vodka
Five years after being kidnapped, you finally feel like you have a purpose again.
You now spend more time in your lab than in your room; and you don’t have to worry about looking after a team, which you never knew you would enjoy so much.
You feel reenergized, feel like there’s more to each day than just longing for the future to come faster (of course, you still have plans of escape and miss your loved ones, though).
You know his arm more than you know your own body.
The routine continued; today being no different. It’s a sunny spring day at the complex, the warm sun filtering in through the reinforced window of your room. You step out of bed and throw on a pair of jeans and a dark red, chunky-knit sweater, along with a pair of black ankle boots that have quickly become your favorites over the last few weeks. Thank god some of the girls who work in this place have a sense of style. Reaching into your small side table, you pull out your knives and holster. You place the straps around your waist and thigh like it’s a second nature to you; and honestly, since this little piece of your past- of yourself- has been back, the thought of escaping is no longer hidden away in the back of your mind. Every single time you walk by a door, you have to immediately shake the thought, the instinct, the need, away. “Long game,” you tell yourself each time.
You check your knives individually before sliding their sheaths onto the leather straps around your thigh. You head out your door and down the hall to the kitchen, giving slight smiles to the groups or individuals you pass on the way there, a habit you have gotten into to further try and convince HYDRA that you aren’t a threat, that you’re comfortable here.
You’re pouring the coffee into your mug when a voice calls out your name from behind you.
You shoot a glance over your shoulder, turning with the coffee pot still in your hand, when you realize it’s a female agent you’ve gotten to know a bit during your time here.
“Hey! What’s up?” You respond, catching a glimpse of the pot in your hand and shifting to place it back on the burner.
“Soldat is back from a mission, he has slight damages today. Maybe needs some welding, but not much.” Her kind voice passes across the room as she motions down the hall to the elevator. She speaks English well, but her Russian accent is still heavy on her tongue- not that you mind, though, you’ve grown obsessed with the accent and could listen to it all day.
You’ve also learned in the recent weeks that the Asset is part of what HYDRA calls “The Winter Soldier Program” The one where they’re trying to make super-soldier-mass-murderers. The one where he is the original “Winter Soldier.” The original super-soldier-mass-murderer. And because of this, he is sometimes called the Asset, sometimes called Солдат, which sounds like “Soldat'' in English.
“Oh! Okay, is he ready for me now?” You ask while bringing the mug up to your mouth, blowing a light stream of air over the steaming mug.
“Yes. They have him in the lab.” She returns, smiling as she rounds on her heel and begins heading down the hall.
You quickly finish the sip you are in the middle of taking and then gather the files up that you were going to look at over breakfast, heading towards the hall to try and catch up with the woman. Thankfully, she is standing in front of the elevator when you get there, shuffling the files around in your arms, trying not to drop them. She reaches out and takes them from you, straightening them and handing them back before pressing the button. You give her a smile and a nod before the bell rings and you both step in.
When it’s time to check into the lab, at least one HYDRA agent has to unlock the door and witness you actually going in, and they observe you until you reach the middle of the lab where his chair is. You really don’t know why they do this, but you tell yourself it’s just so that they know you aren’t running off before you do your job.
She drops you off at the door to the lab and steps into the viewing bay through the other door. You make your way through the small corridor and down the stairs, stopping at the last stair to finish off your coffee. You step onto the lab floor, he looks up, you walk over to the tables in the center of the lab surrounding the chair and place your now-empty cup onto one of them, along with your files.
A habit of smiling at him as you make your approach has also made an appearance recently. You know he doesn’t acknowledge the smile; you don’t even know if he sees it, but it makes you feel nice because you see how everyone else treats him. You hope that maybe he does see the smile and can register it inside his rewired brain and somehow be able to know that you’re here to help him, not hurt him.
When you’ve made it to the chair, you shoot a glance up to the bay window and see the agent give you a grin and a nod, leaving now that she knows you’ve made it to your workspace.
You find in your quick overview of the arm that she was correct; the damage to the arm is minimal, just a couple of plates shifted out of where they should be, and some deep scratches that need to be buffed out and polished.
You switch on the small radio you had managed to include as part of your conditions to work with the Soldier, you gather a few tools and instruments, and you pull up a chair. You’ll be done within an hour.
About twenty-five minutes in, you’re just finishing up getting the plates back into their connective joints when you hear the door to the lab open, then shut, and a voice say that he has some papers for you to look over.
“I’ll be up in a moment!” You shout over to the stairs, sliding the last panel into place with a light ‘click,’ giving the arm a once-over before taking off your glasses, sliding your chair back, and standing.
Then everything is suddenly in slow-motion.
By the time your weight settles on both of your feet and your gaze falls on the stairs, the person bringing you the papers is already at the last stair step. You don’t recognize him- you figure he must be new and have paper-running duty. He looks young, probably just a new intern.
His left foot touches the lab floor first, then his right.
You feel a light touch on your thigh.
Before you can even turn to assess the feeling, the young man has collapsed on the floor, no more than two feet from where the final step meets the floor.
Shocked, confused, you run towards him- a shimmer of dark metal reflecting from his chest when the light hits it as you cross the floor.
You reach the man, eyes immediately falling to his unmoving chest. A blade is buried deep in the dead-center of his torso, as if his sternum was the bullseye of a target.
You check for a pulse, you talk to him, hoping for any sort of response.
But no response comes.
Awestruck, you avert your eyes back to the blade that-
Wait.
Wait?
The light touch on your leg, the dark, almost-black metal protruding from the dead man’s chest-
Your hand is on your thigh within a split second, feeling for and finding an open space in your holster.
Your eyes move from the knife in his chest to where your hand is now resting, and you’re pretty sure that your jaw has reached the earth’s core with just how far it’s dropped.
It’s your knife. The knife in this man’s chest, it’s your throwing knife.
You stand so quickly that you almost make yourself lightheaded, and face the Soldier.
His left arm is no longer on the armrest where you had placed it back down. Instead, the metal hand has a grip on said armrest so tight that it has broken through the thin leather fabric covering the chair. The grip is so tight that it has bent the metal within the armrest.
Eyes darting between the dead man on the floor, the super soldier in the chair, the knife in the chest, and the bent armrest, you take in the scene as the moment replays in your head probably fifty times a minute.
You finally manage to get your shit together and draw yourself out of the shock-induced trance, and make your way over to the phone hung on the wall. You search through the names on the small list of line extensions taped up next to it and manage to dial the extension written down for Rumlow’s office.
Apparently, you are able to get the point across through your jumbled mess of “knife,” “Soldier,” “boy,” “paper,” and “dead,” because within minutes you hear voices calling you up the stairs.
You reach Rumlow and the six, armed men in the corridor atop the stairs and try to tell the story more clearly.
“You need to get the restraints on him, we can’t risk going down to get the kid unless he’s restrained.” He sighs out, gesturing numbly down the stairs.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t even know what buttons to push? God, look at the fucking left armrest! Do you really think that restraint is going to work when the fucking thing is crushed?” You frantically offer back, pointing down to where the Soldier sits, hand still gripped tightly around the metal.
Then you take a moment to re-think what you just said? Why are you not scared? Did you really just talk about the restraints not working when this guy just murdered someone in front of you using your own knife?
You get drawn out of your conflicting thoughts by Rumlow offering “Damn. Well. You’re just going to have to finish up whatever you need to do to the arm and then get him into cryo. We’ll come grab the kid and get it all cleaned up, get the chair fixed too, once he’s back in the freezer.”
“How are you being so calm about this?? A man is dead down there.” You reply, concerned with his casual tone.
“Anderson, I told you, he doesn’t like it when there’s anyone else in the room unless they’re working on the arm.” With that, he motions for the men to leave and motions to the stairs, letting you know he was really serious about you finishing the arm with a dead body in the room.
After pressing the button to close the chamber door and checking the temperature settings one more time, you make your way back to the lab. Rumlow and his team are already there, a couple of the men zipping up the body back when you descend the steps.
You clear your throat, and he turns his attention to you from the man fixing the chair arm.
“Sorry about that, sometimes he can be a bit erratic when it comes to fresh faces, especially in the lab.” He states. “Someone must not have told the kid about the rules to stay up in the hall when you’re in here working with him. I’ll make sure to reiterate that to everyone at the next meeting.”
You’d never even noticed that no one came in the lab if they needed you. They always stayed out of sight at the top of the stairs, or you met them in the viewing bay. You simply thought it was because they were in a hurry or that they were just using their power over you to make you climb all the way up those steep-ass steps. How the hell did you not put two and two together?
You are dragged out of your thoughts again by one of the men approaching Rumlow and yourself. In his outstretched hand sat your knife; blood still tainting the blade.
Rumlow lets out a breathy chuckle when taking the knife from the man’s hand. He runs the sides of the blade along his pants, then lifts and inspects the knife, seemingly to make sure that no trace of blood was left. He then extends the handle end towards you, your eyes wide and in a state of shock for the 182,746th time today.
You hesitate before reaching up and grasping the handle, still looking at him with utter disbelief while holding the blade as far as possible from your body.
Him and all of his men walk to the stairs, two of them effortlessly lifting the body bag, walking up, and disappearing from view.
Alone in the lab, you’re unsure of how long you spend just standing there with your arm extended. Thinking.
Maybe they watch you until you reach him so that they know he won’t kill you that day.
You place the blade on a table in front of you when a cramp in your wrist forces you to move.
Massaging the wrist, you stare at the knife as if it betrayed you, like it was someone you used to love but now you don’t even know who they are. You decide to rush over to the medical cabinet in the corner of the lab, grabbing some isopropyl alcohol and cotton balls.
You scrub every millimeter of surface area on the knife with the alcohol until your fingers burn to the point where you can’t stand it anymore.
With as much conviction as you can muster, you slowly slide the throwing knife back into the empty space on your thigh. A shudder runs through your body, but you shake it off as best as you can, deciding to leave the lab to try and forget about the events of the day.
As the lab door shuts behind you, you don’t look back as you walk to the elevator, then to the kitchen, then back to your room with a bottle of liquor in hand. You aren’t one for drinking much anymore, not after you nearly killed yourself the first time you drank some of the alcohol that they kept in the compound, but you figure tonight, you could more than welcome the magical properties of alcohol that sometimes erase entire nights from memory.
Thank fuck for Russian vodka.