Chapter 5
It wasn’t meant to happen. He is a civilian, completely unaffiliated with the conflict and yet somehow he is the one that ends up bleeding all over the asphalt.
The Asset takes the gun that had just brought the man to the ground and turns it on his mission. The mark goes down, and the Asset watches with black-rimmed eyes as their blood mixes, pooling together. With the mission complete, it’s time for the Asset to go to the extraction point and wait for further instruction. Something holds him back, tugging at his chest.
It’s not like this is the first casualty the Asset has caused. He’s killed civilians before, innocents that had no business being caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage. And yet something makes the Asset stand with blood staining the leather of his boots, looking over the stuttering rise-and-fall of the man’s chest.
It wasn’t meant to happen.
Somehow, the Asset reaches down, picks the man up and disappears. The Asset hasn’t felt anything but pain in over seventy years, and yet now he feels panic as the man's head lolls against his elbow. Something about the fluttering eyelids and sharp slits of blue piercing through the haze of unconsciousness makes the Asset walk faster, each step carefully calculated so as not to jolt the man in his arms.
Blood is pooling in between the plates of his metal arm.
“Wha-” questions that will get the man in trouble are unable to fall from his lips as words are replaced with groans of pain. The man’s breathing grows rapid and uneven, and the Asset grits his teeth together. Something about the colour completely draining from the man’s face has him unsteady and off-set, which has never happened before whilst in the field.
The Asset moves like the shadows, and takes the man to the only place he can think of.
~
The man lays on the mattress in the corner of the room and sleeps like the dead. He had fallen completely unconscious before the Asset had to dig the bullet out of his arm and patch him up. The Asset knows Hydra will be looking for him by now, but all he can think about is praying that the man will wake up. The Asset doesn’t know how to pray, but he is kneeling at the end of the mattress and begging for the man to live.
Drowsy evening sun undulates through the crack in the drawn curtains, and the man continues to breathe. The Asset does not move from his post and simply watches the stillness of the man’s face.
The Asset knows this man - but he does not. He knows no one but his handlers and even then he can only recognize their faces some of the time. His mind is scattered, too damaged for him to try pull up necessary memories that would answer all of his questions.
The man is small and fits in the Asset’s arms like it is where he belongs. His eyes are bluer than the Pacific Ocean and his lungs rattle with each breath. His skin is thin and pale, but his hands are calloused and the knuckles on the right are bruised. His bones are showing too much, but the Asset knows he is strong, somehow. The man’s clothes are too large for him, but they are warm, so perhaps the man gets cold too easy.
The Asset is nearly seventy years old and this man is younger than thirty. The Asset couldn’t possibly know him, but he does. He knows this man more than he knows anything else. He knows the man’s voice is deeper than it should be for his size, and his words clever and meaningful. The Asset’s mind is damaged and warped, but he knows that this man is worth more to him than anything else.
It takes five more hours for the man to wake.
When he does, the Asset is on his feet in a second. The man’s eyelids twitch before sliding open, and a crease appears in between his eyebrows. The Asset can see the moment where the man’s pain catches up with him, because his entire face scrunches up in a twist of agony. The Asset moves forwards, and then fear sweeps over the man like a shadows, and it feels like a knife has twisted its way into the Asset’s gut.
“Step back.”
The Asset obeys without thought, though part of him sings at the thrill of the deep voice. He knows this voice. Surprise flickers over the man’s face and the Asset can tell that the man had not expected him to do as he said. Unsurety hovers between them like smog. The man speaks again, slower and quieter.
“You shot me.”
The Asset nods in response, and for the first time, remorse bleeds onto his face.
“You saved my life.”
None of these are questions, but the Asset gets the man’s need for confirmation.
“Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” Accusation seeps into the man’s tone, and the Asset understands that the man is asking him why he’s taken him here, and if he’s allowed to leave.
The Asset shrugs, because thinking about the answers to those questions is some unfathomable thing. His tongue is thick, and he hasn’t spoken a word in over ten years. He’s unsure if he was programmed to become silent, or if he simply lost the ability to talk, or if he decided not to. He’s sure he hasn’t made a sound that isn’t a scream in a long, long time.
Frustration appears in the lines of the man’s forehead, and the Asset wants to cringe back. Instead, and takes a step forwards and sinks to his knees, and speaks. “I know you,” he croaks.
Terrified confusion spreads over the man’s face. He must think that the Asset is utterly mad. But the man doesn’t understand - the Asset knows him. From before, which makes everything a whole hell of a lot more confusing, because the Asset shouldn’t even know that there was a before. All he should know is Hydra.
And yet.
“How could you possibly know me? Who are you?”
The Asset cringes, pain spiking through his head. “The...I am the Asset.” He knows no other name.
“The Asset,” the man repeats, to which the Asset nods. “I’m Steve.”
Steve. And, oh. Of course he is. Steve. The Asset knows that name, knows the face it belongs to. But it’s impossible. They burned it out of him long ago, after they figured out the only thing keeping the Asset strong was Steve. The only thing keeping them from wiping everything out of him and rebuilding him into their weapon. The weapon he is now.
Steve’s watching him. He seems calm, but the Asset knows he’s the complete opposite. Anyone would be, in this situation.
“Why did you bring me here?” Steve asks.
He’s treating the Asset like a wild dog, easy to spook and easy to provoke into attacking. The Asset figures that’s fair. He slides to his knees and frowns at the ground. “You would have died. They wouldn’t have let you live, even if you got to a hospital. You saw me. You should be dead.” His right hand is shaking. The left one remains still. “You weren’t supposed to be there. You should be dead.”
A sharp intake of breath comes from Steve. “Then why aren’t I?” His voice is trembling.
The Asset’s head twitches to the side in one quick rapid movement. This has happened before. The handlers say that when it happens it’s time for him to return to extraction point for maintenance. The Asset doesn’t want to - which is impossible, because the Asset shouldn’t want anything.
“Because I don’t want you to be. You’re Steve.”
Steve’s dead, though. The Asset can remember - he can see images as though dirty glass, distorted and disjointed, but he remembers. They dragged Steve in, bruises covering every inch of his body, and killed him right in front of the Asset. He’d given up, then. Let them take his brain and warp it and turn him into their weapon.
He doesn’t know how he knows this all of a sudden. Steve’s looking at him like he’s crazy - maybe he is. His brain is that damaged, maybe he is imaging it. Perhaps this whole thing is a trick - a test. Maybe Hydra implanted those memories to see how he would react to seeing someone who meant that much to him.
Steve is silent. The Asset lifts his head and looks him dead in the eye.
“How are you alive?” he asks.
Steve looks incredulous. “Look, man, I don’t know why you shot me or why you shot that guy - who was commissioning me, by the way, so thanks for losing me my paycheck - but I don’t know you. I don’t know how you know me. And I would really, really like to go now.”
The air gets squeezed out of the Asset’s lungs. He knows Hydra will be looking for him. They will kill Steve the moment they get here. The Asset doesn’t want that to happen. “You are - yes. Go. Don’t let them find you.” It’s the only way for Steve to live. The Asset will tell them he killed the man, that he malfunctioned. They will believe him - Steve doesn’t matter to them, anyway, not a civilian, and why would the Asset have any reason to lie?
Steve is dead.
But he is here, perhaps in another life? The Asset has begun to see black spots. “Where do you live?” he asks.
“There is no way I’ll be telling you that.”
Of course. Come to think of it, this isn’t really what the Asset would expect from a civilian - this confidence. Steve hasn’t screamed once. He’s not freaking out - on the outside at least - and he’s demanding to be let go without an ounce of unsurety. The Asset knows this personality. It’s his Steve - it has to be.
Everything hurts.
The Asset rises to his feet and moves to where Steve is lying on the bed. Steve goes tense, eyes widening a fraction. “I will take you to the nearest train. You have to get far away from here, or they will kill you,” the Asset tells him.
Steve just nods, even though the Asset can see that he has no idea what he’s talking about. The Asset offers a hand to him, and Steve takes it. He’s cradling his injured arm, and he’s shaking, but he walks forwards with flint in his eyes. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the Asset, watching him in distrust. The Asset goes first, opening the door to the safehouse - which isn’t supposed to exist.
They walk. It’s not far to the nearest town, and they get there in twenty minutes. They are safe from the prying eyes of the town’s people under the cover of darkness. They are not safe from Hydra, and the Asset knows this. He finds a train station quickly. Steve is starting to sway on his feet, holding his injured arm close to his body. His face is pale.
The Asset is looking at train times when the shadows move. Seven men dressed in black from head to toe step out, and the Asset is surrounded. Steve is sitting down, his eyes closed. He doesn’t hear the strike team approach.
The Asset feels true fear for the first time in a long time.
“Found a toy, Asset?” the leader snarls.
The Asset can’t breathe. Steve’s eyes snap open, and what colour left in his face drains away. The Asset steps in front of him, and stares the men down. “He is a civilian,” he protests, voice dead and flat.
“Don’t try to worm your way out of this. Pierce is wondering why you haven’t returned. We had to be sent out to collect you. Didn’t you learn last time not to dawdle? Or did they scramble your brain too thoroughly this time?”
The Asset wants to be sick. Instead, he draws his gun. Steve is breathing too hard behind him, and the Asset wants to tell him it’ll be okay, but he knows it’s not. The moment he kills the first member of the team, he and Steve are open fired on. The Asset is hit with enough bullets to take him down, and then he’s laying on the pavement, mouth open in a silent scream. He won’t die from the wounds.
Staring at Steve’s slumped and lifeless body, though, he wishes he would.
Perhaps this had been a second - second? This has happened before - chance, and the Asset fucked it up. He doesn’t know how or why Steve had been here, alive, but now the Asset had gotten him killed two - three...four? Five? - times. He’s already throwing up blood, but he still dry heaves when everything in his stomach is gone. He’s taken by the arms and dragged into a waiting van.
Before they lock him into the chair and wipe him twice just to be sure, Bucky Barnes remembers that this has all happened before.
*