried: vaguely unpleasant, like injections or routine arm maintenance, less painful than broken skin. Less painful than most things. It does not really feel like anything, and usually the men that do it are quiet after.
She is kneeling down beside the bed, her front pressed over the edge of the mattress. This is her preferred position and she makes sure the man who is with her now stays there in place behind her.
This man is blond, and unfamiliar, and quiet. The soldier hardly feels anything. The side of the mask she is wearing is resting against the bedcovers and her breath is slow and steady behind it. The man’s respiration has sped up, his breaths shallow like he is in shock. His hands are clammy on the small patch of skin on her hips where she has allowed him to uncover her, and he grabs at her like he is dying.
He does not die. The soldier’s own breath remains steady, and when the man stops moving but does not stand up and move from behind her, the soldier checks to confirm verbally that he has finished.
The blond man does not answer, and she remembers that this is common. However, he does not leave the room, as the men usually do. Instead, he stands up and starts to make a lot of noise.
This is not usual, but the mission is otherwise on schedule and they are in a rest period and he is not her superior, so the soldier does not pay close attention to the yelling man. She fixes her clothing, fastening her pants and smoothing down her armored vest, and then turns and sits down on the edge of the bed. A routine ache in her left shoulder, but otherwise she is unharmed. The man is still standing above her, and his noises do not stop: she catches nonsensical phrases like how dare you act like and trying to make me feel and you think you are better. When the soldier looks up at him, his face is flushed deep red, as if there is deep pressure around his neck that is blocking the blood flow down through his jugular veins.
The noise is irritating, and the commander does not come into the room even though he is also close within the building and should be able to hear it. But the soldier has not been given orders and so she simply sits, watching him. The blond man’s skin becomes redder, and then he says take off that fucking mask and lunges to grab her by the face.
Physical contact in a state of such high emotional arousal risks compromising the mission, so the soldier incapacitates him with a light blow to the stomach, and then reaches up from her sitting position and wraps her left hand around his neck.
The man’s face crumples, flushing even redder, although the soldier’s grip is not strong enough to choke. He pushes out one fist, clumsily, to attempt a punch.
The soldier has always been permitted to make judgements about the suitability of team members who are not her superiors. This man, being so easily disconcerted and physically unstable, is clearly not suitable. It is unfortunate to waste resources like this, but the mission of Hydra is ultimately more important. The soldier squeezes down with the hand that they have given her as a weapon. Warm liquid bursts out onto the metal, and the loud man goes quiet and drops to the floor.
The soldier stands and fetches a towel from the attached bathroom and wipes off her left hand so the blood does not penetrate too deeply and risk damaging the arm’s circuits. It is unlikely to happen, but field maintenance in this remote location would be difficult, if not impossible. The man is not quite dead when she returns to the small bedroom, but given the rate of exsanguination she expects only a short wait. She had not intended to rupture the artery, but her work with Hydra depends on results, not adherence to particular techniques. By the time her superior comes to the room, the man’s breathing has stopped and a large area of the thin carpet covering the floor is wet.
Her superior, the commander, stops and goes very quiet when he comes in. The soldier tells him what had happened and the reasons for her decision.
Her superior’s breathing rate is elevated, but he does not go red.
“I guess it’s my own fault,” he says finally. “I shouldn’t have encouraged it, not with the new ones. God, I’m going to get in so much shit for this. What a fucking mess.”
The soldier is not required to respond, so she doesn’t.
“Get up and help me move this body. We can wrap it up in—no, don’t get too close to me. Jesus Christ.”
The soldier stops. The man looks frightened, even though he is in no danger: the soldier is not supposed to injure her superior. She does not get close.
The others on the mission share a similar reaction, one that continues for the rest of the night: the condition of the blond man’s dead body seems to have frightened them in a way that enemy bodies do not, even though the man was clearly of no use.
She is alone for a long time that night, keeping watch. Sometimes when she stabs a target, her knife will slide in smoothly but then jar against bone as it moves forward. The inside of her head feels like that now, like her thoughts have jarred on something. She does not know why. The others’ behavior is odd, but the mission has not been compromised. She will report their reactions to her handler when they have returned to base.
There is a young man with dark hair who does not keep as much distance from her the next day. He does not touch her. Over the next three days the quiet from the others is not unpleasant. The mission is successful.
Afterwards, when she is sitting in the vehicle that will take them on the first part of their journey back, the young man with the dark hair sits down next to her within touching distance. He reaches out one hand, hovers it close to the soldier’s right shoulder. When she does not react, he touches the shoulder lightly. His hand does not move.
“Is this okay?” he says. “Just to touch your shoulder?”
The question is confusing, so she doesn’t respond. There are three other men in the vehicle and they are pretending not to notice them. One has glanced up only once with an expression of interest, like he is curious about whether he will see the dark-haired man’s blood soon.
The man sitting next to her drops his voice, speaking so quietly that the others in the vehicle likely cannot hear. “I know it wasn’t your fault,” he says.
He speaks to her the way she had seen another team member on this mission speak to a orange cat he had caught sight of in an alley, one that he had wanted to come closer to him. It is not a common tone.
The cat had not responded. The soldier does not respond.
Later, when they are back at the base and she is sitting in the examination room waiting for her post-mission checkup, the man helps her remove her armored vest. She moves her arms as needed to allow him to do it.
His hands stay on her shoulders again after, over the straps of the breastguard she is still wearing. His hands rub back and forth over the skin there, harder on the bunched muscles and gentle on the ribbons of exposed scar tissue. His hands do not move below her shoulders. She does not recognize the sensation, and she does not move. The air on her skin is light, the air around her light, like she is falling.
When the men wearing white come into the room the man leaves her alone without touching her further. The mission is over and it is permissible to be distracted, but she does not think. The jarring feeling in her brain is gone. It feels smooth, like her favorite dagger cutting through skin and muscle and connective tissue and bottoming out in quick death.
When the soldier wakes up next time, a large amount of time has passed, and the man is in charge.
3.
“No one is allowed to touch her,” Rumlow says during the briefing before the soldier is woken up. “This is not a joke. This is not a drill. Talk or make eye contact, I’ll see that you report to me. Touch, and I’ll see that you report to Pierce. You guys love your families? Love your cousins? Your neighbors? Pets? Your best friends from elementary school? Touch her and Pierce will take care of all of them.”
Rumlow is usually friendly with his men, almost always smiling and bantering back and forth. Now, one or two of them gives him a nervous smile, despite the words. Rumlow does not smile back.
The smiles fade, and no one holds his eye. There are no challenges.
He will still make sure everyone watches the video.
4.
The dark-haired man who is now her superior is a very good fighter, although of course the soldier always beats him. She remembers that many of the other men she has sparred with have sometimes gotten angry, which impacts their fighting skills, but this one simply smiles after the soldier has pinned him or knocked him down, and gets up again. His smile is friendly and open. He often helps her stand up after a fight as well, even though she does not require him to. He gives her towels and things to eat afterwards. These are good for you but they're not disgusting, he says, unwrapping pieces of food that are hard and rectangular. The soldier eats them.
She remembers other men being angry when they lose, but the soldier only spars with him now, and when she tries to remember when the others had stopped, the images melt away.
He works with her for a long time the day before they are going to leave for a mission. The soldier is not tired. The man acts as if he is not tired. The soldier pins him to the mat, again, and he pats her on her bare upper arm, his skin hot. His hand is still on her arm as he leads her back to the bench on the side of the room and gives her something to drink in a plastic bottle. He fusses over an area of pain on her right arm, but does not touch her any more than that. The room is very bright. The man says he is looking forward to being away from this place and being on the mission instead, so that they can have more time together. The soldier does not respond. She drinks what he gives her.
5.
She does not remember if this is their first time. The dark-haired man stays behind her so that the soldier is in her preferred position, over the edge of the bed with her knees on the floor and him behind her. He holds on to her sides, gentle.
After he stops moving the soldier prepares to move but the man stops her, still gentle, and says “Shhhh.”
He is still close behind her, leaning forward so his hair brushes the skin on the back of her neck, and then his hand is reaching down, pushing at her at a way that makes her twitch like she has received a mild shock. His fingertips are rough.
“Shhh,” he says again. “It’s okay. Don’t move.” The touch itself is painless, but at first it is too strong and sudden, like an electrode in the brain. But the voice is soft and the blanket is soft against her face and it is bright like the room they spar in and it is like falling again, a fall that goes on and doesn’t end in death.
The movements of his hand are rhythmic and steady, like a pulse of red arterial blood onto the thin carpet. The soldier’s breathing becomes faster. Her skin is damp now, slippery with sweat in a way it never is when they are fighting.
“Shh, good,” he says, his voice quiet, and she remembers a man talking to a cat in an alley, although she does not remember when she saw that. The soldier’s breath is irregular now, muscles tensing against the blankets under her, her human hand tight in the fabric. She does not have words for this. It is like light, it is like a bomb going off. It is like—
“Oh,” she says, and he is pressed against her and her body shakes and jerks like a man who is being strangled.
Her skin is still wet. Her hair is damp. The man kisses a spot on her head close behind her ear.
“How was that?” he says.
The convulsions had felt painful in her left shoulder, and there has been some mild possible damage to the scar tissue, and the soldier tells him so. The man says he will do better next time.
There are lots of next times.
6.
The man is older when the soldier wakes up, but he is still her superior. He fights now like he has trained the whole time she was asleep. She remembers enough to know that he is more skilled now, although she does not know how she remembers.
On the mission, when they are alone, he kisses the bare skin on her shoulder. Touches the scars there and says he likes them as well. He speaks about how powerful she is, what a good fighter. He says love. They stay in her preferred position.
Late in the mission, they must wait quietly inside a building in the daytime for a long time. The windows are covered, but it is still light enough to see, strips of sunlight falling across the floor and across her superior's body as he sits across from her. After a while, he leans his head back and falls asleep. The soldier watches him for a long time, the faint shadows shifting slowly on his face as the sun moves. Her mind feels very smooth.
7.
She likes you, the other men say to Rumlow now, when the soldier heads to him first after a fight or hands him a broken weapon to take care of or stands in front of him to get him to fix her armor.
It’s far better than the type of comments he used to hear about her, so Rumlow ignores the fact that it makes his men sound six years old. Ignores the comments in general, in fact. None of them mean anything.
He has only a brief moment alone with her now, when they can get onto the plane first while the others are checking inventory. Once she is sitting down in the seat, he carefully detaches her mask and strokes her cheek. The plane's engines have not started, and it is quiet enough to hear the leather creak when he touches her.
He runs his palm along the cool smooth surface of her left arm, wraps his hand around the wrist, digs a thumbnail gently into one of the joints. She is looking at him, and her eyes stay on his as Rumlow brings her left hand up to touch his own face. He leans in closer. She smells like gun oil, and her face is expressionless but her eyes are still locked on his.
Then there’s a voice from outside, and a banging noise of somebody loud approaching. Rumlow lets go, letting the metal hand slip off his face so that it rests back on the soldier's leg. He has the feeling he sometimes gets on the rare occasions when he has watched the soldier miss a killing shot.
8.
Every thing else on the mission is as usual, but this time her superior has started to talk about new things.
The future, he says.
The future is the death of the target, the soldier tells him. The future after that is the downfall of the enemies of Hydra.
The man shakes his head and smiles at her. The new words continue when they are alone.
I don’t want them to put you away again, he says this time.
You can come with me after, instead.
He is her superior and she has no one else to report to on missions, so the soldier files away the words for later. She does not look at him this time when he falls asleep close to her, even though they are alone. She keeps her eyes on the damaged plaster on the walls of the room they are resting in. The soldier will look at him again after she has confirmed that he is in compliance with the ongoing missions.
The words continue after he wakes up, as well, words about love and forever and can’t. All of these things she remembers, as clearly as she does not remember anything else, and she recites the words verbatim to her handler when they have come back from the field.
“You did the right thing in telling me,” Pierce says. His face is so much older than she remembers, but his voice is just as kind. “Did he hurt you?”
The soldier confirms that she has not been injured.
He nods. “Get her cleaned up,” he says to the men in white who are in the room with them. “And check her out just in case.”
“Should we wipe her again, sir? She’s due out again in forty-six hours.”
“Not yet,” he says. “There’s more we might need to know.”
9.
Her superior is waiting for her in the bright sparring room the next day. Watching as the men in white lead her in. His smile is sharp as he nods and waves them away.
“The cameras are off,” he says to her. “We’re alone today, soldier.”
The soldier had not remembered that there were cameras, although she supposes that it makes sense for training purposes. She waits for the man to go on.
“I told Pierce that you made it all up,” he says. “Said that you were deluded and remembering an old boyfriend. He believed me.”
The soldier thinks of her handler, and feels herself frown. Feels everything in her mind jolt again, like a knife on bone, like a knife on metal.
The man is still smiling. He is prepared already, his hands already wrapped. “We gonna start?”
The soldier nods.
On the mats, she throws a punch at ten percent power, and the man ducks it.
“More,” he says. “I want a little bit more today.”
The soldier decreases the amount she is holding back, throws a shot she knows the man can dodge. But at the last second he chooses the wrong direction and the shot lands, hard enough to make a noise, hard enough to split skin. Blood spatters onto the dark mat.
The soldier stops. The man looks at her through bloodied eyes, his face hard, his hands still raised in front of him. He wants to continue.
They keep going, and the light is bright. The soldier steps backwards, and he advances, something they’ve done a hundred times before, but today is different. He is not dodging or blocking now as he should be. Is he upset? Has he chosen to fight today even though he shouldn't? The soldier should not fight if he is compromised. She is not supposed to injure a superior.
She slows, weakening her blows and telegraphing her movements and it seems to be enough, but then midway through another shot the man pauses at the wrong time so that another of her blows lands too hard, slamming into a cheekbone. It had been a light punch, for her, but the noise seems loud in the room.
Her superior steps back, hands still raised, and smiles at her. His eyes are wild and his expression is unreadable. There is more blood. Her breathing is hard already, even though they have just started sparring. This is wrong.
This is wrong. This is wrong. The soldier advances, and this time she knows what she is doing, fights slow and gentle and does not cause injury. They are back close to the wall, her blows landing like cotton wool, until he is stooped down and unresisting and she thinks he is ready to tap out—
—and then he punches up hard, a sudden quick blow to her chin.
It’s enough to stun her for a fraction of a second, enough to damage her judgement and make her push and kick outwards at her normal sparring strength. And then the man stops again, pausing at the exact wrong time, that sudden flash of competence vanished already like a lightning strike. There is a crunching sound as the soldier's heel impacts the man’s ribs.
The room is too bright. Her breathing is highly irregular. In front of her, her superior is leaning forward, one hand pressed against his side, but his head is raised and his eyes are on her and his face is red with wet blood.
She is not supposed to injure a superior.
“Got into your head, did I?” he says, and then he laughs, his teeth bloody, and she thinks of a starving wolf she had seen once outside in the snow, even though she does not remember seeing a wolf and does not remember seeing snow. “Lie down,” he says, and he is snarling but his voice is somehow joyful. “On your back.”
The soldier sits down on the mat, and lowers herself onto her back.
She keeps her arms relaxed on either side of her head; she does not know what else to do with them. The surface of the mat underneath her is soft, splattered with blood and sweat. The ceiling is bright. This is not her preferred position.
The cameras are off. The white cloth wrapped on the man’s hands is flushed red with blood. The mat sticks to the bare skin on her human arm and his blood drips onto her steadily, and sweat drips off the ends of his hair. He is close to her, and the noises they are making makes her think of old repeating memories, of trains moving over unsteady tracks. The mat against her back is still cool. This is not her preferred position.
He stops after some amount of memories and time have passed, and finally loosens his hands where he’s gripping her. The soldier doesn’t move.
Her superior stands, and he walks to the bench close to the door where he always keeps his belongings. He wipes blood off his face with a white towel, wipes sweat off the back of his neck. He turns and smiles at her, and the soldier sits up and fixes her clothing. He tosses her the used towel, and she pushes herself up after she has used it to wipe up most of the blood.
“No hard feelings,” he says to her. “I’m still on your side, you know. Forgive and forget, all that.” He laughs. The soldier does not understand the laughter. Her head is metal and bone and noise.
“C’mon,” he says, smiling, and he has his hand on the soldier’s arm, and this time he leads her out himself, out of the door, out down the hallway that will take them back to the room with the men in white. Her superior’s voice is gentle now, and for some reason the soldier thinks of a cat, although she does not remember ever seeing a cat.
“This way, sweetheart,” the man says. “We’ll give you all the help you need.”
10.
She does not remember if this is their first time.