Chapter Text
Steve snaps the targeting blade into place. “Charlie, lock.” His body slides down to the floor, pain and blood loss from two bullet wounds draining him fast.
“Okay, Cap, get out of there,” Maria says over the comms.
He isn’t sure he can. The masked assassin is still below, and the man could remove the targeting blade before Maria has time to fire. He can’t risk it.
“Fire now.”
“But Steve…”
“Do it!” His voice is sharp, urgent. “Do it now.”
Maria doesn’t respond, but a few seconds later, Steve hears the roar of cannons firing. The helicarrier shakes violently as the other two open fire.
He pulls himself to his feet. The destruction is inevitable now, but maybe he can still get out.
Huge pieces of debris start falling from higher up. Time is running out. Maybe he can jump into the Potomac River below. He grabs onto the railing, trying to steady himself when he hears a scream of pain from below.
He looks down. The Winter Soldier is pinned beneath a large steel support beam. Trapped. With his arm dislocated, there’s no way he can get the beam off himself.
It should be a good thing. The assassin has tried to kill Steve and his friends more than once. He almost killed Fury. He’s killed so many people in the past few days, and who knows how many more over the years. He deserves to die with the rest of Hydra.
So why does Steve feel the need to save him?
Even when they fought on the bridge, something about him had felt familiar. Steve felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
He doesn’t think. He drops down to the glass below and stumbles toward the fallen beam. The Winter Soldier tracks Steve’s movement, still struggling against the weight. Steve looks into the man’s blue eyes, and the sense of familiarity overwhelms him.
He knows him. He doesn’t know how, but he knows him. He looks at the black mask covering most of the man’s face. If he could just see what’s underneath, he’d have answers.
Steve collapses to his knees near the assassin. He shouldn’t free him; he’ll just try to kill Steve again. But Steve reaches for the man’s mask anyway, fingers finding the straps behind his head. Something in Steve needs to see under the mask.
The Winter Soldier jerks back, as far as he can while trapped, blue eyes wide with fear.
Steve stops. He stares at those eyes. A sudden sense of déjà vu hits him. Blue eyes, desperate and terrified. A mangled bar breaking, Bucky screaming as he falls.
Steve gasps, dragging himself out of the memory. Why think of that now?
The Soldier is making small, desperate sounds behind the mask, still trying to get free.
Steve grabs the beam and strains to lift it. The gunshot wound in his stomach tears open, fresh blood soaking his uniform. He holds the beam up just enough for the Soldier to pull free.
Steve lets the beam drop and gets unsteadily to his feet. The Soldier is up too, staring at Steve in confusion.
“I know you,” Steve says.
The Soldier’s brow furrows. “You’re my mission,” he says, but he sounds uncertain.
The feeling of recognition is stronger now, hearing the man’s rough voice for the first time. Steve doesn’t get a chance to place it. The Soldier lunges with a cry.
Blood loss and organ damage have slowed Steve down. He gets his shield up in time to block the first blow from the metal fist, but the second swing connects with his head and knocks his helmet loose.
He staggers back, pulling the helmet from his head. The Soldier stops attacking, just staring at Steve. Confusion in his eyes.
“Do you know me?” Steve asks, desperate. “My name is Steve Rogers.” The Soldier flinches at the name. “Just tell me who you are. Please?”
They stand there, Steve watching the confusion in the man’s eyes turn to something like dawning horror.
Then a large section of the central column breaks free and crashes through the glass and beams they’re standing on. Steve is knocked back, his head hitting a bar before he falls.
His vision blurs as he falls with the debris. He hits the water with the force of a freight train, breath knocked from his lungs. He fights to stay conscious as he sinks.
He wonders if they’ll find him this time or if he’ll finally get the rest he’s been searching for.
Through the fading light, he sees the blurry outline of a metal hand reaching for him. He stops sinking as the hand clamps onto his uniform. Then he’s being pulled through the water. He tries to move, but nothing works. He focuses on keeping water out of his lungs.
His heels hit the rocky bottom of the shore then he's dragged up and out of the water. The hand releases him and his body drops.
On instinct, he turns his head, water draining from this mouth before he takes a shallow breath. Darkness creeps in as he loses consciousness.
He hears footsteps moving away; uneven gait of someone injured. Steve wants to look, to see if the river had made him remove his mask.
But darkness wins.
The Asset takes his time returning to base. There are law enforcement and National Guard combing the area around the crashed helicarriers.
It’s dark by the time he’s able to slip through the perimeter and make his way to the old bank.
He finds a place to watch the rear entrance, unseen by anyone passing by. He watches. He puts his shoulder back in place and it heals easily. The various bruises are long since faded. The evidence of his fight with his target gone from his body.
His mind is another matter.
He knows that he will be punished for not completing his mission. He could have easily allowed the Captain to drown in the river.
“My name is Steve Rogers.”
“I know you.”
He does know him. That’s why he couldn’t let him drown. If he could just remember.
Flashes of pain and being wiped shut down that line of thinking. He’s not allowed to remember.
After almost six hours of watching the building, he doesn’t see anyone come or go.
With the destruction at the Triskelion, perhaps the other operatives have gone to ground? He is not allowed to do that unless he deems it unsafe to return to base.
Finding no obvious threats, he leaves his hiding spot. Carefully making his way to the rear door of the building, he enters the correct code and slips inside.
He does not draw his gun as he creeps carefully through the building, regardless of how much his fingers itch to do so. He is forbidden from holding a weapon while at base. However, there is a feeling of wrongness as he makes his way to the vault where the chair is located.
The lights are dead. No humming fluorescents overhead, not even the faint afterglow of phosphorescence. The hallway is steeped in darkness. The air is foul and stifling, made heavier by the acrid, metallic stench of electric fires. The faint warmth in the air indicates it happened only hours before.
He passes a narrow office to his left. Its door is half off its hinges, and he visually sweeps the room, registering the toppled desk, the overturned chair, papers left behind – no blood, no scuff of a struggle. The space is vacant in a way that makes him uneasy; not the aftermath of a fight but a sudden, urgent departure, possibly extraction, evacuation, or cleansing.
As he moves down the hallway, the scorched smell intensifies and overwhelms even his conditioned breathing. He follows it, stepping over a blackened tangle of wiring snaking across the floor. His boots leave faint imprints in greasy ash that has settled on every surface.
In the first of the smaller vaults, he finds the source: a mountain of ruined laptops – all models, all manufacturers – crammed together in a single heap in the corner of the room; most warped and melted with screens fused to keyboards. A few are still recognizable; however, burn lines are erratic as if done hastily out of panic rather than normal data purging procedures.
He crouches beside the mound running a metal fingertip over a half-melted terminal shell and presses its power button to no avail. His gaze flicks to the scorched shelf above where a few hard drives are arranged neatly then to USB sticks dumped unceremoniously on the floor – each one snapped in half. The damage is thorough yet rushed – seemingly standard operating procedure but lacking usual efficiency; whoever did this was scared.
Standing and pivoting on his heel, he continues to the secure archives vault where he finds its door propped open with a fire axe; handle streaked with greasy fingerprints and blade darkened from heat exposure but no blood evident.
The walls of the archive vault are lined with tall metal racks normally filled with labeled boxes and locked file cabinets, they’re mostly empty now except for smoldering folders and half-burned photos curling in on themselves as they cool. He picks up one photo already half-eaten by flame where a man's face still remains visible; though unrecognized by the Asset, something within him tugs with dull ancient ache as he drops it watching it flutter to floor.
He sweeps the room for survivors. First for the living, then for the dead. No bodies. Not even a stray drop of blood. Only the smell of ozone and melted plastic, and a silence so deep he can hear the blood moving in his own ears.
He moves on in silence through the long, cold corridor, avoiding the stray papers scattered in his path.
He reaches the heart of the installation: the largest vault, the one he associates with the chair. There is a change here, an absence that bristles along the back of his neck. The reinforced door has been forced open, exposing the room’s contents to anyone who can bear to look.
In the center of the room stands the chair. It’s untouched, gleaming in the absence of light, the cold metal seat perfectly aligned with the footrests and the head brace, waiting for its occupant. But the Asset’s gaze slides immediately to what’s beside it—a low table where a pile of hard drives sits, each drive with a pair of mag-cuffs locked around it. The cuffs’ electromagnets have been activated, rendering the drives inert; dead to any attempt at recovery. This is redundancy; a final act of destruction after the fire, after the smashing, after the ransacking.
He approaches the pile, kneeling to pick up a drive. It is still faintly warm.
He turns it over in his hands, examining it for any sign of sabotage beyond the obvious. There is nothing, so he sets it down and stands, scanning the perimeter of the room for hidden threats, for bombs, and for tripwires. If there are any, they are expertly hidden.
He circles the chair once, eyes flickering up to the halo above it. The power source has been cut, but otherwise the machine is undamaged. While computers can be easily replaced, this machine is unique. It would never be destroyed without Alpha-level clearance.
He checks the security feeds out of habit but finds that all monitors are blank. He sits in the chair because he doesn’t know what else to do. He places his hands on the armrests - palms facing down - and waits.
The Asset scans around. There are no threats but no technicians either; none of the Strike team and no Pierce. The Asset sits in the chair in silence awaiting instructions—if there is no one to give him orders he must remain stationary until someone returns.
He waits for five hours.
His hunger becomes intolerable; he is allowed to consume nutrition if necessary to remain functional.
He leaves the large vault then returns to the upper level; he finds his meal preparation room—it’s not in disarray like other rooms; nothing incriminating was kept inside.
He measures out the correct amount of powder into the correct amount of water. He stirs it, but longer than his handlers usually do, he likes it better that way. He drinks it. The taste is bland, but he’s used to it. There are other nutrition powders in the cupboards that are sweet, but they belong to the Strike team and the Asset is not allowed to have them.
He leaves the room and intends to go back to the vault and wait as ordered. Instead, he begins making his way through the different rooms that the operatives and technicians had used. He finds more destroyed computers and shredded documents. He goes to the vault that holds the weapons and arms himself with two additional guns.
He flips through the files that are left behind and finds nothing of note. But when he enters the room they use for his briefings, he sees three files sitting neatly on the table and one more moved off to the side.
In their panic to destroy evidence, no one would have bothered with these files. The file that is not with the others is for Fury, Nicholas. It is marked, “Mission complete: Deceased”
The file sitting on top of the pile is for Romanoff, Natasha. The Asset opens it and there is a picture of a woman with red hair. She looks familiar. The Asset reads the cover page. Former Red Room assassin. Current member of SHIELD and the Avengers.
The term 'Red Room' triggers a flicker of memory: young girls dancing gracefully and cries of pain as the Asset breaks them.
He closes the file and sets it aside.
The next file reads, Rogers, Steven. He opens it and sees a picture of his target. It stirs something in the Asset, an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He reads the cover page. Born in Brooklyn in 1918. Experimented on and made into a Super Soldier. Howling Commandos. Missing for seventy years.
Flashes of memory overwhelm the Asset. He hears the sound of a train and someone yelling. He sees his left arm bloodied, missing from the elbow down. He hears surgical tools whirring, cutting into flesh—his own flesh.
“You will be the new fist of Hydra.”
The Asset shoves the file away, scattering pages everywhere. He’s breathing hard, trying to banish the memories.
He looks down at the last file. It has fallen open. The Asset recognizes the face of the man in the picture, but it doesn’t disturb any old memories. He flips the cover closed to read the name: Wilson, Samuel.
This is the man with the wings on the helicarrier. The Asset had been shown a schematic of the wings before embarking on his mission. He had noted that the weakest point was where the wings connected to the pack and had exploited it when they fought.
He had seen the man’s chute deploy after the Asset had kicked him off the helicarrier. He’d deserved that, after kicking him in the back the day before.
The Asset opens the file and begins reading. He learns that Sam Wilson was from a small fishing town in Louisiana. He had joined the Air Force right out of high school. He was brought into the Falcon program after superior officers noted his natural grace and willingness to take risks. He had lost his wingman to an RPG and never recovered from the loss. He left the military and went to college to be a therapist. He lives in DC and works at the Veteran’s Affairs as a PTSD counselor.
The Asset combs over the file. It doesn’t bring any horrible flashes to the surface, which is somehow calming.
The second time he reads through it, he stops trying to profile the man’s weaknesses and just tries to understand him. The Asset wonders how Sam Wilson had come to be fighting on the helicarrier. Captain America, picking up strays everywhere he goes.
The Asset leaves the room and makes himself another shake. He should go back to the vault and wait in the chair. He will be punished if he does not comply.
He returns to the room with the scattered files, trailing ash and spent adrenaline. In this room, everything is unnaturally still: the blank wall monitors, the shredded briefings in the bin. He stands in the center, surveying the debris field of papers, and for a moment his vision blurs at the edges, white static encroaching on the details.
“I know you.”
The Asset knew him as well. The man’s face had been so painfully familiar when he’d removed his helmet. The sight of the man’s face—bloodied, battered, so determined—the way his voice cut through the chaos, not just an order but a demand to remember.
And when the man fell, the Asset had gotten a feeling of wrongness. It shouldn’t have been the Captain falling, the Asset was the one who fell. Down into the snow and ice.
He had let go of his grip on the descending ship to chase his target into freefall.
The force of hitting the water had ripped off his mask. He had been under strict orders to not remove it for any reason, but the water had not cared. For a few moments, there had only been cold, pressure, the distortion of sound. Even then, the compulsion to chase the Captain had not left him.
He’d grabbed the Captain, using his metal arm to drag the man to the river’s edge, ignoring the screaming pain in his flesh and blood shoulder. He just knew he had to save the man.
He remembers staring at the Captain’s silhouette, waiting for him to wake, or to die, or to vanish like the echoes of his memories always did. But the Captain had just lain there, breathing so softly the Asset almost missed it.
The Asset kneels down and collects the papers. The top sheet of the Captain’s file glares up at him, the photograph burned into memory—fair hair, a jaw clenched with resolve, blue eyes looking towards the future—and the Asset feels the echo of an old, impossible word unfurling in his chest: friend. He tears his gaze away and bends to gather the files, but his right hand trembles faintly, and the metal fingers of his left scrape a cold, guilty rhythm against the tabletop.
He tries not to read the words as he straightens the pages, but fragments leap out regardless, sentences like landmines: “decorated for valor in Europe,” “subject survived experimental process,” “KIA, presumed lost at sea.” “World War II,” “Red Skull,” “Tesseract,” “Sargent James-,” He sweeps the papers into a tidy stack, compulsion forcing him to align every edge, paperclipped corners precisely at ninety degrees. He should not care. The impulse to fix, to restore, to mend the archive is alien—some leftover conditioning from a life erased in increments.
The Asset’s hands are steady again as he finishes stacking the papers. He closes each file with a deliberate snap. He aligns them on the table, a neat row, and takes a step back to observe his work. The effect is absurd, almost comical, in the middle of this ruined, abandoned room: four files, three faces, the ghosts of a mission that no longer exists.
He needs to leave the base. Before they come back and wipe him. Hydra has fallen.
He turns on his heels and retreats out of the room with new urgency. The hallways have grown cold as the fires have finally sputtered out.
He stops at the utility closet and strips it for supplies: a heavy parka, a box of hand warmers, an extra pair of boots. He finds a crowbar and an old bolt cutter, still functional. He stuffs them all into a large duffel bag.
He returns to the armory next, keyed up and hypervigilant. Most of the rifles are gone, but there are still a few handguns, a crate of ammunition, and a scattering of knives. He tucks a pistol into his waistband, straps two more to his chest, and pockets five fresh clips. He selects a knife at random—balanced, sharp, with a hilt that fits his palm perfectly.
He then goes to the room with the food. He takes the container of the tasteless powder as well as the Strike teams sweet tasting powders. He finds meal bars and even some frivolous foods. He takes all of it.
He goes to the vault with the chair. He finds the tools the technicians use for maintenance and repairs on his arm and puts them in his bag. He has the desire to destroy the chair, but it would waste time.
As he is leaving, he stops and grabs the three files of the targets he left alive.