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The first weeks are spent in a specialized cell, built to contain enhanced—read: dangerous—individuals like the asset. The cell is bare and white, with white tile flooring and bright bright lights that never dim.
There are tests. Tests upon tests. Regularly scheduled procurements of blood; urine; saliva. Skin cell scrapings. Bone marrow samples.
The metal arm remains non-functional, the dead, leaden weight of it dragging painfully at his left side, courtesy of the specialized cuff he woke up to find locked around his wrist. His head throbs, a constant stabbing agony made worse by light, sound, movement. Nausea churns through his stomach in ceaseless, unending waves, and he loses the battle against the urge to vomit more than once.
Eventually, they move him to a cell with a toilet—so that he doesn’t have to curl in whatever corner is farthest from where he’d last been sick, breathing in the sour-bitter stench that permeates the air and makes him feel even more nauseous—and a rusted drain—so that when he fails to reach the toilet, they can spray down the cell with cold water and a pressure hose. (He knows that the water is cold because when they put him back into the still-dripping cell the wet chill of it soaks into his thin clothing; leaves him shivering for hours until he manages to produce enough body heat to get the clothes dry again.)
Between everything, always, there are questions. What is your name? How did you end up working for Hydra? When did you start? Did you kill this person? This one? What were your missions?
He doesn’t know the answers, to any of those questions. His mind is broken and empty, a barren wasteland, and he has nothing to offer them.
At first, he thinks, this makes them angry: there are only so many times they will accept ‘I don’t know’ as an answer. Eventually they will tire of it. Eventually they do.
They must be angry, because they leave him alone. (He doesn’t know for how long, only that the lights go out and the darkness in his cell stretches on interminably.) Sustenance is no longer provided at regular intervals. No water comes either. The three-by-twelve slot at the bottom of his cell door remains shut tight. (Sustenance always comes in a flimsy, half-filled paper bowl. The pale, slurry-like nutriment thicker than what his last handlers gave to him, but only by an incremental amount.)
Sometimes, it gets so hot that he lies spread out on the marginally cooler tile flooring—sweating and lethargic and barely able to move with the dizzy exhaustion underscoring every endless moment.
Other times, things go in the opposite direction.
Cold enough that his teeth chatter uncontrollably, his extremities going numb as the time drags on. Cold enough that even his shivering eventually ebbs away, tapering down until it stops altogether. He gets very tired then. Loses time. Sometimes a drifting thought passes through his consciousness: he wonders if he might finally close his eyes. If maybe this time he’ll be allowed to close them long enough to never wake up.
(He never actually reaches sleep. Every time his blinks last for longer than half a second an excruciatingly loud blast of sound rips through the pitch dark, jerking him alert and causing his teeth to rattle in his head. That’s how he knows they can see him, even though he can’t see so much as his own hand in front of his face.)
When the room gets that cold, the smooth tile beneath him is more torture than comfort but there’s nowhere for him to go. Nothing he can place between himself and the ice-cold floor because there is no furniture in the cell. No bed, or mattress, or even a blanket. (He thinks, maybe, even his last handlers allowed him a blanket sometimes. When he’d been good enough, maybe. When he was good. Was he ever good? )
Eventually the lights come back on and the questions begin again.
He still has nothing to give them. (He wonders when they will begin to hurt him for the answers he cannot give.)
Things continue like this for a long time. (A long time. He thinks. How long has it been? He can’t be sure. He has nothing to judge it by. He wakes sometimes, without the memory of ever having gone to sleep, and finds that his nails have been neatly trimmed; his face cleanly shaven. His hair remains the same length, ever unchanging.)
When they seem to run out of ways to analyze every bodily fluid he possesses, they move on to taking scans.
They manipulate him into every position, take images of every inch of his body. He goes elsewhere in his head during a lot of that. Maintains just enough of a tenuous grasp on reality to be able to follow orders. Stand here. Hold this position. Don’t move. It isn’t difficult, slipping into that pattern, straddling the line between present and not. He’s had a lot of practice.
Being elsewhere means he doesn’t have to think about when the hands on him will turn harsh and demanding. How much the next procedure will hurt. The number of weapons prepared to target his kill zones should he step out of line; cause them to worry he might pose a threat. (Whenever they take him from his cell, a team of armed guards is already there, ready for him. They go where he goes, shadow his every move. This is familiar. His last handlers followed the same protocol.)
When they get to his brain, there seems to be an uptick in their level of interest. They spend almost as much time scanning and re-scanning him there as they spend examining every angle and nuance of the metal arm.
Something seems to change after that. They don’t question him anymore—or rather, they don’t continue with the same questions.
Where are you from? they ask instead. Do you have any family? Where did you grow up? And, strangest of all, If we were to let you out of this cell, what would you do with your life?
The answers to these questions aren’t any easier for him to supply; his response remains the same. I don’t know, he says. I don’t know.
His anxiety grows with every repetition of that phrase—he knows what happened the last time he couldn’t answer their questions. (He doesn’t want to go back into the dark.) He doesn’t have the luxury of not answering, though. When his handlers address him directly, the only choice is to respond.
Inexplicably, despite his stagnant, unfruitful answers, they don’t put him back into the dark.
His cell stays lit. Sustenance continues to get shoved through the slot at regularly scheduled intervals. The ambient temperature remains unchanged—a few degrees too cool to be comfortable. (He doesn’t think this is something they’ve done on purpose because he’s always cold; can never seem to get warm.)
Quietly, secretly, he can’t help but be relieved at the unfamiliar turn toward benevolence. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. That he hasn’t even done anything to earn it. It makes him wish he could give them the answers they’re asking for because at least then— at least then—
One day, they take him—reinforced cuffs locked around his wrists, accompanied by his usual array of armed guards—to a room he hasn’t been to before.
With it’s beige-colored walls, lack of tiled-flooring, and tiny cot tucked into one corner, it looks less like his cell—though the door is similarly reinforced, and there is at least one, visible, surveillance camera to keep track of his every move.
He’s walked to the center of the room and left there, the handlers informing him that the restraints will release once he is alone, the reinforced door between him and—presumably—everyone else.
There’s a line on the floor that bisects the room into two halves: one closer to the door, the other toward the back. Step over the line, he’s told. The order sounds from above, the speakers in the ceiling lending a vaguely muffled quality to the voice. He takes the necessary step to place himself in the half of the room farthest from the door.
A tiny beep signals the release of the cuffs and his wrists fall away from one another, the weight of the left jerking him suddenly off balance. He staggers, just barely keeping himself from toppling, and breathes through the deep ache of his wrenched shoulder.
Don’t try anything, they warn him.
If he attempts escape, or to damage anything in the room, or behaves in any manner that might be perceived as threatening, they will reengage the restraints. A press of a button will trigger the handcuffs to snap back together and activate the automatic fail-safe: an electrical charge, powerful enough to incapacitate even enhanced individuals like himself.
We’ve taken precautions, they tell him. There’s no point in testing us. You’ll only end up hurting yourself.
He takes them at their word. Though the thought of ‘trying anything’ has never once crossed his mind.
Confirm acknowledgment.
“Confirmed.”
The sensation of his left arm coming back online catches him completely off guard. There’s no warning, just the sudden cessation of numb paralysis, and he braces himself. Knows what’s coming next.
It comes on gradually; waves of cramping, grinding pain pulsing through synthetic nerve-endings, growing stronger as the minutes pass.
Uselessly, he clutches at the arm. Clamps his mouth shut on the whine that builds in his throat as he sinks to the floor; curls against the side of the bed frame; pants through the pain for long, mindless minutes.
Eventually, as it always does, the pain recedes to its standard, dully persistent ache, and he comes back to himself—sweaty and shaking and dragging in shuddering breaths, pushing clammy hair back off of his face.
It takes him another minute to get back to his feet—legs unsteady, body shivering from the cold sweat covering his skin; the psychosomatic aftermath of high levels of pain.
The sound of locks disengaging brings his head up with a jerk. His gaze zeroes in on the door, heart rate climbing until it pounds against his sternum, loud in his ears. Body vibrating like a wire too tightly strung, he waits for whatever’s coming through the door.
When the Dom steps into the room he’s on his knees before thought crosses his mind. Instantly, instinctively, he crashes to the ground, hard enough that pain reverberates through bone and he bites almost through his lip to stifle a choked cry.
The pain makes everything worse.
It sinks into his mind, turns his thoughts hazy and thick. Wrong.
In the presence of a Dom he is to remain sharp and alert, prepared to receive orders, ready to comply. He shouldn’t be slipping under, not like this, not here, with an unknown dominant who hasn’t even spoken to him yet. He’s malfunctioning, he realizes with distant panic, trying to force himself back up.
He tries, but bringing himself out of the hole he’s disappearing into is like trying to swim upstream through thick, dark syrup, and he doesn’t come back to himself until the scent of ammonia cuts sharply through his senses.
He jerks back to awareness with the taste of blood on his tongue, body trembling from the intensity of the episode.
The Dom is nowhere to be seen.
He’s lost time, they tell him. Almost twenty-five minutes, which is unacceptable.
You must learn to control these responses, they say. To submit only as a matter of choice.
(Choice, he knows, is an illusion. And resistance is futile. The only "choice" is obedience.)
In the eyes of his new handlers, the degree to which his submissive instincts have been honed is undesirable. Re-training is necessary.
Thought must come before instinct, they tell him. Sinking to his knees before a Dominant must no longer be an automatic response.
He is to practice as many times as it takes. Until they are satisfied that he can combat his original programming.
Again, they tell him, bringing back the Dominant.
Again.
Again.
Again.
-
There’s a van parked on the street in front of his house.
It’s large. Rust-stained, white. Unfamiliar.
Tinted windows make it impossible to see if anyone is inside, but the engine rumbles, a low, stuttering rattle.
Adrenaline courses through his limbs. Fear clenches a tight knot in his belly. He knows what’s waiting inside that van. He knows—
No. That’s wrong. He doesn’t know what’s waiting. Not yet.
He eyes the van, footsteps eating up the sidewalk toward his house, right hand clasped gently around her left. Her. The little girl. His…sister?
His sister. Five years old, round cheeks rosy from the chill in the late February air.
She’s singing. Little-girl voice tickling his ears, making him smile. "...gently down the…” She’d learned the song today, in school. Has been singing it the whole way home, small hand swinging their arms in a gentle rhythm, back and forth. “...merrily, merrily…”
They turn onto the path that leads to their front door.
Little fingers slip from his grasp. His sister skips ahead, toward the house, the scent of fresh bread wafting through the air because it’s Monday, and Monday is bread-baking day. Warm, buttery slices after school day.
His mouth waters. He pictures himself at the table with his sister. Pictures the warm bread on his plate, the cool glass of milk on the side.
“...life is but a…”
Metal scrapes against metal, the sound of the van door opening behind him. A hand closes around his upper arm, tight, unbreakable. His fourth-grade school books thud to the ground, a startled cry escaping his mouth.
His sister turns at the sound, hand slipping from the doorknob, eyes widening in childish horror. She says his name, voice wobbling around the syllables, face gone pale, sheet-white.
“Call her back,” the stranger murmurs quietly into his ear, fingers biting deep where they grip his arm. “Get her over here, and I’ll let you go. It’s not you we want.”
He licks his lips, throat gone dry with fear. “B- - - -," he says to his sister, forcing his voice not to shake, “go inside.”
The stranger shakes him, rough and angry, cutting off any attempt at further words. “No,” the stranger counters. “Come here. Come over here to your brother.”
His sister shifts, uncertain. Blue eyes dart from her brother to the man gripping his arm; afraid to approach a stranger, afraid to leave her brother alone with him.
“B- - - -, don’t!”
His voice comes out sharp, harsh, and his sister freezes at the tone, a tone he’s never before used with her. “Go inside,” he says. “Now, B - - - -.”
His sister’s hand returns to the doorknob, terrified tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. She says his name again. Says, “I’m scared.”
“It’s okay,” he tells her, evenly. “We’re just gonna talk. Just talk, that’s all. Go inside and find Ma. I’ll be right behind you.”
His sister sniffles. “P-promise?”
“I ever lied to you before? Go on inside.”
His sister steals a last, darting look at the stranger, then nods. Turns the doorknob. Hurries inside.
-
They make him pay for that. For not letting them take her.
They make him pay for years to come.
-
His eyes are open.
He is awake.
Awareness rises gradually. A slow coalescence of thoughts that had gone quiet and dark an indeterminate amount of time ago.
His gaze lingers upon the shadowed ceiling above. The shadowed ceiling which is— Where he is, is—
Inside the closet.
The closet within the room they assigned to him. The room they assigned to him once they determined he’d be more useful as their asset than a decommissioned test subject.
‘"he truth is...’"The man with the eye patch watches him closely, hands folded neatly atop his desk. His gaze is shrewd and unblinking. ‘"he truth is, SHIELD feels that someone with your particular skill set could be a very valuable asset."
The closet is where he goes to initiate voluntary REM shutdowns. (They haven’t provided him with a cryo-freeze chamber since he came here. If— When he is to rest, to sleep, he must manage it on his own.)
Pressed against the back wall with his legs curled close to his chest, he can slide the door completely closed if he wants to. Tell himself that he is in a safe place.
(There is no safe place. The door to the room—sub-level 3, door 10—locks from the outside. A ventilation shaft capable of filtering in any manner of aerosolized chemicals rests high on the wall. There are no windows because he is underground, far enough that they can keep him from ever seeing the sun again if they become so inclined.)
Sometime between 0300 and now he must have managed a voluntary shutdown. The burning of his eyes and the relentless pounding headache have lessened. He can get to his feet without swaying. His limbs have stopped shaking, no longer cumbersome with fatigue.
He estimates at least forty-eight hours before the initiation of another voluntary shutdown becomes critical to his functionality.
(SHIELD has made it explicitly clear that he is to maintain his functionality at all times. He is their asset now, and he doesn’t know all the rules yet but he does know that they want him to be useful. To SHIELD, ‘useful’ means functional.)
He slides open the closet door. Steps out into room S310. According to the clock bolted high on the wall, it is 0730 hours. He has one hour before they will come to collect him for his bi-weekly appointment with Doctor Hartman.
He glances around. Tries to determine if anything had been moved or altered during his short stint of unconsciousness. It’s impossible to tell. S310 has very little furniture—a bed, complete with scratchy sheets and a thin coverlet; a small desk, shoved against one wall; a closet he can just manage to squeeze into. Everything marginally heavy and capable of being moved has been bolted down. He has no personal items to speak of.
Really, with its lack of windows and its door that locks only from the outside, S310 is not all that different from the cell they’d kept him in at the beginning.
(He wonders if he can trust the fact that the only surveillance he’s been able to identify stops at the hallway outside the room, then berates himself for the thought. He’d be a fool to believe they’d ever leave him unsupervised. He doesn’t even bother searching for the hidden cameras, the audio surveillance devices. Doing so would only make him look suspicious. Like he has something to hide.)
There is one major difference between S310 and the cell: the luxury of a tiny bathroom. His own private toilet and a sink. There’s no bathing area—if he wants a shower, he’s been advised to visit the communal washrooms.
He’s been making do with birdbaths.
He has also, at his disposal, a small sliver of soap and a washcloth—both of which had been here when he’d arrived: sitting on the counter-top in generic, utilitarian packaging along with a plastic-encased toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste.
Between keeping himself—and the single set of clothing he owns—clean (the thin scrubs he’d changed out of as soon as he found the SHIELD-branded outfit lying crisp and brand-new at the foot of the bed don't count as clothing, and just the thought of putting them back on makes his stomach clench forebodingly), he’s getting dangerously close to exhausting his meagre supply of soap.
He doesn't know how to acquire more. If he’s being honest, he can’t quite find it in himself to try.
His stomach growls hollowly, a feeble attempt at protesting the fact that he hasn’t eaten in close to thirty-six hours because, more often than not, he can't force himself to leave the pseudo-safety of these walls.
He’s allowed. They’ve told him he’s free to visit any of the communal areas, the gym, the showers, the mess. He isn’t locked in by anything other than his own reticence.
Still, even when he manages to suppress his apprehension long enough to force himself to creep through the facility—always during the small hours of the morning, and always when he has the best chance of encountering the least amount of people—he knows better than to believe he’s anything resembling ‘free’.
The cameras along the corridors follow his every move, agents and other SHIELD personnel alike side-eye him with suspicion wherever he goes, and the cuffs around his wrists provide a constant reminder that he is theirs. Their asset. Their weapon. One that they have every intention of keeping contained.
He is an attack dog on a leash. A thing for which ‘freedom’ is an unattainable fiction.
The mess hall comes with its own set of complications.
His options for sustenance are limited. There are a lot of things he doesn’t recognize. Most things. And if he wants something to eat that’s either hot or fresh, there is no way to get it without interacting with people. He’d have to stand in line. Brush shoulders with other personnel. Choose something off of an extensive menu he has no hope of even beginning to comprehend. Just thinking about the process is exhausting and he shies away from even attempting it.
(He’s never had a choice about what he eats. Sustenance has always been provided for him; meant to be gulped down as quickly as possible.)
On top of that, his stomach tends to reject a large number of the things he puts into it; he still isn’t used to eating anything heavier than a thick slurry, and it’s taking time to figure out what’s okay to eat and what isn’t. Mostly he’s been sticking to pre-packaged protein rations, various flavors of a thickened dairy product called ‘Yoplait’, other small items that don’t require preparation and fit easily into his pockets.
He never takes more than a couple of things. Doesn’t want to be accused of stealing, even though everything in the mess is free and the few items he takes never manage to quiet his stomach or stop it from hurting.
(His stomach never seems to stop hurting anymore.)
Right now, as he waits for the armed escort to collect him for his appointment with Doctor Hartman, the pain is dull, aching. Dread sitting heavy in his gut.
He doesn’t like his sessions with Doctor Hartman.
The thought is a dangerous one, and a zing of terrified adrenaline skitters down his spine even as he firmly banishes it from his mind.
SHIELD has made sessions with Doctor Hartman mandatory and questioning his handlers’ decisions is one of the quickest ways to get himself punished with swift severity. The asset belongs to his handlers, and it is not his place to express any sort of opinion on what they decide to do to or with him. This lesson he learned early, and it never changes no matter the handler.
A firm thud against the door pulls him from his thoughts, the preemptive sound both a warning and an announcement. His escort has arrived.
When they enter, he is already in position: facing the door, arms by his sides, hands open and turned outward to show them empty, gaze averted in deference. Eye contact can be construed as aggression. A challenge. He knows better than to risk it; waits for orders. They will tell him what to do, when to move.
They will tell him what to do, when to move. (This is another protocol that has remained unchanged for as long as he can remember, no matter his handler.)
Hands hovering over their sidearms, they beckon him forward, closing in around him as he moves where directed. As soon as he is encircled, they move out, heading toward the elevator that will take them up to ground level.
He keeps his expression carefully blank. Buries all feelings of anxiety deep where they can’t touch him and doesn’t think about what will happen when he gets to where they’re taking him.
-
Steve taps a polite knock against the door-frame of Director Fury’s office, broad shoulders filling the entryway as he waits perfunctorily for Fury’s invite.
Fury’s dark eye flicks up from the spread of paperwork across his desk, pinning Steve with the unsmiling lour Steve’s come to believe is his resting face.
“Captain,” Fury acknowledges. “Come in. Shut the door behind you.”
He goes back to frowning at the papers in front of him, and Steve settles into something like parade rest before the broad, wooden desk, curious about why, exactly, Fury had called him here; it’s rare that Fury requests his presence outside of a mission briefing.
After a long moment, Fury shifts his attention, lifting his gaze to fix Steve with a careful, considering expression. “What can you tell me, Captain,” Fury says, finger tapping absently against the corner of a page, “about the Winter Soldier?”
Steve glances at the papers across Fury’s desk; returns his gaze to the director. “The Winter Soldier is—was—a highly-trained, Hydra wetwork operative, accredited with over two dozen assassinations in the last thirty years. He’s strong. Fast. Has a metal arm.” He hesitates for the barest of moments before he adds. “Recent intel identified him as submissive.”
Fury hums, steepling his fingers. “All of that is true,” he says. ”In combination, it also means we’re dealing with a... unique situation.”
Steve considers the implications behind Fury’s words. If SHIELD is currently dealing with this “unique situation” it means they hadn’t decided on the simpler option of throwing the Soldier into maximum security and tossing away the key.
Like Steve, they must have considered the Soldier’s submissive status as a mitigating factor in his culpability as the Fist of Hydra. Steve supposes that’s a good thing. It had been very clear to him, in that hellhole of a basement so many weeks ago, that the Soldier was both mentally and emotionally compromised.
So SHIELD has apparently kept the Soldier in their custody all this time. And it sounds like they’re still working out what to do with him.
“The problem,” Fury says, “stems from the fact that the Winter Soldier embodies an unfortunate compilation of highly proficient, highly dangerous, and highly compliant. Dealing with him is not a simple matter of handing him over to be prosecuted and penalized for his crimes, especially if we’re considering the possibility that he was in some way coerced. He needs to be contained. Right now, SHIELD has the best resources to do that.”
“‘Contained’,” Steve says. “Not imprisoned.”
“No.” Fury’s tone is decisive. “The doctors who’ve been working with him attest that he’s highly suggestible. Putting him into the system would make it too simple for anyone who wants control over the Winter Soldier to get their hands on him.”
Steve remembers the Soldier as he was in that warehouse, kneeling and mute and trying so very hard to be good for Steve, a Dom he didn’t know and had absolutely zero reason to trust. Thinking back on it, Steve suspects he could have done anything to the Soldier in that room, and the sub wouldn’t have made a move against him.
Without some sort of precautionary measures, some sort of “containment”, as Fury’d put it, the Soldier will almost certainly end up back in the situation he’d just left. There are too many people—organizations, terrorist groups, shady government officials—who’d do just about anything to get their hands on the infamous Winter Soldier. If word were to ever get out about just how malleable he is, that number would only go up.
“He’s a weapon, Cap,” Fury says. “And we can’t allow a weapon with his destructive capacity to fall into the wrong hands.”
It’s a blunt, unsympathetic classification of the Soldier, but from a technical standpoint, Steve doesn’t disagree.
“So.” Fury spreads his hands, eyebrows raised. “Now I’ve got a highly-trained, exceedingly dangerous submissive operative on my hands who, according to medical, doesn’t know the difference between a Dom and having a Dom, and I’ve got—you, Captain.”
Steve says nothing. He doesn’t particularly like where this conversation looks to be heading.
Fury pins him with that unwavering stare, waiting. When Steve very carefully doesn’t give anything away, he sighs.
“The truth is,” Fury admits, “The Soldier being in SHIELD’s custody presents us with an unparalleled opportunity. We want to work with him, rehabilitate him, if we can. He could be one of our greatest assets.”
“You’re recruiting him?”
Steve supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. The Soldier’s abilities are legendary. Of course SHIELD wants that kind of competency working for them. What does it matter that the Winter Soldier was Hydra’s greatest asset? That he’s played such a large role in precipitating so many deaths?
“It’s one option,” Fury says ambiguously. “If we’re being honest, Captain, with the Soldier’s track record it’s probably his best option. SHIELD is willing to spend the resources necessary to determine whether the Soldier is worth giving a second chance. It’s a better opportunity than most would get in his situation. He’s lucky to escape a bullet to the brain.”
SHIELD seems to have found itself in the same predicament Steve had unexpectedly stumbled into so many weeks ago—an uncertainty about where the Soldier’s loyalty actually lies.
Submissive or not, it is entirely possible that the Soldier was always a willing supporter of Hydra. That he’d chosen to work for them, and that he’s still loyal to them, even now. Maybe they’d taken advantage of that loyalty, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Soldier’s fealty has wavered.
There is another possibility: that the Soldier—willing or not—had spent so much time as a Hydra operative that his loyalty to them is too deeply ingrained to be overturned. But loyalty to Hydra, however produced, always yields disastrous results.
What SHIELD, and Fury, are undoubtedly hoping for is that the Soldier’s loyalty can be turned—in favor of SHIELD.
A place within SHIELD’s ranks, the chance to escape legal retribution and imprisonment—it’s a generous offer. With his history, Steve’s not so sure the Soldier deserves it. But then, it isn’t up to Steve to decide.
“Cap,” Fury says, recapturing Steve’s attention, “I called you here to ask that you consider accepting the role of the Soldier’s primary handler.”
Steve had suspected this is where Fury’d been heading with this conversation, but he doesn’t have any desire to be involved in Fury’s pet project. He straightens sharply, ready to protest, but Fury keeps talking, not giving him the chance.
“I’ve spoken with the doctors, Hill, members of the Council. All of us agree that you’re the best person to take him on.”
“Because he’s submissive?” Steve’s not the only Dominant around, and SHIELD has a number of highly trained agents on hand. There’s no way Steve’s the only one capable of handling the Soldier.
“The Soldier’s not just submissive,” Fury says. “Or exceptionally prone to following orders. He’s enhanced. Strength, speed, stamina, all of it has been heightened. His blood-work is remarkably similar to yours. The popular theory is that he was given a bastardized version of the same serum you got.”
“The serum formula was lost over seventy years ago,” Steve says. “Along with Abraham Erskine.”
“Yet you and I both know of cases where another version of it has cropped up. Most notably where it involved one Bruce Banner.”
Steve shakes his head, trying to wrap his mind around the idea that there is another supersoldier around. Someone like him.
“You must see now why we think you’re the best person for this job,” Fury states. “As much as the Soldier may need protecting from other people, other people also need protection from him. Your enhancements, training, and designation make you the best candidate for handling him.”
“Are you reassigning me, sir?”
Fury leans back in his chair, mouth pressed into a contemplative line.
“No.” He flips the cover of the Soldier’s file closed. “Not reassinging. As one of our top operatives, permanently sidelining you is not an option. We have resources enough to keep the Soldier contained when you are out on assignment.”
Steve wonders what sort of supersoldier-proof “resources” Fury’s got in mind, and doesn’t particularly like the mental images that train of thought yields. But then, the Soldier is lucky enough that SHIELD is offering him this chance at rehabilitation. A little bit of confinement isn’t that big of a deal, in that light.
Besides, it’s not like Fury is going to do anything to ruin his chances with his little investment.
“This isn’t a reassignment,” Fury reiterates, ”but it is of primary importance that we determine whether the Soldier is a worthwhile investment. Right now, we have him undergoing regular sessions of desensitization therapy. It’s been marginally successful, but the Soldier isn’t anywhere near where we’d like him to be as a fully functioning agent. His compliance makes him dangerous. Both to himself and others.”
Steve’s familiar with the process of desensitization. Often recommended as a treatment for abused subs, the therapy focuses on minimizing a sub’s inborn urge to comply with a Dominant’s commands.
At SHIELD, such desensitization training is mandatory for all agents, whether their instinct is to comply, as it is with submissives, or to protect, as with Dominants. Either instinct can be exploited in the field.
It’s not overly surprising that the Soldier is having difficulty with the training. With the way he’d responded to Steve and his team in that basement, it's obvious that his compliance has been deeply ingrained.
“In between his doctor appointments,” Fury says, “he’s got a lot of downtime. We’ve moved him from a cell to a containment suite, and he’s been given restricted access to the facility, but he rarely comes out. He follows all of our guidelines—meticulously—but he’s extremely reclusive, and hasn't made any effort to branch out past whatever is required of him.”
Steve can feel his neutral façade beginning to fray at the edges as he struggles to keep a frown from overtaking his expression. Is Fury asking him to…make friends? With the Winter Soldier?
“You want me to… to socialize him?”
“In a word,” Fury says. “Spend time with him. Get him out of that room. I want him making connections with SHIELD personnel, of course. But I also need to know how he thinks. Whether he has the desire or the ability to become loyal to SHIELD. If he’s too damaged to waste anymore resources on. That, Captain, is the real assignment. Determining whether the Winter Soldier is capable of becoming a loyal operative—if he can be trusted—or if he should be terminated.”
Steve stifles a sigh of frustration. There are so many other things he’d rather do than babysit a dysfunctional super-assassin.
It’s more than that, though, isn't it?
What Fury is really asking is for Steve to help determine the outcome of a man’s life. It’s a weighty assignment; one that Steve would prefer to have no part in.
Still, he can’t deny that the reasons behind SHIELD choosing him make sense. At the end of the day, surveillance cameras can only communicate so much. If there’s any chance of the Soldier ever qualifying as a proper agent, SHIELD will need to be completely certain they can trust him. That will require regular one-on-one interactions. Conversation. Seeing how the Soldier reacts in various settings within various circumstances.
Along with that, having Steve around significantly reduces the odds of the Soldier either getting taken advantage of, or causing harm to someone else. Steve’s dominance plays a part in that, of course. But even more important is the fact that Steve’s enhancements put the Soldier’s odds of physically overcoming him about as low as they can be in any given situation.
Taking those things into account, even Steve can admit that assigning him as the Soldier’s handler makes sense. And when all is said and done, he’s not selfish enough to refuse to help. It’s just as Fury said; this is the Soldier’s opportunity for a second chance. And without knowing whether the Soldier was a willing Hydra operative, Steve can’t find it in himself to deny the Soldier an attempt to prove himself.
Even if he really doesn’t want to babysit.
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Once Steve agrees to take on the Winter Soldier assignment, Fury arranges for him to attend a series of meetings. He speaks with the Soldier’s doctors, learns about what they’ve done to help him, what they think Steve should do to maintain any progress they’ve managed to make.
Fury also authorizes Steve’s access to a number of documents. Digital records. Information respecting the Soldier’s enhancements, his medical and mental status, the metal arm. He wants Steve to be as prepared as possible, he says. To know exactly what he’ll be dealing with.
Steve flips through the Soldier’s file.
“No name?”
“He hasn’t been able to remember it,” Doctor Josephs says. “Not yet. There’s been some debate about assigning him something temporary, but nobody can agree whether that’s the best solution. Fortunately, we’ve been able to determine that his brain is healing. So we believe it’s only a matter of time before he remembers. For the most part, we try to avoid calling him anything, though he does respond to ‘Soldier’.
Steve studies what information they send him, asks questions when he has them.
He takes the tiny remote they give him and slips it into his pocket.
“It controls the mag-cuffs he wears at all times. They’re unimposing, like bracelets that fit close to his wrists. But if he gets violent, or you think he may be a threat, you can activate the cuffs remotely. They’ll snap together, and if you press this button here, you can have them deliver a shock that will incapacitate him.”
“Incapacitate how?”
“He may not pass out, but he’ll likely hit the floor. Don’t worry, Captain, he won’t be able to do much of anything for a while after you press that button.”
Later, Steve requests a clip so that he can attach the remote to his belt—ease of access could make all the difference in a high-risk situation.
After a week of carefully examining files, talking to doctors, and mentally preparing himself to take on the Soldier, Steve arranges another meeting.
0800, two days from now, he will face the Soldier for the first time since he’d stumbled across him in that Hydra nightmare of a basement.
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