Jasper Sitwell is not stupid.
He is one of SHIELD’s best scientists, he commanded the computers of the Helicarrier, he’s collected and cool in the field and one of the best damn patsy acts the intelligence community has ever seen. He is not stupid.
He has to remind himself of that, sometimes.
He is not stupid, but the person he plays can be, the bumbling enemy agent, a threat but not too much of one, and when you are undercover like that for so long...when you are undercover like that for so long, you have to become your part, and sometimes it’s hard to get out of his head, to remind himself that he’s more than this, more than his mission. He has a list of successes he repeats over and over again, a mantra made out of pure desperation, something to hold onto. Item 47, Birmingham, Volgograd, Ontario, Tegucigalpa...
One of these days, he knows it won’t work.
One of these days, he knows it won’t work, but until then, he has to try. He’s sacrificed too much for this mission to back out now, killed too many little parts of himself, little parts of his heart.
The first time Jasper ever said Hail Hydra, he felt a piece of him die. He called his mama that night, apologized over and over and over again into the phone, barely fighting back tears, barely able to stop himself from spilling his guts and telling her everything. Agent Sitwell is unflinching, but Jas? Jas needs to be able to look his mama in the eyes. If he saves the world but breaks her heart, he’s not entirely sure that it will be worth it.
You ever go home for Christmas and look around the room at your family and know that the men you clap on the back and force yourself to call brother want every single one of them dead or under them? You ever know exactly what you’re fighting for? You ever feel a cold, cruel, protective, ruthless need in the pit of your stomach, gazing at the people you love and remembering how it felt to plan to take everything from them?
No. No, you don’t. No, you haven’t.
Jasper has.
Jasper has, and he is going to have to live with that. He is going to have to force his heart to keep up its steady one two one two beat. There is so much riding on him. There is the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. Humans weren’t made to be Atlas, weren’t made to be holy, weren’t made to carry eternities of agonies. But God, Jasper is going to try. God, he has to try.
He just hopes that there’s some way this ends well. Some way that this ends happily. Some way that he gets out alive and hugs his little sister (she’s on Hydra’s fucking list she’s on their fucking list Insight wants his baby Josie dead) and kisses his mama’s forehead and maybe takes Nick’s hand - thinking about Director Fury like that is unprofessional. He leaves it out of his official reports to both sides.
Both sides.
The layers and layers of lies get too easy sometimes. He almost forgets who he’s supposed to be double crossing. There’s a time when he smiles at Rumlow and it doesn’t feel like poison seeping into his veins, and that night he goes to his apartment and slams his fist through the bathroom mirror, breaks and bleeds and bleeds and breaks until he remembers who the bad guys are, please he needs to remember who the bad guys are.
He pulls the glass out of his fist piece by piece, slowly and with as little mercy as he can manage. The TV blares in the living room, one of his mama’s favorite telenovelas ringing distantly in his ears, but Jasper just sits there, glass still digging into his skin, nails still stained dark red. He just sits there.
Some nights, that’s the best he can do. Just sit there, and try to hold on.
Item 47, Birmingham, Volgograd, Ontario, Tegucigalpa…
He gently wraps up the cuts, washes away the blood, and makes himself dinner with shaking hands, tries not to spill hot water on himself. He barely even flinches at the burn of it. Every movement when he cleans is slow, methodical. Robotic.
He’s not sure if it’s worse when he’s stuck in his head, or when he can’t get into it. When he can’t feel anything, despite trying to.
Either way, on his worst days, being Jasper Sitwell is a special kind of hell.
He’s not sure what he did to deserve it. He’s not sure he wants to know what he did to deserve it.
But not every day is one of his worst days. Maybe most of them are, but not every day. He has to remember that. He has to make himself remember that. Because he has work to do. He has a mission, people are depending on him. And he can’t help anybody if he’s bleeding out in his own home, unfeeling. He can’t help anybody, and he needs to help all of them.
That’s why he’d agreed to do this, after all. To help. To save. Though God knows he couldn’t deny the Director anything, not even this. He sometimes wonders why Director Fury chose him, out of everybody. He could have asked Hill or Romanoff - but he chose Jasper. Hill and Romanoff aren’t expendable, after all. Jasper is. Patsies are meant to be.
He’s not sure when he started considering himself expendable. He’s even less sure how to stop.
It’s okay, though. It’s okay. It’ll all be over soon, and then he can go back to the way he used to be. He’ll take Josie to their ice cream place, a block away from the house they grew up in, and she’ll tell him about her work and her girlfriend and he’ll smile. He’ll bring his mama flowers, visit her in her always-full home, and she’ll laugh and fuss over him and he’ll smile. Maybe he’ll even ask out Nick. Maybe. But that’s a dream for another time.
Natasha Romanoff kicks him off of a fucking roof, and as Jasper falls he wonders how far he is willing to go to keep this triple agent act up, faced with the Black Widow and Captain America and their friend with the metal wings. He thinks of his family, and keeps his goddamn mouth shut.
Even with the Winter Soldier in pursuit. Even then.
Jasper hits the unforgiving concrete hard, hears the truck racing towards him, and he doesn’t beg. He doesn’t shout a last ditch plea out to the Captain, doesn’t use his last breaths to tell the world where his loyalties lie, where they always have. With the good guys. With SHIELD. With Nick.
Instead, he closes his eyes, and he remembers his sister, he remembers Josie’s name on Insight’s list, and he hopes he did enough.
(This is why Nick chose him. This is exactly why Nick chose him. Jasper is anxious and thinks too little of himself and doesn’t have Hill or Romanoff’s track record, but he is loyal. He is devoted to a fault, loving to the ends of the earth. He is never cruel, he is painfully human. He always, always does his best. And Jasper Sitwell is not stupid.)
(Distantly, as Jasper’s coffin is lowered into the ground, Nick realizes he is going to have to start thinking of him in the past tense. That hurts more than he’s willing to admit it does.)