Chapter 1
It’s the quiet, rhythmic beeping that ends up pulling him into wakefulness. Something in his head tells him not to open his eyes, though, so he stays still and listens to the world around him for several minutes.
Heart monitor. Pressure around the tip of his right index finger. Soft, warm clothes and blankets. No one else in the room moving or breathing. Faint chemical smell: antiseptic. Muffled noise from outside the room; a cart rolls past, and voices fade away with the sound of the wheels on tile.
Hospital.
He tries to lift his hand, and something tugs at his wrist. A twist of his hand tells him there’s a padded cuff fastened around it, and pulling it towards him makes it pretty clear he’s strapped down to rails on either side of the bed. The other wrist and both ankles get the same result. He can’t help the slight spike in his heart rate, revealed in faster beeps from the monitor to his left.
He opens his eyes when the door latch clicks, just in time to see a tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired man in a military uniform step through. The nameplate above the man’s right breast pocket spells out ROGERS, and captain’s bars decorate his shoulders. Rogers looks at him, grits his teeth, and looks away.
“You’re awake,” Rogers says, and it’s not clear whether he’s happy about it or not.
“Guess so.” He swallows; his throat is dry and his voice feels rough and rusty.
Standing at the end of the hospital bed, Rogers crosses his arms and looks at the blankets. “Congress is raising hell right now, trying to get you and what’s left of your men sent to the Raft. I have more than half a mind to let them.”
His men? Congress? Raft sends a chill through him that he doesn’t have the context to understand. He makes a confused, quiet noise; Rogers looks up at him in concern.
“How much do you remember?”
There’s an alarmingly blank space where he’s pretty sure his memory should be. The confusion and panic must show on his face, because Rogers’ expression softens.
“Do you remember anything?”
His eyes start to burn as he shakes his head.
Rogers wraps his hands around the rail at the end of the bed and leans on it. “You had a severe concussion about a week ago, and they’ve been keeping you sedated since Search and Rescue found you. The neurologist that checked you out said memory loss was a possibility.”
Oh. “Is it permanent?”
Rogers looks up at him with an odd look, almost pained. “We don’t know yet.”
He looks up at the ceiling as it blurs, and swallows. “Why am I restrained?”
“There was… a fight.”
That still draws a blank, and he shakes his head a little.
“Give it some time,” Rogers says quietly. “You’ll get a lawyer and a trial by jury. Hospital won’t release you to the feds until you’re healed up enough.” There’s an awkward pause, then Rogers turns to leave. Before he opens the door, he pauses and takes a breath. “For what it’s worth, it’s good to see you, Jack.”
Jack. That must be his name. He swallows again and closes his eyes. The door clicks shut behind Rogers, and he’s left alone.
The next week is a flurry of doctors, exams, staring at the pockmarked ceiling tiles to find the repeating pattern, splitting headaches, nausea, and medications.
He tries to ask the doctors what each pill and injection is for, but his tongue feels heavy in his mouth and he can’t focus on the words long enough to string them together.
Week two sees him transferred to a prison detainment facility, where he’s given his own private room and only allowed to talk to his lawyer and his psychologist. The headaches continue even if the fuzziness starts to fade, and Jack can’t help but feel a yawning chasm inside his head where… something is supposed to be.
The armchair in the psychologist’s office is comfortable, thankfully. Even though he’s been ‘impressively nonviolent’ during his stay at the detainment facility, they apparently think he’s still enough of a threat to warrant restraints. Jack picks apart the patterns in the worn carpet with his eyes rather than look up at the petite woman sitting across from him.
“How’s your head today, Jack?”
It’s taken them a few sessions, but she’s finally stopped referring to him by his rank.
“Had another headache,” he admits, voice quiet and rough, fingertips plucking at the fraying seam on the armrest of his chair. “Another dream. Soldiers without faces. One of them had black hair.”
“Any memories?” Her eyes flick down to the edges of the intricate white tattoos peeking out from under his shirtsleeves.
Jack shakes his head without looking up at her. Even if he did remember why his body is covered in markings from his neck to his wrists and ankles, something tells him he should keep it a secret. And he knows the psychologist doesn’t have the skill or temperament to convince him to talk.
Phantom pains ripple through Jack’s shoulders, the afterimages of electric shocks. His neck stiffens and he shudders, turning his head to the side as he closes his eyes.
“Jack?”
He takes a deep breath in through his nose, then exhales. Once he’s able to push the sensations away enough to focus again, he forces his shoulders to relax. Maybe if he can just keep breathing, the ache at the base of his skull won’t spread. “File says I was some sort of soldier, right?”
The psychologist tilts her head. “You tell me.”
“Why else would I know what torture feels like?” he grits out before a migraine slams into him with the force of a freight train.
He wakes up on his side on a bed in the sick bay, wrists secured to the rail in front of him. The doctor sitting at his desk on the other side of the room glances up when Jack groans.
“Welcome back,” the doctor says as he sets his crosswords down, stands and walks over. “Scale of one to-”
“Six.” Jack endures the searing pain of the penlight flashing over his eyes and tries not to flinch away from cold latex gloves against his pulse point. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Not sure which direction gravity’s pulling in, though.”
“Wish I had something that could help, man.” A gentle pat on the shoulder is followed by footsteps back across the room, then a rustle of paper as the doctor picks up the puzzle book. “Seven letters, ‘Left a military formation.’ First one’s an F.”
“Fell out,” Jack rasps, and presses his aching forehead to his upper arm. A soldier, indeed. He’s not sure he wants to know what kind, given the few fragments he has.
The other inmates detainees turn to look at him the first time he’s escorted out to the exercise yard. The sunlight makes his head pound as he squints, bringing one hand up to shield his eyes while the other dangles from the other end of his handcuffs. It’s decidedly brisk outside and he knows if he doesn’t get his heart rate up soon, he’s going to be shivering in the late February air.
Jack nods towards one of the empty treadmills and walks over with a guard at his side. He sits down at the nearby bench, takes the running shoes he’s given, and swaps them out for the canvas slip-ons he was issued with his uniform. A quick glance up and a shake of the wrist has him sigh as he’s told the cuffs are staying on.
It’s not too difficult to figure out how the settings work on the treadmill, and he’s soon jogging at a decent pace. The chain between his wrists jangles quietly with each step, but it’s nice to be able to move again. As his heart rate rises, his head clears, and the world narrows down to the track under his feet, the display in front of him, and the sound of his own breathing.
The tablets in the little white paper cup rattle quietly as Jack takes his prescriptions from the doctor. He takes the glass of water in his other hand, downs the pills, and lets the doctor check his mouth to make sure he didn’t stuff any of them in his cheeks.
Once that’s done, he’s handed a cafeteria tray and shuffled on down the line.
“That’s a lot of pills,” the guy behind him comments as they’re handed bowls of oatmeal.
Jack’s eyes ache in the flat fluorescent light in the cafeteria. He can’t rub his forehead and keep his hands on his tray at the same time. “Just wish they helped more.”
Fifteen days after he’s transferred into the detainment facility, heavy-booted footsteps echo down the hall, drawing closer to his cell. Jack looks up from the book he’s reading as his lawyer walks into view with four heavily armed military police officers.
Closing his book slowly, Jack watches the warden unlock the cell door.
“Time for your trial, Jack,” his lawyer tells him with something that might be a smile.
Jack looks between the MPs and raises an eyebrow. “Are the guns really necessary?” He knows the main purpose of the riot helmets, giant goddamn rifles, and black uniform from head to toe is intimidation, but it doesn’t seem to be working on him.
“Standard protocol.” The warden walks in and nudges Jack’s shoulder. “On your feet, Rollins.”
He sets his book down on the cot and stands, then has to slap a hand against the wall to catch himself as the world twists around him. Dizzying deja vu helpfully provides him with eight ways to kill each of the grunts and the warden before he even gets his hands on a weapon. Breathing through it, Jack shakes his head to dislodge the sensation. “Sorry. Stood up too fast.”
Once he’s steady on his feet, he holds his hands out, trying hard to ignore the red, chafed skin where the handcuffs rub against his wrist bones.
The jeering of the other detainees is equally hard to ignore as the MPs walk him out and load him into the back of a van.
The judge introduces him to his jury as Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Andrew Rollins of SHIELD’s STRIKE Division, Alpha platoon. He sits, allows the bailiff to chain him to the fucking table, and settles in as best he can.
Admittedly, Jack tunes out for most of the trial, just sort of staring off into space, until he’s called up to the stand on the second day.
“So,” his lawyer asks him once all the formalities and restraints are dealt with. “What do you remember?”
Jack fixes the lawyer with tired, aching eyes. “Procedural things. Some semantic memory. I can tell you the capitals of most countries in the world and the primary languages spoken there, but I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast the day of my injury.”
“Anything before that?”
Looking down at his hands, Jack swallows; his throat clicks. He’s tempted to ask for some water. “Enough to know I’m not sure I want to remember anything else.”
The prosecutor paints a picture of Lt. Commander Rollins as an expert soldier, remorseless killer, and double agent embedded deep within the ranks of SHIELD. He flatly reads off Jack’s combat record with the intent to shock the jury.
Jack idly wonders how the man got a hold of something that he’s pretty sure should be so heavily classified that its clearance level is classified. Then, he wonders why there’s so many foreign names on the confirmed kill list. One name has several jurors turn to stare at him; Jack just looks at the plastic wood-grain veneer on the table his arms are resting on, and traces it with his eyes.
A thin young woman around Jack’s age takes the stand and introduces herself as Jack’s sister.
The rest of the trial is lost in the dull roar inside of Jack’s head. He puts his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. It’s not until the lawyer taps his shoulder to get his attention that he realizes the trial is over.
It’s after the sun’s gone down on day three by the time he walks out of the courthouse in slacks and a collared shirt, and it feels strange to be able to pull on the coat he’s handed without handcuffs getting in the way. The cold air aches wonderfully in his lungs as he tips his head back and looks up at the stars just starting to peek through the cloud cover.
“Come on,” the agent assigned to him says, more gently than Jack expects. “Let’s get you someplace to stay for the night.”
Jack catches himself rubbing his wrists multiple times during the car ride, trying to ease the chafing from the past month of being a prisoner in both body and mind. He watches the buildings slide by as they head toward the outskirts of the city.
“What convinced them?” he rasps finally as they roll past a gas station full of exhausted commuters. “I should be behind bars for the rest of my life and we both know it.”
The agent hums and flicks the blinker over as they pull into a turn lane. “Turns out, HYDRA’s been brainwashing their agents. Captain Rogers came forward with some documentation of how hard they had to work on you to get it to hold.”
Jack’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse, even if he’s been told Rogers is one of the good guys. He drags a hand over his face and rubs at his eyes. “Explains why my brain feels like mashed potatoes.”
“That’d be the concussion, sir.”
Tipping his head back against the headrest, Jack sighs. “I’m a civilian, now.”
“You’re also the guy who led the team that pulled my team out of a FUBAR in Chile. Sure, we have to draw the line somewhere, but people who have never been in the field won’t ever understand the kind of decisions we have to make.”
He’s sure that’s supposed to be comforting, or at least commiserating. But all he feels right now is tired.
Fatigue pulls at his bones as he hefts a plain black duffel back onto his shoulder and follows the agent into a small motel room. The manila envelope containing his new identity and seed money is bulky and heavy in his hands; he sets it next to him on the bed, then puts his elbows on his knees and rubs his face.
Release conditional on maintenance of regular appointments with assigned doctors, and self-administration of prescribed medications.
His attempts to look up the names of each of the four drugs they have him taking only gets him another headache, and he adds smartphone screens to the list of things that make his brain cry for mercy.
He endures it long enough to tap out the first four numbers that come to mind to set his passcode, then turns the damn thing off.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Jack digs through the duffel until he finds some clothes to sleep in and heads for the bathroom. It’s cramped, the fan is noisy, and he’s pretty sure the smudges in the corners of the shower are mildew, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the industrial spigot walls he was herded through in detainment.
He braces his hands against the wall under the showerhead and lets his head fall forward, the scalding hot water rolling over his neck and shoulders. Knots of tension finally start to slip free, and Jack damn near falls asleep standing up twice before he shuts off the tap and stuffs his face in a towel.
It only takes one glance at the mirror for him to tear his eyes away and pointedly avoid looking at his own reflection.
He doesn’t need any more reminders of the soldier who used to inhabit his body.
The vending machine outside his motel room groans as it shits out dollar-a-pack snacks, and Jack does his best to make a meal out of them. He hardly has any appetite, but he chokes down a few bags of passably edible junk food before he can’t bear to look at it anymore.
After sliding between cold, scratchy sheets, Jack stares bleary-eyed at his new phone again. Someone probably thought they were trying to help by programming Kayla Rollins into his contacts. But the way she’d looked at him in the courtroom, sickened and betrayed and relieved and heartbroken all at once… Jack ends up falling asleep without making the call.
She’s better off without him.