sinatra
You can’t sleep. Not that you expected to or anything, not after that whole “the Soldier is a real person and yeah you never doubted that but you never thought that he actually still had human emotions and feelings and is fucking capable of expressing them” thing. God, and he’s in pain, physically and emotionally. After starting to take deeper looks into the damage last night, it was clear that you need to do more than just replace the broken parts.
You need to find out who he is.
You need to make the arm stronger.
When you get to your lab at seven that morning, the door to the viewing bay is open. Rumlow is standing at the window, so you take the opportunity of him being alone to see if you can find out any little bit of information about who the Asset was- is.
You walk up next to him, watching as the men bring him into the lab and get him into the chair.
“I need more materials. I’m going to have to remake nearly the whole arm, and if he’s going to get into situations like this, it needs to be reinforced.”
He lets out a chuckle, saying “This mission went a little haywire. It was supposed to be an easy in-and-out job, but we were attacked unexpectedly. None of our guys saw it coming, they were ambushed and he was nearly taken out. That’s not something that happens too often.”
“I don’t care how often it happens, this is serious damage,” you say, motioning down to the lab, to the arm that’s nearly in pieces. “It’s not going to be an easy fix, and if it does happen again, it’ll be ten times harder to put it back together.”
“How much do you need?”
“A lot. The whole arm plus the new parts I’ll add to make it more durable.”
He lets out a heavy sigh “I don’t know if there’s that much titanium just laying around. I’ll have to see what I can do.”
After a beat, you find the courage to ask “Who was he? Like, before. How is he strong enough to handle all of this?”
“What do you mean?” Rumlow questions.
“Before. Before he was ‘The Winter Soldier.’ It’s not like he was always this way. Who was he?” You hope you sound sincere enough that you don’t alarm him.
“He was brought to HYDRA during World War II. The rest is classified. No one knows what would happen if any of his old memories are brought up and triggered, so we don’t talk about it. Why?”
“I don’t know, I think seeing him bleed so much yesterday made me remember he’s actually a human. I’ve never really thought about it and it caught me off guard a little. Just thought I should ask so I didn’t feel guilty about it.” You chuckle and walk out the door. “Can you unlock for me?”
A look of confusion and concern crosses his face, but it passes within a split second. He swipes his keycard and you enter the lab, passing his men as they come up the stairs and you go down.
The lab is a total wreck. Tools and random pieces of metal are scattered about, some on tables and some on the floor. You decide to straighten everything up a bit before working on trying to fix the arm anymore, so you turn on the radio and start skimming through the stations.
You settle on one, humming and swaying along to the music as you try to find a good place within your wreck of a lab to start picking things up. Occasionally you get lucky and are able to find a station with music in English, and today happens to be one of those days. Not that you have anything against Russian music, you’ve actually really grown to like it, but sometimes you miss the hell out of your Frank Sinatra records.
Hannah and you would always spend countless hours in Brooklyn record stores. Depending on what the two of your found that day, you’d scream and jump to the songs as you listened for the first time, or you’d slow dance with each other in the living room, or you’d sit on the couch together and cry while eating ice cream. Once or twice you found some big band records, and Hannah gave you hell for the money you spent on them, but you wanted nothing more than to teach her how to swing dance. Your dad taught you when you were young, having you stand on his feet to show you the basic steps, having you hold on tight as he dipped or spun you around to the beats. For your eighteenth birthday, he took you to a jazz club and you danced all night with him, reliving just how good those nights were when you were little.
One day, after nagging for hours (and promising to do the dishes for a week), you were able to convince her to give it a try. You attempted to teach her the steps, carefully tried to execute a few spins, but all the effort just ended up with you both lying in a heap on the floor, unable to control your breathless laughter.
Shit, you miss dancing. You miss Hannah. You miss your dog. She may have been a tiny stray mutt you found in the middle of an alley on the way back from a class, but she gave the best cuddles in the world. You’d named her Leia, after your favorite character from the new Star Wars series that had been coming out. Hannah gave you hell for that too, telling you that you “can’t bring random strays in off the street just because they look sad and cute,” but you disagreed. She warmed up to Leia pretty quickly though after the puppy started to sneak in her room at night and curl up on the pillow next to her. Ugh, and then there’s the pillows.
The pillows they give you here are so soft. Way too soft. You hate insanely fluffy pillows and marshmallow-soft beds, they hurt your back too much. Your bed back home was so firm and all your friends who ever stayed the night at your apartment had something to say about it. When you were first brought to HYDRA, you were sleeping on the floor in your tiny basement cell, and your back was happy about it. Aside from being awoken by getting kicked in the ribs every morning, you woke up with your body feeling aligned and refreshed. When they moved you into a proper room after a while, you were given a metal cot for a bed, and they offered something that resembled a piece of foam to put on it as a cushion, but you declined. Sleeping on the metal every night kept your body cool and your spine aligned, so you at least can’t complain about your sleeping arrangements.
Although, you do miss the noisy nightlife of Brooklyn. It’s so peaceful and serene here, locked away from society and outside life, and it took you months to be able to get used to sleeping in the quiet. At your old apartment, you were lulled to sleep by your next-door neighbors fighting; Charlene always yelling “Harold, you didn’t have to kill the guy, I coulda just fucked him for the money,” car horns blaring, pounding music, and the frequent police sirens.
Where was the Soldier from? Clearly somewhere in New York. Brooklyn accent, has to be. Queens? Shit, he must have had such a hard time adjusting to the quiet too when he first got here. If he was brought here during WWII, maybe he was a soldier anyway? Was sent to Russia on assignment? Your dad had fought in the war, maybe they were in the same infantry and you’d seen a picture or two of their crew together, maybe that’s why he looks familiar. You need his file. But how can you get it? If it’s classified, it’s bound to be locked away somewhere in a vault, and it’s not like you have access to anywhere aside from your lab, and the file sure as hell isn’t in here.
You need to convince someone to either get it for you, or take you to get it yourself, which is probably going to be harder than fixing this stupid arm. It won’t be someone with seniority, they’ll be too hard for you to take down on your own. It’ll have to be someone new, someone naïve and with less experience, someone with something to lose. You’ll keep your eyes peeled.
The lab is somewhat put back together in about an hour, which means it’s time to really get to work. Grabbing some plates that you had shaped and welded the day before, you head to your rolling cart by the Asset and place them alongside the tools and small iron. Just as you’re about to start, though, your name is called and you’re drawn up the stairs by Rumlow’s voice.
“Yes?” You say, stepping out into the hall after him. His men are with him, but there’s a new one standing among them. Young . Has the universe been listening in on your thoughts?
“Who’s this cutie?” You ask, shooting the young man, probably about 22, a glance and a smile. Rumlow rolls his eyes as he starts speaking, saying “New kid, Jordan. Jordan, Anderson. Anderson, Jordan. It’s his first day so he’ll be following me around for a while.”
“Nice to meet you Jordan.” You send him one last smile- which he returns- before turning your attention to Rumlow. “What do you need?”
“Well, the higher-ups are pretty tired of you dragging away agents to let you into your lab, so they’re giving you a key card.” At your wide-eyed, then furrowed-brow response, he quickly shakes his head before adding onto his statement; “Correction, they’re giving you a key card to the lab . It’ll only work to get you in here. You’ll still need someone to get into the freezer room, but this’ll lessen you having to pull us away.” He outstretches a hand with a plain white card, lanyard attached. “Give it a try.”
You take the card, holding and staring at it in awe for a bit. You shift your body around to face the door and key swipe, lifting it and nearly bursting out into a fit of laughter as the door beeps and the light flashes green.
“I also found you some more metal. It’s not titanium, and it’s a little heavier, but it’s something. I can get it in your lab by the morning.” He chimes in.
You send him an endearing smile, thank him, and head into the lab to start working on plans for the new, reinforced arm.
Over the next two weeks you spend about ten hours every day in the lab, every single day. You also decide that you’ll use Jordan as your in to get the Soldier’s file, so you keep a close tab on him too.
The metal Rumlow found for you is a durable, hardened steel that has a gold tint to it. You know that it is stronger than the titanium, so you use it as the arm’s reinforcing metal; the gold sheen showing through in the spots where the silver titanium plates meet and allow for movement.
Enough of the old titanium is still usable, so with that and the other titanium you were able to round up from the lab, the outer plates of the arm remain silver. Although, the shoulder plate- the one with the star- is so damaged that it needs to be fully replaced. When it comes time to put the new one on, you don’t put another red star on the arm, and no one seems to notice.
You were sure that with spending so much time with the Asset, another incident where you would see the real him would happen. But it never does.
It’s odd; the connection you seem to have with him. When his eyes don’t meet yours again after that first night, your heart falls a bit. When the arm is finally finished and you haven’t seen any more of him, you can’t help but feel defeated; like something is missing, like you aren’t done just yet.