Chapter 1
Steve and Bucky
Steve’s in custody, wondering how exactly he got there. Sure, he knows all of the events leading up to this point - refusing to sign away his ability to choose and deciding to protect the only person he has left to see him as he is with all of his goodness and flaws, the one he’d always been willing to defy the world, and especially his own government, for - but he never thought he’d have the government that literally created him turn on him. Steve loves his country and the ideals it represents, but he does not trust certain people in the government, especially people that have agendas he doesn’t know about. He doesn’t want to be someone else’s blind weapon again. Steve watches them wheel Bucky away, locked up so tight he could barely breathe, and wonders why he hadn’t been locked up like that as well. Sure, he had technically been arrested, but Steve’s pretty sure he could break out easily - he doesn’t even have handcuffs on. His already strained temper snaps a little when Steve finds out Wanda is a prisoner too, just in a more gilded cage, and any thought of compliantly working on the Accords vanishes with his belief that Wanda wouldn’t be locked up because some highly placed people didn’t like what she - a not-fully-legal immigrant now that she is a public liaison liability - had done. Tony looks surprised at the less-than-collected response but leaves him mostly alone after that.
Steve paces back and forth as the agents around him watch the numerous screens intently. He hates that he can’t be there with Bucky to support him, that he can’t even see him. A glimpse of a monitor here and there is not enough for him, and the vague threat constantly surrounding him is setting his nerves abuzz, not to mention that he’s in a glass box in the middle of a room full of people he doesn’t trust. At least he can move around in his own slightly larger glass box. Steve’s not entirely sure how Bucky isn’t completely losing it over being locked in a glass box with someone he doesn’t trust in the room while being unable to move at all. He is immensely grateful when Sharon clicks a button on the table and allows him to see and hear whatever evaluation is going on inside Bucky’s cell. When the lights go out, he immediately looks to Sharon in the hope that she will tell him where Bucky is. She pauses a moment before telling him to go to the East Wing of Sublevel 5. Steve runs about halfway to the door before he has to grab a chair to hold himself up when his legs decide to stand still when his brain says to run.
“Everyone out!” he orders when it becomes clear to him that Bucky’s being activated. Tony, Sam, and Sharon all just stare at him in slightly angry curiosity.
“Now!” Steve gasps.
“Are you okay?” Tony asks, but by then it’s too late.
Steve’s brain feels like it’s tearing itself apart. He knows he can’t resist this one like he had the others before the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D; he’s too close to Bucky, too close to put a wall between them. He can’t fight the red darkness spreading through their mindscape, though that doesn’t stop either of them from trying. Steve throws a clawed hand at the table, trying unsuccessfully to hold himself up, splintering the wood and falling to his knees, hands gripping his head hard enough to leave marks, if the serum would allow that. He hears the last four words as they come out of Zemo’s mouth. Steve’s last thought is that he hopes he doesn’t kill anyone or hurt them too badly before his mind goes completely black and he drowns in the silence.
Tony watches in shock as Captain America breaks the table and crumples to the ground, wondering if they perhaps should have heeded Cap’s warning after all. Tony grows more concerned when he sees the man grab his head tightly with both hands as if experiencing a headache. As far as Tony knows, it is literally impossible for Steve to get headaches out of nowhere because of the serum, something about really, really fast healing. Suddenly, Steve drops his hands and climbs to his feet. His face is hard and his posture tense. He looks lethal, completely ready and able to kill. When Steve responds to someone that’s not there in Russian, Tony can’t help noticing that his Russian is perfect and lacks an accent as far as he can tell, and he can tell a lot from his dabbles in different languages. Something is going on, and Tony is really starting to think they should have run out of the room when Steve told them to.
“Mission report, December 16, 1991,” Zemo says for the second time. He feels like screaming when the Winter Soldier gives him the same response: “My Shadow must arrive before the mission report can be given.” Zemo resists the urge to scream with the last remnants of his control as he asks again for the mission report.
Natasha notices right after the lights go out that something is happening with Steve. She begins weaving her way to the door around the panicking agents. She hurries just a little faster when she sees Steve on the ground by a broken table. The others in the room look just as shocked as she feels. Natasha is close enough to the door to hear and understand the words spoken by whatever is inhabiting Steve’s body. She’d hoped never to hear the phrase “Ready to comply.” again, especially in that hard, empty tone. Natasha attacks the man coming out of the door as soon as she can, hoping to use the element of surprise. The man immediately blocks her attack and grabs her by the throat.
Shadow throws her across the room, and Natasha crashes into several computer monitors. Shadow notices but has no emotional reaction. They faintly remember training her, but there is no connection, no emotion, no humanity, left in his body. He begins running across the room and down the hall, killing or permanently disabling every agent he comes across. He heads down to where the one he is connected to waits. The mess he has left behind, the lives irrevocably changed, the heroes left shaken behind him, do not even register on his list of things to worry about as the sole desire to fill the orders of the one who activated them occupies every corner of his being.
Zemo is more than a little concerned when he hears the sound of fighting coming from the room beyond the door. He does his best not to show it because he is still being stared down by the super soldier forcefully under his control. The door wrenches open, and Zemo watches in silent amazement as Captain America walks through the door. He glimpses broken bodies in the other room before focusing his full attention on the two men in the room. The Captain is now standing by the Winter Soldier’s side, stance and expression so similar Zemo thinks for a moment that they could be clones other than the fact that one is slightly taller and blond. Zemo doesn’t know what’s going on but decides to ask anyway.
“Mission report, December 16,1991.”
The two men answer completely in sync, words and nearly monotone voices identical. Zemo is more than a little creeped out, but he gets the information he needs. He dismisses them with an order to escape and makes his own escape. He doesn’t specify to escape unnoticed, though perhaps he should have because the lockdown the two trigger makes his own escape much more difficult. Zemo picks his way through the bodies and leaves the building with the mass of panicked people, shedding his jacket on the ground as he goes. The outfit change will be necessary to delay anyone searching for him, and he leaves behind the chaos and possibility of being caught before seeing his plans to fruition with relative ease.
The Winter Soldier and his Shadow climb the stairs to the ground floor. They are in the process of switching from hidden staircases to the public ones across the lobby floor when they are attacked by two agents. They take care of their attackers quickly and permanently, joint mind working to protect themselves while solely focused on the directive to escape. Tony attacks them next with a sonic blast that makes them freeze for a moment. As he approaches them, the two men kick Tony in unison, Bucky in the chest and Steve in the stomach. He flies across the room into a table and stays down on the ground.
Unable to breathe, he watches as first Sharon and then Natasha attack. Both are dealt with quickly; T’Challa saves Natasha’s life by tackling them both to the ground. He is literally thrown off a moment later and slides across the ground. Tony watches in bleary disbelief as the Winter Soldier and Captain America take the stairs two at a time, perfectly in step. He misses most of the rest of the fight but knows that T’Challa lost. By the faint sound of a helicopter he can hear far above him, Tony guesses that they've successfully escaped.
A spot of turbulence shakes the Winter Soldier’s side of the helicopter a little rougher than anticipated. His hand brushes the back of Shadow’s hand as Shadow begins to bring the helicopter back to equilibrium. They black out as the trapped consciousness within them have their chance to fight towards freedom, and the helicopter starts a nosedive towards a nearby river. Steve and Bucky return to themselves a moment before they hit the water. Bucky doesn’t even have time to complete his curse before they hit the water and are unconscious again.
Ross’s spectacularly disastrous day gets slightly better when he hears the helicopter crashed into the river. He sends out nearly all of the remaining agents to fish them out of the river and detain them. He curses at how few men he’s able to send, especially since most of the Avengers have been rendered unable to assist by the super soldiers. The team captures the two men without resistance, the criminals still unconscious from hitting the water from that height.
Ross rushes them towards the maximum security containment facility in the Atlantic Ocean. Anytime the two men look like they might stir, Ross’s agents hit them hard enough in the head to knock them back into unconsciousness. It’s not an approved method of transporting prisoners, but Ross feels no guilt over it. After all, he’s lost almost 30 men to them, men that he will have to send condolence letters for. The Secretary of State raises his eyebrow when he sees the knock-over-the head method but doesn’t comment. He’s been reminded yet again how dangerous Captain America can be and thinks the legendary Winter Soldier is just as dangerous, if not more so.
Steve and Bucky wake up in different cells. There’s at least one cell in between them, maybe two, but the duo isn’t worried. They are still connected, can feel each others’ emotions and hear the others’ thoughts. Steve and Bucky revel in the feeling of being immersed in each other's clear minds as they lie on the stiff beds with their eyes closed. Steve only realized there’s someone in the room with them when that person coughs a little and clears their throat.
“I can tell you’re awake now, both of you. You might as well sit up and face me,” the man says. Steve knows it’s that Secretary of State again without even opening his eyes, the knowledge flitting over their bond and into both of their minds. The two men slowly open their eyes and stand up, stretching but unwilling to remain prone with another in their area.
“What, not going to interrogate us separately?” Steve asks drily.
“No, I’m the one asking the questions here. Why did you crash the helicopter?” the Secretary responded in a clipped voice.
Twin blank looks answered the man’s question.
“A helicopter crash would at least explain how they caught us,” Bucky said as he turned to the wall. Despite the fact that he could neither hear nor see Bucky because of the soundproof glass behind the cell bars, Steve nodded.
“How did you do that?” The Secretary asked, weirded out and angry at the non-answer if his voice was anything to go by.
“What did we do?” Steve asked, completely disregarding the Secretary’s question.
“You tell me. One moment you two are sitting relatively peacefully in what counted as cells for Ross, and the next 27 agents are dead and 14 more are permanently injured.”
Steve and Bucky pale. 41 people? They sit down in shock and horror as that number keeps ringing over their bond.
27 dead, 14 injured, Steve intones.
We need to get this under control, Bucky agrees. Ignoring any further questioning from the Secretary of Defense, Bucky and Steve lay all the way back from their slumped sitting positions as one and began to explore their mindscape. The Secretary eventually just leaves after getting no further response from either man. He does, however, note that they’d done the exact same things at the exact same times with almost no variation.
The officers watching the video feed of the cells page the Secretary and Agent Ross soon after. The two hurry in, wondering if the two soldiers have somehow managed to break out already. All of them watch in shock as blood drips out of the left side of Steve’s nose and the right side of Bucky’s. A team is immediately dispatched to wake the unconscious men and stem the bleeding. Each person in that room is concerned about potential brain damage causing the deaths of the two now infamous men. After all, no one wants them dead before the trial - it could cause a huge public scandal.
The efforts to revive the men from outside the cell are fruitless. Sound isn’t working, not even the fire alarm, and drastic changes in the internal temperature of the cell produce no result either. The bleeding seems to have slowed and is only trickling now, so Agent Ross doesn’t give the order for the medical teams to enter the cell. He figures that with the serum giving the two fast healing, nothing not instantly fatal could truly injure them as long as they were given enough time to recover.
A tense hour later, the two men wake up. Though they can’t see each other, Steve looks right as Bucky looks left, and they share a pained smile. They get up, wash the dried blood off of their faces, and begin to work out. The Secretary takes a small amount of comfort in the fact that the two are using different exercises. Steve and Bucky work out for most of the rest of the day, seemingly having competitions on the number of push-ups and sit-ups achieved after lunch and dinner breaks if the celebratory trash talk is anything to go by. Those watching the monitors count the number of sit-ups and pushups and silently vow to never get into a competition with the two while they each try to restrain their laughter at the trash talk and the exaggerated reactions it causes; the sheer speed and numbers the two manage before the time limits they agree on are staggering.
The two are rather shocked by the large amount of food they receive. After all, they grew up during the Great Depression and never had enough to eat. The man, a certified nutritionist doing his best to stay calm and collected in the face of two of his childhood heroes in the flesh and in prison , that came with the prison guard to deliver lunch explains that they needed four times the amount of calories usually needed by men of their height, weight, and muscle mass due to the serum when they look at him in shock at the plate of food first handed to them. The nutritionist stays to see them eat their food to ensure that they aren’t somehow allergic to anything presented to them. The man has obviously tried to make a good meal, but he looks conflicted over serving men in prison.
This pattern continues for seven weeks. Steve and Bucky wake up around six in the morning and immediately appear to go back to sleep for around an hour before getting out of bed to work out. They nearly always bleed out of the nose, giving the guards extra work in changing the sheets. The guards only come into the cell with guns drawn and ready to be fired, but the bloody sheets are changed each day, as none of the higher-ups want the two complaining about living conditions at their trial. Steve and Bucky also manage to fill out even more due to the near constant working out and proper nutrition under the surveillance of their food specialist. Any attempt at questioning made by any of the prison staff, including the nutritionist despite the somewhat easy rapport they have with him, is thoroughly and completely ignored.
On the fifth day of the seventh week, Steve and Bucky bleed out of both nostrils. There is more blood than usual, and medical experts are on standby.
On the sixth day of the seventh week, Steve bleeds out of his left ear, as Bucky bleeds out of his right ear. The nosebleed is gone, but medical professionals are more concerned with the bleeding out of the ears than they ever were about the bleeding from the nose.
On the seventh day of the seventh week, Bucky and Steve bleed out of both nostrils and ears. The hour mark comes and goes, and the personnel on duty become more and more concerned when all drastic measures taken to wake the two fail. Nearly three hours later beyond the regular length of the forced sleep, the men gasp, sit up in unison, and get out of bed. They take the small extra blanket on the end of the bed with them as they get up to use as a pillow. The men sleep, truly sleep, for the rest of the day and night as their minds process the removal of the final dark roots of Hydra’s control and the return of the last forcibly suppressed memories. Neither man can be so easily controlled again, not after spending so long forcibly removing dark feelers by forcibly getting to know every single atom of their mindscapes.
On the first day of the eighth week, the entire prison is thrown into a state of panic at 6:53:04 in the morning as Steve and Bucky are found missing. Two pink diamonds are the only remnant, one sitting on the clean sheets of each pristinely made bed. A seemingly random glitch, not too unusual, in the videos of each cell from 6:52:58 to 6:53:01 is the only other clue left behind. Tony laughs when he hears about the diamonds and regrets showing Steve the Pink Panther soundtrack and movie. It’s not quite bright enough to cover his obvious worry.
Harry
Harry’s in his crib, silent sobs wracking his body. He knows his life is over - his mother is dead - even though there’s still breath in his body and blood pumping through his veins. His mother’s killer is sprawled out on the floor next to her, the shell empty of life. Harry knows that creature isn’t dead despite its outward appearance. He watched the soul fragment leave the body, is aware of the small fragment of soul that embedded itself into his head when he was at his weakest. Harry watches rather dispassionately as a dark man with that creature’s essence on him rushes into the room and scoops up his mother. The man cries, great heaving sobs, and Harry wonders why the man bothers. After all, everything is different, nothing will ever be the same, his mother is dead. There is no way for the situation to recover. Another man comes in shortly after the first man leaves, a tall man with long brown hair and a mid-length tangled beard. Harry doesn’t protest as the man lifts him out of his crib and takes him away. His final view of his mother is of her dead green eyes. Harry faintly enjoys flying on the motorbike ride for just a few minutes before he allows sleep to claim him.
A year has passed, and Harry is falling more and more to the wayside of Petunia’s affections. He will survive, of that he has no doubt, but he no longer knows in what condition he will be in. He’s first put into the cupboard six months after his second birthday. He is silent, as he usually is, about it. There’s nothing he can do that he won’t get in trouble for, and Harry doesn’t really care.
When he’s three, Petunia slowly stops remembering to feed him. Four months later, when he’s weak and desperate for food, Harry toddles out of his crib and goes to ask Petunia for food, one of the few times he’s used his voice since that dreadful night that lingers in his memory and dreams. The look of hate and revulsion that crosses her face at the sight of him is becoming more and more familiar. She tells him he has to work for his food now. When he points out that Dudley does not have to, Harry is slapped for the first time and sent back to the cupboard. He is deliberately starved for the next week. His magic, which he is fully aware of even if he suppresses it to lessen the sour look on his relatives’ faces, keeps him alive somehow, and he gets to work once Petunia finally lets him out of the cupboard. He toddles around doing household chores. He quickly learns to not make mistakes.
On his fourth birthday, Vernon gives him work to do. This is the first time this has occurred, but Harry has already learned the futility of resisting. He does as he is told. When the task is not done to the man’s satisfaction, the man hits him. Vernon hits harder than Petunia, so Harry works harder and tries to keep his head even further down. He learns not to show how smart he is in pre-school either.
Soon after his fifth birthday, neighbors move in across the street into Number 5 Privet Drive. Harry notices this only because he’s weeding the garden again, and they’re making a bit of a ruckus. He runs into the house immediately after he finishes because his aunt doesn’t like the neighbors to see him or acknowledge his existence. Petunia hits him and tells him very firmly that he is to never speak to or even see their new neighbors - both men, and in this neighborhood! If they infect Harry with their brand of freakishness, it might get to her precious Dudders - if he can at all help it. Harry nods in acceptance and begins to vacuum the floor. He’s not supposed to talk to any of the neighbors.
Steve and Bucky
Steve and Bucky apparate out of their cells at 6:52:59 in the morning and find themselves high in the air over the Atlantic Ocean. As they begin to freefall, Steve pulls Bucky close to him and grabs his forearms. He lends Bucky enough of his power to get them safely to England. Neither of them have needed their wands since being experimented on, though he highly doubts that was an expected side effect from the non-majs experimenting on them. Bucky lands them in the drawing room of an old friend of theirs, Abraxus Malfoy. The two have high hopes that the man is still alive; wizards live much longer than regular humans do, so he might still be relatively young even though almost all of their unmagical friends. A shocked house elf appears in the room a moment later and asks their purpose in being there.
“We’re here to see Lord Malfoy,” Steve answers.
“And who might you be, sirs?” Dobby asks.
“We are old friends of his,” Bucky responds, a rather good non-answer for the impossible situation.
“Stay here and do not wander,” Dobby admonishes. He’s gone for several minutes, and Steve and Bucky assume that he’s telling the Lord Malfoy of his guests.