Chapter Text
NEW YORK CITY - 10 YEARS AGO
There is a child in front of the Soldier, just a few years old, staring at him in wonder.
The Soldier has crawled in from an open window, having climbed up several stories in the dark of the evening to discover his presence, and the Soldier considers what he should do. He knew the Parkers have a child before now, even knows his name, but it did not occur to him that he would be interacting with him. The child is not the mission, after all, but his dark eyes hold wonder in their depths as he looks up from the toys in his little fingers.
“Woah,” he breathes, and the Soldier tips his head to evaluate him.
He could kill the child. It would be easy enough, a flick of one of the many blades on his person or even simply his strong, experienced hands wrapping around his neck, but the thing is, the Soldier does not particularly like to kill, and furthermore, the child has not done anything worth killing him for.
Can his handlers call him a witness if he hasn’t seen the Soldier doing anything wrong?
The Soldier knows the answer is yes and also that his handlers don’t have to claim he’s a witness to order the Soldier to eliminate him, but the Soldier definitely does not like doing anything extra for them. So, the Soldier lifts his hands to his face, feeling for the weak points on his mask. They grew tired of the Soldier talking back long ago, but his muzzle is not as complicated a contraption as they seem to think. It is a simple matter of the right amount of pressure at a few key spots, and the amalgamation of metal and fabric falls into his hands.
There is curiosity sparking in the child’s eyes, and the Soldier obligingly hands him his mask. He would give him his goggles too, but there should be no shooting today, which means he isn’t wearing them. Still, the child looks pleased with what he has given him, turning it over in his small hands. “Hi, Peter,” the Soldier says, lips curling artificially as he observes him. There is no emotion to his smile, only the mind of the Soldier that tells him the child will make less of a fuss if he doesn’t see him as a threat, but the child doesn’t know that. “You want to help me out with something?”
His voice is soft, carefully subdued and raspy from disuse, and the child instinctively copies its volume, looking up from where he’s fiddling with the muzzle. “How’d you get up here?” he asks, skirting the question with none of the Soldier’s own finesse but all of the blind excitement the Soldier doesn’t possess.
“That’s a secret,” the Soldier replies, crouching down, “but I can tell you if you do something for me first.”
An adult, even an older child, would understand that there are no good favors a creature that looks like the Soldier might ask, not with his empty eyes and the matte of the weapons strapped to his side, but the child is only that. The Soldier has made no move to expose himself as something worth fearing, and so the child merely nods.
“Stay in your room for me? Just for a few minutes. I need to talk with your mom and dad.”
The child nods, and the Soldier leaves him his muzzle. He’ll tell his handlers it fell off in the climb, and if he’s lucky, they won’t care enough to punish him for it. After all, the Soldier became imperfect a long time ago. He’s not the brute, blunt perfection of his most revered peer, but they have never been able to make him as mindless as his predecessor.
He heads for the door, footsteps silent despite the weight they should carry for the task the Soldier has been instructed to carry out.
The child holds his mask without fear, and the Soldier silently twists the knob of the last barrier standing between him and his mission.
“Have fun with your adult stuff,” the child tells him, voice still quieted.
The Soldier turns his head, flashing a dead smile. “Will do,” he lies, and then he is gone.
//
HYDRA BASE - PRESENT
The Soldier knows his cell. Granted, he is sure his cell changes from wipe to wipe, mission to mission, but they’re all the same. Four walls, one cot, one sink, one toilet, one shower, and seven cameras, with one in each corner of the room, two in the shower, and one more in the sink, though whether it’s in the drain or the faucet changes sometimes.
The Soldier is always watched at base, so though his thoughts spin constantly, he is never granted a moment for himself to use his brilliant mind to its potential. It’s as maddening as it is stifling, stuck in a grey room where he can do nothing but wait, so he is always grateful when someone comes to fetch him, even if he inevitably wants to plant a knife in the back of whoever it is.
Some days, the Soldier wishes he could be more like his predecessor in that he could truly let go, allow himself to forget and thoughtlessly do as he’s told, but the Soldier’s mind is tenacious and fast and angry, and no matter how many times they fry his intelligence away, it comes back with a vengeance, screaming to destroy and escape even if the Soldier’s body is theirs to control.
The man in front of him, the Soldier can intuit, is fragile.
He’s been dragged from the numbing familiarity of his quarters to sit in front of him, however, so he must be important, no matter how the Soldier can see the sweat forming on his brow.
The Soldier wishes he could bare his teeth just to see him jump, but he sees that his blank stare does a passable job of unnerving him on its own. The man’s eyes dart from the Soldier to his handler, and his finger taps nervously on the table. “Are you—are you sure he’s stable?” he asks.
“Stable enough,” she replies.
The man does not look convinced, but his handler calls to the Soldier, forcing his attention away from him. “Soldier,” she snaps, and his shoulders instantly roll back. “You’re to accompany and protect Jasper Sitwell, here. Anything he asks of you, you do without delay. Our other Soldier has been hard at work, and you’re here to take care of his scraps, understood?”
The Soldier suspected something more was happening, but hearing that his counterpart is active again is a surprise—just not as surprising as hearing he’s going to be let out with him.
(The Soldier’s mind is always running, and they’ve stopped allowing them to work together since the last time the Soldier realized the power in numbers.)
The Soldier is not allowed to have emotion and knows his face does not betray him. However, he is smart, and his handler knows this, revels in it more than most. She leans across the table and into his face, and it would be so easy to reach out and latch a hand around her neck as he wants, as he craves, but the Soldier is chained to his orders. She smiles, sensing what he’s already thought of. “Not to worry, Soldier. Sitwell is going to keep you two far apart. We would hate for you to get distracted.”
The Soldier hates her, hates her, hates her—
And she is pulling away, and his face shows nothing.
“He’s all yours,” she says, and the Soldier can do nothing but comply.
//
LONG ISLAND - 1981
Long before there was ever the Soldier, there was a boy. That boy loved to tinker in his father’s lab in his family’s house, though his mother always ushered him from the premises when he came home. The night he meets Alexander Pierce is no exception.
He’s nearly finished with the car engine he’s been working on for the past couple of days when his mother appears in the lab, already in her Sunday best—hair made up, makeup immaculate, and not a wrinkle in her dress. “Tony,” she calls to him, “you have to leave early tonight. Your father is having guests for dinner, and we need to get you ready.”
He sighs with a mouth twisted in concentration and grease on his hands. “I’m almost done,” he pleads, trying to continue his project, but she comes over and swats his fingers with a rag sitting out—not hard enough to hurt, nevermind bruise, just enough to make her son look up at her and see the unimpressed tilt of her brows.
“I said we need to get you ready.” And then, as if unable to hold her more severe expression a moment longer, she cracks a conspiratorial smile. “And if we’re fast, there might be a surprise treat before we eat.” He grins back, she shoos him from the room, and they spend the next half hour wrestling his wild hair into submission, getting the oil off his pale skin, and stuffing him into a slightly-too-tight suit. She could let the maids take care of it, but the boy loves his mother, and his mother loves him. Besides, she’ll likely be up entertaining too late to tuck him in, so this is the extent of the time she’ll have with him today.
“Who’s coming over, anyway?” the boy grumps, nose wrinkling but making no verbal protest as his mother artfully combs his hair into place.
“Some people from work. Your father’s especially impressed with one of the younger ones—Pierce, I think. He comes from a political family, but he’s interested in SHIELD.” She tips his chin up with her pointer finger, making the boy look into her eyes. “Be on your best behavior, alright? I’ll see what I can do to get you excused, but if your father asks any favors of you, don’t talk back to him.”
He nods, fiddling with his tie, and she kisses his forehead with a soft smile.
The boy will never admit it to his friends at school, but he loves her kisses.
When his father and his guests—including his business partner, who the boy calls Obie—walk through the front door that evening, there’s only one that bothers to crouch to the boy’s level and say hi—the one his mother told him about. Pierce shakes his hand and asks him how his day was, and the boy tells him the truth: his car engine is coming along great, but he needs a cool car to put it in.
The man, young and exuding a presence that, even at the tender age of seven, the boy can’t help but be taken in by, laughs. “Precocious, aren’t you?” he says, smiling wider than the boy’s father ever does at him before he ruffles his hair and continues towards the dining room.
The boy likes the praise, and his father doesn’t seem perturbed, so he doesn’t understand the chill that follows him as he trots along complacently and settles into a seat next to his mother. It’s strange, but as the adult conversation starts up, the boy’s mind moves onto other things, like the homework he has to get done before break is over and his creation still sitting in his father’s lab.
The boy won’t have a reason for his trepidation until much, much later, and by then, it will already be too late.
//
SHIELD HQ - PRESENT
The Soldier finds that Jasper Sitwell remains a fragile creature, even when the Soldier is put into civilian clothes, or at least clothes that make him look like the average agent instead of his normal self.
The number of people who know about the Soldiers is kept to a minimum whenever possible, and so the Soldier molds himself into a quiet, unremarkable presence at Sitwell’s side.
He stands by him, watching the man they’re tracking—a man they call Captain.
The Captain seems familiar to the Soldier in a way that’s not like seeing an old handler or doctor. It’s as if he knows of him, but he does not know him, which makes sense considering the ruthless way he attacks the agents he’s found himself surrounded by. Furthermore, the Soldier does not find himself liking the Captain very much, though his feelings for him are not like those he harbors for his handlers.
The Soldier does not necessarily want to kill the Captain so much as he would prefer that he stay out of his way, but he can admire his form as he fights. He personally knows it to be painful to keep going with those charged batons stuck into one’s skin, but the Captain seems to be holding his own.
“Mobilize strike units—twenty-fifth floor,” Sitwell says, and the Soldier’s face is blank, watching the fight happen. Sitwell can do as he likes, but the Soldier has been in similar positions to the Captain. A little bit of pain for freedom is far better than punishment, and the Soldier sees the Captain’s out long before he takes it.
Watching Rumlow go down—that’s something the Soldier can appreciate, along with the ease with which the Captain stands above the forms of his opponents.
The Soldier understands the thrill of surviving.
The Captain leaps, as the Soldier expects, and he wonders why, exactly, they think Sitwell is important enough to protect when he can’t even do his job because the Soldier knows, seeing the Captain’s resourcefulness, that he’s a lost cause the moment he breaks free of the elevator.
The Captain runs and drives, and when he escapes the compound, Sitwell, panting in the wake of his failure, turns to look at the Soldier. “Why didn’t you do anything?” he spits.
The Soldier knows how breakable men love to think they have power.
He blinks, unperturbed. “Did you tell me to?” he replies, and Jasper Sitwell’s hand cracks across his mouth in panic, in fury, in knowing he can because the Soldier may not be muzzled but he certainly cannot bite without orders.
The Soldier doesn’t flinch, and the Soldier remembers how he loves to see breakable men fall.
//
LONG ISLAND - 1987
The boy is thirteen now, and he’s gotten himself into a fight at school. His father is livid, and the boy remembers that he’s never liked his study, not even when the appeal of his brilliance was fresh and his father still thought he had potential.
“What were you thinking?” the boy’s father spits, and the boy, with his arms crossed and his feet planted, has no problem spitting back.
“John’s an asshole—he deserved it!” The boy can see the flames he’s stoking in his father’s expression, but he has never been good at holding his tongue, not even when it might help him. “He started it, anyway. Why is it my fault?” he demands to know.
John has been harassing him for months now—why should the boy be in trouble because he went after him like always and found that the boy had enough of his idea of fun?
It’s not fair, but the boy’s father has an expression that looks like a storm sounds, and the boy knows he won’t understand.
“It’s your fault because you’re a Stark, and Stark men are made of iron. We don’t break for little assholes who try to throw their weight around at school,” he growls, using the boy’s words against him, and the boy has a thousand whip-sharp retorts on his tongue.
The one that comes out is as damning as the worst of them.
“Maybe I don’t want to be a Stark,” the boy says, tears burgeoning in his eyes despite his rage, and thunder booms in the study.
Really, Jasper Sitwell’s punishment is far from unique.
//
SHIELD HQ - PRESENT
The Soldier knows that failure is unacceptable, so he is not surprised when he is relieved of his duties with Sitwell. He is, however, pleased at the insecurity cracking across the man’s face when he returns to his handler’s side. The sudden vulnerability of losing his guard appears to have shaken him, and the Soldier feels vindicated, though his cheek is still smarting.
Sitwell walks away in shame, and then the door opens to reveal a man the Soldier does know. His handler salutes him, and the Soldier remains still.
Alexander Pierce crosses over to the Soldier with an easy smile, placing a hand on his shoulder like they’re friends. “How are you doing, Soldier?” When the Soldier doesn’t reply, Pierce merely gives a politician’s chuckle, knocking a finger against the Soldier’s chest, where the Soldier knows he knows his light is, and a faint clunk that would be alarming coming from anyone else echoes in the room.
The Soldier ignores the pain of having his battery jostled, fiery and acidic in the back of his throat. The Soldier knows pain, and what his light brings him is comforting as far as pain goes because it is his.
“How’s your heart?” he continues, already aware that the Soldier isn’t permitted to reply—not to him, anyway.
In fact, though the Soldier doesn’t remember it, Pierce is the one who made the rule.
The Soldier has been freed from his muzzle so that he could blend in with Sitwell, but talking back to a man who’d just disgraced himself and talking back to Pierce are very different things.
At the silence that follows, Pierce laughs again, patting the Soldier on the back and moving past him like nothing happened—like he is nothing. The Soldier forgets when he doesn’t see him often, but he hates Pierce, more than he hates his handlers, more than he hates anyone. There is something more to it than Pierce merely getting the final say on what the Soldier does, but the Soldier can’t remember what, and Pierce is still talking.
“You’re going to be helping me out in a few days, Soldier. We’re moving into position for our takeover, and we’ve already shown our Asset. That’s where you come in.” He turns back around, but the Soldier can taste the condescension in his words. “He’ll be keeping the skies clear, but you’re going to keep things contained on the ground. Think you can do that for me?”
As if he could say no.
//
LONG ISLAND - DECEMBER, 1991
The boy is seventeen and home for a break, thinking about who he wants to invite to a party he’s planning on throwing that night, and a police officer comes to his door.
“I’m sorry,” the man says. And, “We need you to come down to the station.”
And just like that, the boy believes his world to be gone.
Except it’s not.
Not yet.
//
A VEHICLE EN ROUTE TO SHIELD HQ - PRESENT
The Soldier is put with Rumlow, who finds out he’s going to be with him and doesn’t waste a second before curling his lip in a sneer. “Me and the genius, huh?” he says, and though the Soldier is used to similar nicknames, his next words ignite flames in the Soldier’s eyes. “I can’t get the braindead one?”
His handler sighs, as if there isn’t a simple set of words she can say to force him still under her thumb, as if he can honestly put up a fight. “You’re telling me,” she says. “Apparently, the Asset is acting alone. Pierce is confident he won’t need further instruction.” She motions toward the Soldier, who is wordlessly absorbing the information for his own knowledge. “This one is wilier. Send him on his own if you need to, but he works best under direct instruction.”
Rumlow sizes him up, his eyes even colder than the Soldier’s. “Me and smart guy here will get along just fine, don’t worry,” he assures her.
“You ready?” she asks him, checking over her weapons.
“Been ready a long time,” he replies.
The Soldier wants to cut his overzealous smirk off his face.
//
LONG ISLAND - JANUARY, 1992
The boy has been drinking. He’s older than he was when Pierce strolled into his life for the first time, nearly an adult, really, but not yet. Not now, when he’s destroyed the piano his mother put in his room on one of his birthdays because he can’t play it anymore without thinking of her, not when he’s trying to grieve his father but can only seem to think of the darkening of his eyes when he made him angry or the feeling of his palm smacking his cheek.
If the boy’s parents had gone a different way, he might feel worse about hating the memory of his father, but everyone knows how his father loved a drink, and the boy knows how his father never let his mother drive.
An accident, the paper called it. Murder, the boy thinks of it.
He should’ve said something before they left for the airport, he should’ve smelled his father’s breath before he left the house with his mother, but he didn’t, and now their mansion—always too big for the three of them, even with the servants—feels so much colder than before.
His aunt’s called six times today, his best friend five, and just then—
A knock on the door.
The boy doesn’t plan on answering, but then he hears the low, familiar voice filter faintly through the house: “Tony? Tony—I know you’re in there.” A pause. “I brought pizza.” Another, a tad longer than the first. “And whiskey.”
The boy doesn’t want to see anyone, but he’s been working through the same bottle of stupid-expensive scotch for a day now, and Obie—
Well, if anyone gets it, it’s him. He’s been friends with the boy’s father for as long as he can remember, and his mother just the same. He might as well be another father to the boy, and he gets up to answer the door. When he does, Obie hides a wince at the sight of him, dark, bruise-like smudges under his eyes and hair greasy from days in bed.
“You said you had whiskey?” the boy croaks, and Obie follows him inside, to his mother’s favorite couch in the living room. “There’re glasses in the cupboard,” he mutters, as if Obie doesn’t know the house just as well as he does.
Obie talks, but Tony doesn’t listen until he pours him a drink, tossing it back nearly as fast as he gets it and not noticing that Obie ignores his own in favor of some of the pizza.
“How’ve you been,” Obie asks gently, and the boy shrugs, every part of his body aching with the motion.
“Great,” he replies, no life to his voice. All the boy wants to do is sleep, but he can’t, so he turns to the next best thing to make him forget and welcomes the burn of the liquor. “And you?”
A pause. “Alright,” Obie tells him, and the boy wonders if buying his own food and drink instead of having it brought to him out of pity will mean he’s alright too. “You left the house recently?” he asks, and that betrays a little more of the truth of the boy’s situation.
“Does it look like I’ve left the house?” comes his coarse answer.
“Just asking—just asking. Didn’t want to assume,” he placates him. “Have you heard anything about the company?”
“Who cares about the company, Obie?” the boy finally snaps and immediately regrets it.
Obie’s just trying to help and he’s—he’s ungrateful, like his father always said.
He blinks back a few tears, and some of the strength goes out of his shoulders, leaving them to sag. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, and then Obie’s arm is around his shoulders, soothing in its weight.
“It’s okay,” he assures him, and if the boy could muster the energy to look up from the amber depths of his glass, he might see Obie’s other hand clenching, his eyes hardening, betraying what he truly thinks of the boy’s tone.
They sit in silence, the boy soothed in some way to know that there is still someone left to hold him, and eventually, the boy grows tired—so, so tired. It’s nice, actually, considering his sleep ever since the accident has been rough, to say the least. He’ll have to do something nice for Obie at some point to thank him for dropping by, but for right now, he just wants to head back to his room.
He yawns, taking another sip of his drink, and doesn’t see Obie’s eyes flit to a clock hanging on the wall before coming to rest impatiently back on him. “I’m going to head to bed,” he tells him, except when he stands, the world doesn’t stay still.
The boy stumbles, unsure when the carpet started spinning and of how to make it stop. He must’ve had more whiskey than he realized, he thinks, and Obie’s hands go to his shoulders, steadying him.
“Easy, Tony. Why don’t you lie back down?” he suggests, and yeah, that sounds like a good idea—he should do that. He nods, trusting Obie’s judgment.
He smacks his lips together, tasting a saltiness that whiskey doesn’t have, but his eyelids are suddenly too heavy for questions as he falls back onto the couch.
He feels a hand patting his head, and, oh, that’s right—Obie’s still there. Well, that’s alright then, isn’t it? The boy knows Obie, and he knows Obie won’t think it’s a big deal if he falls asleep, so he lets himself go.
The boy will remember the couch being warm as he drifts off, and he will know Obie was watching over him, but the image that will haunt him before it will be wiped away with everything else is the last thing the boy sees before falling under: Obie’s glass still sitting on the coffee table—untouched.
//
SHIELD HQ - PRESENT
For all that the Soldier instinctively dislikes the Captain, he will say that he has a way with words. When his voice dies on the overhead, the room falls silent, hundreds of eyes on one another, seeing who is siding with who.
The Soldier has always hated the quiet. He would much prefer to fill a room with his voice, but his handlers have known this since the beginning of the Soldier. As a result, his muzzle is on and tighter than ever, cutting harshly into his skin. The Soldier wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bruise when it comes off, but it won’t matter. If he fails here, he’ll be surprised if he even remembers where the bruise came from come morning, so when Rumlow strides into the thick of the room, the Soldier grits his teeth and watches his back.
“Pre-emp the launch sequence. Send our ships up now,” he commands the man at the main computer, but the Soldier can see that though the man is trembling, he is not fragile like Sitwell was fragile. He doesn’t move. “Is there a problem?” Rumlow presses.
Though the man stutters, the Soldier knows this; if he were going to cave, he would’ve done it already.
“Is there a problem?”
“Sorry, sir.” A shaking breath, as if it might steady him. “I’m not gonna’ launch those ships. Captain’s orders.”
Sitwell was fragile and a coward. This man is fragile and will take the bullet.
There’s no use wasting time, then, is there?
Rumlow reaches for his gun, but before he can pull it, the Soldier rips the man from the chair and tosses him into the blonde agent standing near Rumlow like he weighs nothing, tuning out his scream of terror without even realizing he’s doing it. He takes the man’s seat without a word, and as his fingers fly across the keyboard—a painfully simple sequence, and he still doubts Rumlow could enter it in any respectable amount of time—he feels adrenaline flood his veins. Gunshots fill the room, but the Soldier’s work is already done. He lifts his hands from the keyboard, tugs Rumlow to him, and bolts, dragging him along for two reasons.
One, the Soldier will be punished if Rumlow turns up dead under his watch.
That’s a given, but the other reason is more motivational and stems from Rumlow’s generally overconfident demeanor and what he dared to call Winter.
Two, the Soldier wants to be the one to kill Rumlow, not some stray gunfire.
“You crazy son of a bitch!” Rumlow yells, and if the Soldier thought he was worthy of seeing the expression, he might smile beneath his mask at the rage in his voice.
Good, he thinks, and then he lets go of Rumlow to run and shoot and kill, to do what he was made for, and it’s just so easy. The Soldier watches men run at him, and they’re nothing—little bugs he picks off with a bullet here, a knife placed there. It flows like code under his experienced hands, a rhythm he falls into seamlessly and hates all the same: punch, kick, shot, shot, stab, punch, stab, shot, kick—
It’s the atmosphere the Soldier has been trained to survive in as long as he has existed, and though there is no joy in his actions and the bodies he leaves in his wake, it’s not hard to cleave his way through the masses, leaving Rumlow behind.
If the Soldier is not being wiped, then he is on an assignment, but quick kills or heists are not this—they are not a battle, and the Soldier’s use is plain enough in his name.
“Soldier!
Stab, shot, shot, shot, shot, punch, shot, kick, stab, punch—
“Soldier!”
It reaches him the second time but only because Rumlow is leading them somewhere new, somewhere without enemies for him to dispose of.
The Soldier halts, and Rumlow’s command reaches his keen ears perfectly. “Get to Pierce, now! He’s with the Widow.”
And that, as much as the Soldier would love to see Pierce die, is exactly what he does.
There is a man who tries to plant himself in the Soldier’s path, but he is too slow for the speed the Soldier is going for his hit to land and is still too slow to give chase, especially when Rumlow puts himself in his path. The Soldier blows past him, but he still hears what he mutters into his comms—“Natasha, you got company headed your way, fast.”—and Rumlow’s low reply that ends in a laugh—“Oh, she’s got way more than company.”
In the counsel room, Pierce hears the crackle of Agent Romanoff’s comm, and a quiet laugh leaves his lips.
He always did think Howard’s son was more impressive than his father gave him credit for.
//
???? - 1992
The boy falls asleep on his mother’s couch, and he wakes up strapped to a table. He looks around, still groggy. He remembers the whiskey, remembers Obie, but beyond that and the exhaustion that hit him out of nowhere—nothing.
He squirms, straining against the cuffs keeping him down and earning nothing but bruises for his efforts. What’s going on? Why is he here? Why is he being held down?
He has what seems like a thousand questions and no one around to answer them, and the boy is thinking of yelling for help when the door swings open all on its own to reveal Alexander Pierce.
Relief floods the boy in a wave. Pierce never went away after that first dinner, and while he’s no Obie, he’s a familiar face—a friend. He even remembers him from the funeral, where he tugged the boy into an embrace that felt more sincere than most others he received at the event. “Thank God,” he breathes, the tension leaving his limbs. “I thought I was stuck here. Any chance you can help me out?” the boy asks, though he already knows the answer.
That’s why he’s startled when Pierce doesn’t move, just folds his arms and has an expression on his face the boy has known for years that looks like sympathy, except that doesn’t make sense. If he just lets him up, he won’t need to feel badly for him—not because of this, anyway.
“Pierce?” he asks, waiting.
Pierce sighs, and the boy doesn’t know why the sound feels like ice in his veins. He’s known him for ten years, there’s no reason he won’t help him—is there?
“It’s good to see you, Tony,” he says. “I’m sorry you couldn’t be kept somewhere more comfortable, but we tend to take some precautions with our investments, especially ones as expensive as you.”
Investment? But he’s a person—he can’t just be bought.
“Quit messing around, Pierce,” the boy says, except what could possibly be the punchline to this? To the concrete walls everywhere the boy can see and the steel at his back?
Pierce tips his head to stare at him, and the boy feels like he’s seven all over again, being told why he has to leave his father’s lab early.
“It’s alright, Tony. We’ll take good care of you here, so long as you come around to our side of things.”
“Your side of things?”
Pierce smiles and talks, and as he does so, the boy learns several things that quietly shatter everything that is left of what he thought he had.
The boy learns that he may be a person, but he has already been bought.
The boy learns that he was drugged and sold by the man who might as well have been his father in exchange for control of the company that bears his name and a few billion dollars.
The boy learns that he has been bought by the organization his father hated with all of his heart, and when Pierce finishes and asks if he’d like to help shape a better world, the boy spits in his face.
The boy knows he is good at talking, but the boy learns to scream.
//
SHIELD HQ - PRESENT
As far as the Soldier can tell, he arrives late. He sees the helicarriers start to fire on one another, and he runs faster—harder. If Pierce falls because the Soldier could not reach him, his punishment will be excruciating, but he is calmly taking his exit when the Soldier enters the room that smells like burnt flesh, gun raised.
In it, he finds a man missing an eye, Pierce, and a Widow, as promised.
He enters without much thought for stealth, and at once, three pairs of eyes swivel to him.
The Soldier evaluates them all carefully, taking stock of his surroundings, but his eyes stay on the Widow. Pierce is unarmed, as far as the Soldier goes, and the man without the eye has a gun, but the Soldier knows what to expect from a gun. He keeps his own trained on him, but his eyes constantly dart back to the Widow. The Soldier may not remember much, but he never forgets his training, even with one of the women who undoubtedly helped take him apart.
Of his opponents, the Widow is the biggest player in the room, even obviously held hostage like she is, and the Soldier’s eyes only leave her for a moment at Pierce’s drawl. “So nice of you to join us, Soldier.”
The Widow and the one-eyed man glance at each other, and the Soldier can see her disbelief.
His eyes narrow at her, and he reads the recognition, however shocked it might be, on her face.
Did she really think Winter was the only one left of them? If so, she must’ve got a nasty shock just now.
Pierce speaks again, and the Soldier’s eyes return to him. “Lucky for you, I’ve found myself a new pilot. Soldier, if you would.”
The Soldier understands, and he stalks over to Pierce, drawing another gun as he does—one for the man, and one for the Window as he walks and then flies the person he’d love to kill most to safety.
They’re in a copter and headed away from the wreck when Pierce makes a comment that almost makes the Soldier lose his grip on the controls. “According to our intel, our Winter Soldier is nowhere to be found.” That alone is impossible and incredible all at once, the idea that Winter, deadened to the world as he is, has made it away without the Soldier’s help, but Pierce twists the knife deeper, forcing the Soldier to come to terms with where that leaves him. “That means we’ll be making the most of you, Iron, doesn’t it?” he muses.
The Soldier knows Pierce is right, but hearing him use his title makes his blood boil, makes Winter’s victory more bitter, because it’s not his to say, not anymore, not when there is a child not so far from the chaos smoldering below them who says it so much more kindly.
//
NEW YORK CITY - 10 YEARS AGO
The fact of the matter is that the Soldier was not always the Soldier, not that he remembers being anything but. Once, he was a boy that loved to build and loved his mother even more, a boy who could play the piano and speak Italian like a lover instead of as a means to an end, but that boy is buried under years of shock and pain, and in his place is a creature that doesn’t know how to respond to the child in front of him, still just a few years old and frantically switching his brown, strangely piercing gaze from his parents to the Soldier.
The Soldier lied to the child when he said he needed to talk with his parents, but the Soldier is a very good liar, and it doesn’t matter now anyway. There were no final words before the Soldier crept behind each of the people who are now just bodies, drawing his blade across their throats in a single practiced slice. The blood is pooling beneath them—turned onto their backs so the wounds aren’t visible—and the Soldier steps in front of their prone forms so the child doesn’t have to see them anymore.
The Soldier doubts the child has ever seen death so clearly for himself, but he is not stupid and knows things have gone terribly, terribly wrong in his life regardless.
“What—why—they—” he stammers, trembling in the entrance to the kitchen as tears silently trek down his cheeks.
Was the Soldier like him, once? Did he shake at seeing someone die? He doesn’t know, but he crouches down, thinking about how he is going to clean this mess.
If the child screams and alerts the neighbors, he’ll have to die. If he tries to run and anyone sees, he’ll have to die, but right now, he is not part of the Soldier’s mission, and he is tentatively, miraculously safe.
“Peter,” the Soldier begins, “I know this is hard, but you have to listen to me. Can you do that?”
“I—I—”
He continues despite the child’s horror, calm, measured. “When I leave, you’re going to go find a neighbor. Doesn’t matter which one. You’re going to tell them what happened to your parents, and no matter who asks you, you can’t say anything about seeing me, got it?”
“But—”
“If you say you saw me, I’ll come back and kill you too.”
The Soldier won’t have a choice.
The child whimpers, stumbling away from the Soldier, who brushes past him. He thinks about touching his shoulder, offering him some comfort, but the Soldier thinks of how he hates the touches of his handlers and thinks better of it. Instead, he returns to the window he came in, closes it, and leaves through the one in his parents’ room.
Making his way back down the sheer brick drop, the Soldier attributes his own non-compliance to the desire to savor what rebellion he can and doesn’t have the presence of mind to process the tickle at the back of his consciousness that realizes the scene he left in his wake holds eerie similarities to something a boy the Soldier might’ve once known went through.
The Soldier takes everything from the child in one fell swoop, save for his life, and he will never know how the child screams when he manages to find his voice.
Not that early on, anyway.