spaces_between | For morethanashield

For morethanashield

Who: James "Winter Soldier" Barnes & Steve "Captain America" Rogers
When: Months after initial capture
What: AU - Both Steve and Bucky fell from the train. Both were captured and forced into service of HYDRA as their weapons to shape the world.
Warnings: Maybe violence?

The pain was momentarily numbed, though it would return along with his orientation of his surroundings now that the days experimentations were over. For the first time, he was stable enough to be moved from being trapped and monitored in the medical wing (he assumed it had a name though didn't know it) and shifted to the cells where only a guard was required to keep watch over numerous subjects in their small cages side-by-side. The room was kept colder than normal to prevent them from moving around much or thinking too hard about escaping.

His head was fuzzy and his vision wavered as he was settled down in the middle of his new cell. There were whispers (always were), but his head was too drained of anything to grasp onto any one detail. This was a test apparently. Perhaps to see if he could survive the rigors of the illusion of freedom in a small cold cage left to his own devices. They left, clicking the door shut with too much noise that he twitched where he lay.

At first he lay on his right side just drinking in the air, orienting himself on one aspect of his surroundings before adding another. He allowed his ears to focus next, the sounds of moaning prisoners, the mutter of a disgruntled cold guard making rounds, the shuffle of cold experiments trying to find that one warm place that didn't exist. His sense of touch was next, feeling the rough cement under his arm, and the cold wash of sensation from the left side of his body where heavy bandages covered some recent modification to where his arm should be. At last, he allowed his eyes to pick out things, but it was the current weakest of his senses, fallible and blurry as he dragged himself across the floor.

He didn't know where he was going, didn't know he was being watched keenly for what direction he chose to go when there were four options for him. One had no other prisoner, the other three did. He pulled himself towards the right, and though he didn't know it, towards where they were all very excited that he would go. To him. He nestled against the bars in the corner, breathing hard from the excursion but slowly curling up. There was a source of familiarity nearby. He chose to be close to it.

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He - the man was only a "he" now - had been removed from the medical wing a while ago. He couldn't remember how long, just that it was a while, and his memories of the straps and the operating table were as hazy as his memories of other places. That didn't mean he wasn't subjected still to frequent stints in the chair, quite the opposite. He needed the extra time, according to bits and pieces he snatched from the doctors and guards. It wouldn't stick otherwise. But he was tough, he could take it.

Whatever it was.

He knew that the shocks, when they came, scoured his mind and always left less behind, always left him less than he had been. That didn't mean he could do anything about it.

It had been a bad day, when his name had finally slipped away. He was pretty sure he remembered taking a guard's finger off when they'd tried to subdue him. "Scrappy", they called him. "Sometimes I think he likes getting punched."

The man was little more than a snarling dog, now, tearing into everyone and everything he could reach in a vain attempt to fully encompass the aching sense of loss inside him, all the worse for not knowing anymore all that he'd lost. HYDRA, however, was patiently working to point all that helpless rage in a productive direction.

He spent a lot of time in this cage when he wasn't running through drills. They kept him on a strict regime of military exercises, training, until he was too exhausted to stay standing and could thus be safely dragged back to this cage. They mostly kept him handcuffed, too, with at least one wrist to a bar. Long enough to allow for at least some movement, but not enough movement to reach through the bars of the opposite wall.

He'd woken up without his chains today. He didn't know why, but knew better than to ask. So Steve had been dozing off in one corner of the cage, when he started suddenly awake at the sound of the door next to his opening. He looked up to see a ragged form tossed carelessly inside. That should have been as far as the situation concerned him - he tended to treat the prisoners with reserved, almost anxious wariness, most days.

But something about this one...

Every muscle ached in protest as he moved, easing forward towards the other wall as the other man did. When the other moved to curl up against the bars, he felt a throb of something in his chest - pain, yes, even anguish, both emotions he was intimately familiar with.

But it had been a while since he'd let himself feel them for anyone else. He didn't know how long, exactly. Just that it had been a while.

He swallowed past a tightness in his throat, settling against the bars once more beside the man. Almost without thinking, he reached out with shaking fingers through the bars, as much as he could, to stroke gently at some of the tangled, matted hair.

"Hey." He barely recognized the sound of his own voice, especially when it wasn't raised in anger.

Edited 2014-11-13 21:57 (UTC)

Aside from voicing cries of pain or incoherent slurring, he hadn't given voice to much since he had come awake. He couldn't remember when he had come awake, no real identification of time save that it came with pain most of the time or left him in a groggy fog that were mostly flashing lights, blurred faces and the whirl of various instruments that sounded all too loud for him. Confusion was another part of his life, if he could consider what he was doing actual living.

Yet, there was something of the warmth on the other side of the bars where he had curled, something that nagged at a part of his mind that was considered stolen from him. It was a deep pit of nothingness there, empty. He had skill knowledge, language knowledge, tactics, but his memories on how he had gotten those things were gone, stolen away in a very precise way of damage to key areas of his brain. Familiarity felt foreign to him, but it still drew him like a moth to flame.

He ached, but he was aware on his peripheral senses of the heat of another body close by. It took the edge off of some of his shivering, and his head jerked up at the sudden press of a hand in his messy dark hair. He leaned more into the cold bars and peered blurrily at the person on the other side, the familiar one, the other source of warmth in an otherwise cold environment. It was a man like him, bigger of bone and flesh but blond with bright blue eyes. He didn't recognize the man, not with a name or an identity but he felt a surge of familiarity.

"Y-you," he replied hoarsely, his own voice cracking with disuse. Without considering the possibility of injury, his only hand slipped through the bars, curling around the small of the man's back. "Warm."

He flinched very slightly, drawing in a shaking breath at the feel of another hand settling against his skin. It had been a long time since he'd been touched without the intention to direct or restrain or hurt behind it, but clearly none of that was the case here. The man on the other side of the bars was clearly helpless, exhausted, hurt, and he hurt to see him this way. Even if he couldn't remember why he should know him any other way, the sight was indescribably but no less definitely wrong.

Yet the other man was reaching out to him, reaching back. That meant something. That mattered - it had to.

He was so lost in these strange, overwhelming thoughts that he almost didn't realize that the man had spoken. Then he swallowed, nodded. His mouth twitched for an instant into something he no longer recognized as a smile. "Yeah." He felt quite cold, here on this bare concrete floor, pressed up against these bars, but he apparently ran at a higher temperature than "normal". Whatever that meant.

He could often remember snatches of conversation between the scientists and the guards, but could no longer remember his own name. It was like someone had built a great wall or dug an enormous pit, and if he looked too deep he'd just...fall.

He let himself continue touching, as much as he could reach. Just touching, gentle, careful, his body almost moving on its own in response to that indefinable sense of familiarity, like he could remember who this man was from touch alone. He stroked through the stranger's hair, trailed his fingertips along his cheek, rubbed his hand lightly over the back of his neck to maybe impart some warmth.

Then he faltered, catching sight of the swathe of stark white bandages. "Your arm..." Gone, obviously. It shouldn't be.

The skin under his fingers was warm, smooth and hard, the kind of skin that he might have identified as someone who was fit and strong, but it wasn't why he continued to dare leave his only arm in such an vulnerable position. There was a strange and almost foreign comfort in such simple touch, the act of giving in the same moment of receiving it. It also carried with it a sense of certain rightness that he couldn't remember experiencing, though he must have at some point. It was a relief to know something familiar like that again, basking in this strange attention with a man who he didn't even know the name of. Did they even have names in this place or were they just nothing?

His fingers slowly smoothed up the ridges of muscles of the blond's back, caressing and offering what little comfort that he could find. His finger tips ran across areas where he suspected something healing was there like a scab or tender new skin. For some reason, despite his disorientation, those injuries required his attention, his soft touch more than anywhere else, soothing away the hurt with a promise of something better, warmer, and far more well-earned than the violence that had created the hurt in the first place.

His head dipped towards the bars, feeling the tug of fingers along his hair and he drew his knees more towards his chest more for warmth than to protect any sense of modesty. He drooped his head to allow the touch to his neck, eyes closing momentarily before the tension was back at the mention of his arm, and he turned his head to his left as if seeing the fact that he was missing part of himself for the first time.

Old hurts ambushed him at the sight of the bandages, and he hissed softly, crawling more against the bars as if pressing more would allow him to escape he loss that he had suffered or perhaps the foggy memories of the pain that was ready to pounce if he thought too hard about it. "...gone..." he whispered hoarsely back. "I'm in pieces. They take it all away in pieces...."

"God..." He bowed his head, biting his lip almost hard enough to bleed and closing his eyes as though to banish the sight of the hurt. It was wrong, that loss, a wrongness that marred the otherwise indefinably warm sense of familiarity and rightness that seized him at the sight of this man, at the feel of his touch. "I'm sorry." He offered the apology out of sympathy - an emotion he was only just remembering to identify - but also out of a sense of guilt he couldn't place but that was no less raw inside him. The loss, the pain, the pieces...they were his fault. He didn't remember how, didn't remember why, but the sense of failure still made his eyes sting with the threat of tears, when they'd remained dry in the face of all the pain this place had piled onto him.

He didn't deserve these soft touches and the reassurances they conveyed as clearly as any words, but selfishly, he drank them in anyway like a dying man. And he offered his own reassurances in turn, touching gently, tracing his fingers along the edge of the bandages, soothing over bruises from restraints and ruthlessly applied needles and scabs of healing skin. All for the sake of just keeping up this newfound yet beautifully familiar and right connection between them. And he spoke, just because it had been longer than he could remember since he'd last spoken to anyone. "Shh, it's okay." It wouldn't - he wasn't sure anything would ever be okay, not least because he'd forgotten until this moment what "okay" was even like. But things were...better, now. "I'm here." He was here, they were together, and he knew in that moment that he'd do damn near anything to stay that way.

Steve didn't know where the words that he said next came from. But, with that same impulse that drove him on to touch, to connect with this man, he said them, whispered them like a prayer. They were meant only for the other man's ears, even if their captors were always listening.

"...'til the end of the line."

If it was possible, he snuggled closer to the harsh bite of the bars that separated them. He wedged the full length of his muscled arm through the bars despite them pinching and grinding on his biceps and triceps, wanting to be closer but unable to do more than that. He felt a brief and indescribable stab of panic that his ailment, his disability would drive this man, this familiar aspect of a previously isolated existence to do something that he could never stop. His arm curled almost desperately around the blond's waist as if to hold on, to prevent rash action, to be closer still.

"Don't go," he replied in a raspy voice when faced with the apology. He had no sense of time, but he suspected that if they parted they would be separated for a long time and he couldn't deal with that right now when there was finally a single bright point in his world. His fingers stroked as soothingly as he could manage across muscles laid over ribs, his temple coming to rest against the bars. He shivered as those gentle fingers found marks so similar to those he had found on the blond's body, a tale of abuse and roughness that they had suffered under. "Just like this. This is all I..." he choked on the word 'need' as if it had previously been stripped from his vocabulary.

That phrase whispered like a secret had his head coming around to peer through the cold of his cell into the one next to him. He stared blinking at the man on the other side, and the sudden warmth of his body made him consider the struggle of something inside of him. "To... the end of the line," he whispered back, keeping it even lower like a mumble. "...I know you," he added just as softly.

He pressed as close as he could, yet no matter how much he strained or reached, the bars remained an immovable, solid wall all along his side. The chill of the metal felt all the more sharp against his skin for how it contrasted with the warmth of the man on the other side of them, with the bright lure of familiar and right that he represented. He hated them all the more for standing between him and the promise, the real possibility, that there was something beyond these bars and this pain.

"I won't." It wasn't a promise he could make, and yet to say anything else was unthinkable. It was a sense he shared - that if this moment was allowed to end, it wouldn't be so easily found again. He knew, in that moment, that he would do anything to hold onto it. Until then, until he had to fight, Steve just let himself relax and bask in the warmth. "Just like this. I won't."

Like this, with this temple resting against the bars, he could look into the man's eyes for the first time. And what he saw there was something vast and deep and hidden, like the well of blackness in his mind.

This time, however, he didn't feel like he was falling. It felt more like flying. "Yeah," he murmured, as though tasting the word and all it meant. "And I know you." Didn't he? Not just here, not just now, but...before.

There must have been a "before".

In the shadows, with their hidden windows and listening devices, their captors watched and listened with baited breath. The two of them would already need another session in the chair after this, but now it was time to see just how much work was ahead of them.

And it could all come after they slept, the better to extract htem once more with a minimum of fuss and lost fingers.

But this bond, this connection, even that sense of knowing...they could potentially use that.

It didn't matter to the bruises that he would create with the force that he pressed himself closer to the bars because he was aware that it was a reciprocated action. They were kept apart only marginally, unable to curl together to share proper warmth and perhaps to chase away the cold of the aching emptiness that had bored a hole into his mind. He didn't remember, but this man next to him pressing hard into the bars was familiar in a way that nothing else in this environment ever was. His right side was warming though they had so little skin-to-skin contact, but it was enough to chase some of the cold away.

He watched and stiffened at the eyes that stared back at him from between the black bars. They were very blue, but there was a void there that looked as if it might be reflected in his own eyes. They were being taken apart in piece, bit-by-bit stolen from them until there would be nothing left, maybe not even aware of this familiarity? He railed against that as he had never fought physically against the restraints, though he had struggled. He couldn't lose that sensation, not after he had just grasped onto it.

He pressed his forehead forward, resting it between two of the bars and peering the short distance into the other man's handsome face. His fingers stroked gently up that broad bare back as his expression softened. "We're... together," he whispered softly, his tone evening as he relished the thought. "You're... like me being pulled apart, having things taken away... I can see it in your eyes." It was vast and gaping, but there was something dark that lurked there, something powerful that may be unleashed not on him but everything else.

"...can you bend the bars?"

No, he couldn't. He knew he couldn't. At the start, when he'd been strong, when he'd been whole, he could have pulled these bars apart with all his strength. But he didn't have all his strength anymore, he was exhausted and worn just from trying to hold on.

And yet, as impossible as he knew it was, it was suddenly unthinkable not to try when the other man asked him. For this impossibly familiar stranger, he would try anything. So he nodded, and pulled away just a little. "Yeah."

Just enough to properly take hold of the bars, one in each hand. He braced his knees against the cold, unforgivingly hard floor. And he pulled, he strained and he pried until his muscles stood out starkly against his skin, until it felt like his tendons would snap from his bones.

Yet if he could do this, they could be together. They cold hold fast to one another properly, even in this harsh, cold world, and maybe in one another they could find something of what had been taken from them. These were the thoughts he clung to as he hadn't been able to cling to anything else, these were the thoughts that fueled his efforts.

The steel separating the two men gave a warning screech.

And then, it was like flipping a switch. The door at the top of the stairs was flung open. Lights came on. Voices raised, footsteps hurrying over to them. Guards, too many guards, and some scientists trailing along behind at a safe distance. He fell back, gasping, panting, hurting, yet even then trying to ready himself to fight. He knew why they were here. He knew the only reason they could be here - to take the other man away again, and everything he represented.

He couldn't just let that happen.

He pulled away from the bars to watch, but he didn't have much hope of anything happening because he barely had to strength to stand, so how he could he expect the familiar warmth to have the strength to bend bars? He wasn't worth the risk and yet, his blue eyes opened wide when the blond tried anyway, forced to the limits for him when all they had was that sense of familiarity and nothing more than that. Maybe it was enough; maybe it made him understand that it would always been worth the effort.

At the warning screech of the metal bars, he suddenly threw his body against them, finding strength he didn't know that he had to shove his feet against one and his only working arm against the other, helping to contort the metal apart enough where he could consider being able to properly hold the other man. If anything, the fear lent him new strength as he shoved harder before he was left a panting mess.

Yet, guards and scientists spelled a certain kind of disaster and they were all lining up outside of his door. He pressed against the bars before looking at the source of warmth, the only good thing in his current miserable existence. What would he give to keep it?

Everything.

He suddenly pressed to the bent bars as the guards worked the locks of his cage open. He managed to force his head through the contorted metal and struggled, thrashed and pulled to get his shoulders through to the blond's side of the bars even as the noise in the area increased as scientists and guards yelled orders and tried to increase their speed. "Don't let them part us," he pleaded with the blond as he wiggled his shoulders enough to get to the other side, tearing bandages and scraping flesh as he went. Once his shoulders were almost entirely inside, he was aware of guards crowding closer to make a grab for his legs.

"Stevie!" Blasphemy fell from his lips, ripping from the abyss of memories.

He grasped desperately with fumbling, clumsy figures, grabbing hold of the other man to try to pull him through the gap. It wasn't a large gap, but with the man as starved and wounded and lessened as he was, he could just barely make it. He pulled, heedless of wounds and injuries, heedless of danger, just needing to have his friend here in his arms where he could keep him safe.

"I won't," he promised desperately around breathless sobs, trying to hold on. "I won't, I won't..." Others were trying to pull him back, pull him away, and Steve was almost about to give up in despair before the stranger cried out.

It was like being struck by lightning, energy lighting up every nerve. Something deeper and more primal than the shocks, something that healed instead of broke. Adrenaline washed through his mind, clearing away the fog that seemed to have an everpresent hold on him. That name, his name, echoed in his mind clear as a bell. Stevie. Steve. His name. How could he have ever forgotten?

"Bucky!" He was exhausted, wounded, weak, but for just a moment he was still stronger. At least enough to pull Bucky through to his side entirely, to wrap his arms around him and hold him close as the guards managed to get his cage door open. It wasn't a large cage, and there was only so many that could fit through to try to grab at them. Steve fought them off the best he could without letting go, shoving and snarling. "Let go of me! Leave us alone!" HYDRA. This was HYDRA, they'd been captured after the fall, oh god, how long had they been here...?

Steve Rogers. He was Steve Rogers, and this was James Barnes, his best friend.

He put up a good fight, but they were outnumbered and outmatched. Steve dug his hands in as tightly as he could before he felt himself torn away, felt them torn apart again, and no matter how he struggled and thrashed there always seemed to be more hands to hold him. "No!"

Insistent hands pulled at his kicking legs, trying to drag him back the way that he had escaped, though the rising panic in him to get to where Steve was gave him strength to squeeze himself the opposite to the hands. It was actually almost a shock when he was yanked through to Steve's side, the stone floor just as cold and unyielding as the side that he had come from, but it didn't matter either to him. He was where he needed to be, even if the bandages that had been wrapped around his upper body to keep his metal interface in his shoulder safe was exposed.

And he had a name. He almost choked on his warm joy of hearing that nickname tumble from Steve's lips, awakening grudging parts of himself. Unlike Steve, it didn't all come back but enough to have him clinging close to his friend.

There wasn't a lot of room for a fight, and he was honestly in no condition to do so. Only his fear and adrenaline kept him moving with his friend, keeping to Steve's back to prevent them from easily being pulled apart, separated. His right hand stayed at Steve's hip, allowing the touch to guide his own motions to keep close even if he didn't officially fight. It was a strange dance that had other prisoners peering, guards shouting and scientists howling about the damage being caused.

And then good things, simple though they were, came to an end. He was torn away from Steve, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, gloved hands seized him in the cacophony of their exhausted combat, and he was dragged further from the source of warmth, the one good thing in this miserable existence. He was torn away from his Stevie, and he yelled and howled until he was sedated and then there was only the cold impartial presence of guards and scientists.

The last thing Steve saw before he was sedated was Bucky, slumping limp and senseless in the arms of the guards, out of reach no matter how much he struggled. The sight sent a wave of numb, leaden despair through him, enough that he sagged n defeat while he waited for the by-now familiar feeling of a needle sliding home into his neck.

It was almost a relief, when the blackness started to close in on him. Dark senselessness was better than the agony of failure.

He woke up in the process of being secured to the chair, to the chatter of scientists and the creak of leather bindings and the hum of that damned, nightmarish thing. He could hear it whirring to life, crackling with the electricity that always hungrily scoured his mind, taking everything, leaving nothing.

A scientist was trying to force a mouthguard between his lips. Steve tried to bite, but two more guards held his head in place, forced his mouth open, and held it shut so he couldn't spit the thing out. It would only be worse for him if he did, but Steve didn't care, he didn't care how much he suffered just as long as he fought, but his limbs felt leaden and numb even besides the restraints and his vision was going black as the helmet descended over his head.

All was black and dark, isolated and cold. There were no more hands on him, but Steve barely had a scant second to consider any of that before pain.

It was like barbed wire being wrapped around his head, tearing and shredding, the hum of electricity blocking out any attempt at thought. It was like being burned away and broken down.

He tried to hold on. Steve Rogers. His name was Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers.

His name was...

His name...

His...

But it all slipped away, until he forgot even that he'd been trying to hold on to anything.

HYDRA wanted to make use of their bond with one another, now that it had proven so persistent. Even that sense of familairity, that sense of knowing and caring, could be used. But they had to be certain that it would only stop at a sense, that it wouldn't properly trigger memories. Reinforcing the damage done specifically to the memory portions of their minds could help ensure that.

Further contact would still have to be carefully monitored, but it would be arranged.

They gave it another few weeks, putting Steve ruthlessly back on his routine as soon as he recovered physically from the wipes. Once they were certain that he was no longer operating under the desire to see Bucky again, once they were certain that he'd lost any specific sense of who Bucky was...only then, did they re-introduce them.

This time, in a bare, white room, divided by a clear pane of soundproof, bulletproof glass with Bucky on the other side with his own escort of guards. His friend still only had one arm.

The team that worked on him didn't allow his mind to entirely shut off as they reinforced that his bad behaviour would earn him something that would lodge into his mind in that primordial lizard remnant of his brain. They tested the nerves of his left shoulder ruthlessly, earning screams as the hot burn of electricity was applied to each one. It might have gone on for hours, but time was a fickle thing while in the hands of HYDRA. It would end when they were both satisfied he was still in working order and had also learned a lesson that he might not entirely realize he was being taught.

His wounds were cleaned, scrapes and bruises cataloged with measurements, depth, and severity. His healing factor would always be compared to something else - someone else - though he would never know it as the constant chatter of numbers and impersonal touch worked over every inch of him. Only the occasional disgusted phrases like "what a mess" and "I told you it was too soon" reached the fog of his mind that focused all too sharply on the fading memory of warmth and safety.

Cleaned, bandaged, cared for and given the clear for health, they wiped him clean of all the little naughty details that he had gathered up. They made certain to do a good job, enforcing his behaviour with training and cues and more work to build him up. He was trained heavily, driving to the point of exhaustion every day and then back to the chair for more alteration. He was never ever to speak that name again. He was a weapon being forged and the only familiarity he was to have was how another weapon identified itself in another.

The day had begun the same, warm-up, checks, exercise, food, but he was put in different clothing. A grey t-shirt and sweatpants, though it was clear that he wasn't to take this as anything more than a new training session. He was in a white room with three guards at the door, and he noted the separation but more the man - no, the weapon - on the other side. He prowled only close enough to explore the full extent of his side of the room, eyes flicking around.

Finally, when it seemed that he wasn't about to either be attacked or trained or ordered, he shifted and settled down cross-legged in front of the glass and stared through at the other side, at the blond who tugged like fish hooks in his mind. It kept reeling him, a sort of insistent urging to be closer though he couldn't explain why or for what purpose.

He was also allowed to approach the glass divider, allowed to observe the one-armed man sitting calmly on the other side. He remained standing for a long moment as he regarded the stranger. Yet finally, moving almost unconsciously, he sank down into a sitting position, mirroring him, his gaze never wavering all the while.

He felt the guards approach, more than anything. He barely twitched at it, now, and it was more the instinctive flinch at being sneaked up on that all good soldiers learned. But he knew that they were his guards, his keepers, and that there was nothing he could do to stop anything they might do to him.

It was a minor relief, albeit a confusing one, when they only asked him a question.

What did he think of this weapon?

He mulled over the question for a long moment. Finally, a touch helplessly, he could only answer. "I don't understand. What does it matter what I think?" That was...unusual. Unfamiliar. That wasn't right.

Why, he was a weapon of HYDRA as well, after all. His poor, sporadic performance aside, they trusted him to understand one of his own kind. At a glance, what were his impressions about this one's capabilities? Was he worth the time and effort they were putting into him?

They expected the answer that came, of course. "Yes." But it was the reasons they really paid attention to. And as it turned out, they were good reasons that were given. Appropriate ones. The man on the other side of the glass had clearly suffered some significant damage in the past, above and beyond what had cost him his arm. Yet his gaze remained alert, his stance controlled, and while the missing arm was clearly an obstacle, it was one he had obviously learned to work around. With a replacement, he would doubtless be a valuable asset. It would be a waste to dispose of him, and in doing so recoup none of their efforts.

They nodded and made notes, and he allowed himself a moment to relax at the feeling of having passed some sort of test. But as was always the case with his life - what little he knew of it - the end of one test so often meant the beginning of another.

How much did he really believe in what he was saying? If asked to prove his belief in this weapon's potential efficiency, could he do it? How willing was he to work for HYDRA's glory and strength, piece by piece, starting with this man?

He stared at the stranger, and in the back of his mind he felt inexplicably drawn to him above and beyond what he should feel in regarding a subject. The answer he gave came from an unfamiliar place, shadowy and lost, yet he felt in his bones that no other answer was at all possible.

"Tell me what you want."

The guards on the other side of the glass were speaking to the other man. He couldn't hear what they were saying. It didn't matter.

His blue eyes drank in the way that the other man moved, the fluid motions that wasted nothing and barely hid the power of those limbs and body. He knew with only a few moments that this was a very deadly weapon if employed correctly, but it was also a weapon that was not yet completely molded like he was. There was always work to be done, always improvements to be made and aspects to filter and test to be certain that those harsh lessons had stuck correctly.

His own guards approached, but he paid them little mind as he instead continued to watch the weapon on the other side of the glass. They sat almost completely the same, but the other man was longer of limb and broader of chest than he was. No doubt stronger where he was faster and perhaps had more finesse, though having never seen this one move in combat training, he couldn't be certain. In a fight, he would certainly lose; his missing left arm was a disability that was impossible to overcome, though he had no idea if it had been removed purposefully or if he had suffered some accident that resulted in it being this way.

"What do you think of the weapon over there?"

He shifted his shoulders slightly and then stilled again. "If properly forged, the weapon will be unstoppable assuming that the hand on the trigger is capable of setting it." He stared across the way at the familiar sensation, the little prickle of disquiet in the blackness that was where memory would have been. It was quietest there where nothing else filled. They asked him more questions, quiet ones as if they were sharing some of kind of secret. He answered each blandly.

"What do you feel for that weapon?"

It was only then he turned his head to look up at the guards that flanked him. He tilted his head slightly as his mind rolled over the question, turning it about before he decided it wasn't a trick to earn him punishment. He went back to staring at the other man. "I do not feel," he said simply. "Being closer to him would be warm, nothing more."

That answer seemed to satisfy more than he would have thought that it would have. Then came the line of questioning on just what he would do for a chance to have that warmth from time-to-time. It seemed strange to be asked that as he had no concept of time and had by now gotten used to the fact that he was cold, but he admitted it would be novel to have some warmth for once. He told them as much.

So the reward system began to come together. He worked and did what he was told, he took on the missions that were given and in exchange, he might be given an opportunity to be warm. He shrugged almost indifferently, aware he would be doing what he was told regardless of any false promises made to him. He was a weapon; he had no choice in how he was handled.

The guards on one side of the glass exchanged words with the guards on the other side, speaking through walkie-talkies that weren't obstructed by the soundproof glass. They were, both sides, satisfied with the test. No, more than satisfied. They were excited.

He heard half of the conversation, but felt only the barest stirrings of curiosity. Even then, it was only for the sake of best anticipating what he would be needed for next. He felt for the mission, not for his own sake. Whatever would happen, would happen.

He would survive. And he would do as he was bidden, because he couldn't remember life being any other way. It was almost...soothing, to comply. When he did, it seemed to quiet the yawning emptiness that was otherwise always lurking in the back of his mind. He wasn't something, no, but he was more than the nothing the ruin of his mind told him he was.

Seeing the man on the other side of the glass was the first time he could remember really feeling something himself. So it was for the best, that it just so happened to be something he was allowed to feel. Something that he could serve HYDRA in feeling.

He did not want this man to be lost. It would be...a waste. HYDRA needed weapons. And no one weapon could change the world alone.

He was taken from the room after a few more words exchanged, and for the first time he was not put back in the chair. Instead, he was fed - the carefully calculated nutritional mass designed to keep him functioning without keeping him truly healthy. He was watched carefully all the while, of course, but that was nothing new.

Finally, they took him into another room, a room with a man tied to a chair. A man who was blindfolded and gagged, utterly helpless. They gave him a knife, and told him that the man was an enemy of HYDRA. One who would oppose, even dismantle, HYDRA's glorious plans for the world. A man who would take everything...everything they had built, and take it down to nothing. Down to the last weapon.

They told him to kill the man.

It should have been the easiest thing in the world, and yet Steve hesitated, for the barest fraction of a moment, before he brought the knife down. Something prickled in the back of his mind. Something familiar. And yet, in the end, it wasn't familiar enough. The blood was warm on his face. The man died almost instantly, choking on his own blood.

He was punished, badly punished, for his hesitation. A weapon of HYDRA must not hesitate. Yet the trial itself was a success, showing that their theory was sound.

HYDRA's other soldier would get his replacement arm, something functional and sleek, in development almost longer than the two had been held there. Something carefully molded to the interface embedded in his shoulder, that could react as smoothly or even better than his flesh arm. He would even be told why. Or at least, he would be told that the other soldier had secured his continued survival. All because each piece in the machine should look out for the other pieces, for the sake of securing the continued survival of the whole.

They would be expected to dispose of one another, if one proved a liability rather than an asset. But as of now, it looked like a bright new day for HYDRA.

And once they were certain that the soldier was acclimatized to it, they knew just who he could test it out on, too.

His guards exchanged whatever words were necessary and he continued to stare at the blond weapon on the other side of the glass. He didn't expect a reward for his answers; he had learned to expect nothing at all, just to exist in the last few weeks. When there was no pain, he was allowed to go into idle mode and linger in consciousness until the next order or test for him to perform. He was still requiring a lot of work given his disability.

When he was removed from the room with the glass, he only looked back once at the other weapon, his gaze lingering for a moment as if to assure himself that both of them were leaving. One was not abandoning the other. The sheer idea disquieted him, but there was no need for that idea to lodge because they both left at the same time with the guards to lead them in different directions.

He was put to sleep in cold and ice, the first to enter cryostasis. He was incomplete and thus slightly more expendable then the other man, so it was a process tested on him first, on the lesser serum that flowed through his body until the prosthetic had been shipped down from Russia to be equipped. He survived the subzero freezing, and the team that worked and knew him best worked to attach the new arm that would be his new one, to replace what he had lost and tip the balance of power so that it was far more even. He was kept asleep for that process but they warmed him appropriately.

Disoriented but with two working arms, he throttled a curious technician without the order. He was wiped clean after he was properly sedated, the imprint that the arm was part of him and he was to use it as such. Then he was put through drills and the full range of the limb tested on various substances to assure them of the quality. He was told that his cooperation would earn him a small warm spot now and again; he didn't think much on it.

Now that his metal arm seemed relatively indestructible and moved well, they had a single final test. He was to combat another weapon that was on the same level as himself, to show the full motions and abilities of his arm and to prove that their conditioning would hold if put in a situation where he would have to withdraw similar punishment as he gave out. The few mercenaries who had volunteered hadn't lasted long against him after all. It was better for bigger and better things.

While one weapon was put through his paces with his new arm, the other was put into cryostasis to wait, now that the process had been properly refined and they could be certain of bringing him out of it. He was awoken a scant day before the test, and because HYDRA did nothing if not learn from their mistakes, he was properly restrained until they could finish warming him.

It was a way to test how quickly their weapons could recover from cold sleep - they might need to be deployed at a moment's notice, after all - and also a way to further even the field between them. There was an undeniable, inescapable physical disparity between them. The serum in one was just stronger, more pure, than the serum in the other. The metal arm could make up some of that difference, but not all.

Yet that wasn't all they wanted to test. Before being brought out into the training yard, they gave him a weapon of his own - a shield, perfectly round, painted pure silver but for a red star in the very center. He could appreciate the design of it, the subtle brilliance of it. A target might subconsciously attack the more visible color, after all, rather than the man in black wielding the shield itself. And while on the surface, the cold and logical side of him questioned the offensive value of a shield, he nevertheless accepted it without comment.

And when he hefted it on his arm, something about it felt undeniably, indefinably natural. He discarded his doubts immediately.

He was to combat another weapon that was apparently on the same level as himself, to test himself in a live combat situation and to prove that their conditioning would hold. They weren't to kill one another, and they were to stop fighting immediately if ordered. Beyond that...anything was allowed.

His steps faltered for a moment when he was led out into the yard, with only two guards this time and three scientists fanned out behind him. He told himself that it was only the faint surprise of properly seeing his opponent, a pause to assess him. Even just from the way he moved and walked, here was clearly a fearsome opponent. He would definitely be in for a fight.

But he would fight to the best of his abilities. There was no other way to carry on.

As he took his place on one side of the field, Steve favored the man with a nod, even a faint smile. All their conditioning still hadn't been able to leave him entirely empty of emotion. There was an unthinking ease and courtesy to him, something that even now might be called charisma. Eventually, they had allowed it to persist. After all, it made him easier to work with. One day, it might even make him a leader.

But otherwise, he waited for the signal to begin. Once it came, he would try to close immediately, keeping the shield between them until the very last instant he was ready to strike.

Like most training days, he was taken out of his small confining cell and warmed with exercises and doing the new tests on the arm to make certain that it still followed his nerve commands. While he practiced, he heard the odds against him, that regardless of any upgrades that made to him, he was of the poorer stock when compared to the other weapon. The guards jokingly called him 'Soldier' for being the grunt worker, the one to get the jobs where he was considered more expendable. His opponent was called 'Commander' for being the superior one, perhaps even more proven in combat and the one who would perhaps always be the brains of an operation. He filed away those terms but had no opinion about them.

He wasn't allowed to have an opinion. He was to take the orders that he was given and use them to the best of his ability, and still be able to think on a mission when he was deployed. They were not yet entirely trusting that his abilities or his training would hold up on minimal supervision activity, but at the same time, he regenerated more slowly than the other weapon so he was less likely to fight back sometimes.

The Soldier was taken to the grounds where he was undertake this combat training for his arm but also as a comparison to measure himself against the other weapon. He flexed his shoulders, clothed simply in black combat trousers and a leather jacket. Unlike his fellow weapon, he wore a muzzle-like mask over the lower half of his face, keeping him from showing too much expression in case it might trigger something.

He carried knives along his legs and belt, no guns as they were required to close and combat with strength today. He stared at the other weapon, that sensation of fishhooks setting in his brain causing him to shift his footing as he remained a good distance away. He didn't acknowledge the other weapon at all, just stared the distance with his new arm glinting in the light of the room.

The combat training began, and he remained standing perfectly still as the distance between them closed. There was something about that shield, he decided. He waited, letting the other weapon close the distance until he could see right into the other man's blue eyes before he side-stepped quickly to avoid a strike, back-peddling smoothly to keep a relative safe distance, making the other weapon close on him rather than take the offensive just yet.

He heard those names, heard the something like twisted affection that lay beneath them. To the unobservant, to the outsider, they might almost have sounded affectionate. Yet he was not so far gone, not so unobservant, as to understand the truth. It was the sort of affection one might give a pet, which was to say it was undercut with scorn. He was indulged, regarded with rather more fondness than the soldier, because he was better at pretending to be a person.

He saw and understood all of this. Yet he remembered it only in so far as it might come up again for predicting the patterns of behavior in the people around him, for missions or similar. He remembered the name "Commander" only to respond when he was addressed as such, and only as some simple way of distinguishing himself from the Soldier. They meant nothing beyond that. Sometimes he thought he understood that better than the other soldiers.

He heard the odds being made, the bets and wagers, the catcalls and calls of something that might, for lack of a better word, be called encouragement. He almost pitied them, that their lives were apparently so empty that they had to find satisfaction in the performance of another, in petty distractions. The man standing across from him on the field...he seemed to understand, at least a little more.

The half-mask did disorient him for a moment - for a moment, there was a sense that there wasn't enough of this man, and that wasn't right. It was enough that he didn't anticipate the neat little sidestep. His opponent was there and gone in an instant. Yet he did recover quickly, pivoting on his heel to face the man again, bringing his shield around in a wipe swipe as he did so to ward off any knives that might have been coming for him in that moment of distraction. After that, he would go for the legs with a low kick, trying to scythe them out from under the other weapon.

The mask wouldn't catch him off-guard twice, especially not with any scrap of body language that might play into this fight. But it had put his opponent off to an advantageous start.

They had an audience for the combat training, both those who were taking notes on their progress, those of higher stations within HYDRA and some of those who were expected to handle one or both of them in the field at some point. It was far enough away so as not to interfere with any direction that their fight might go, though close enough where those in charge of arranging this could easily and effectively call it to a stop.

He darted backwards to avoid the wide swing of the shield, keeping just out of reach but still close enough to rap his metal fingers against the shield as he tested what it was made of based on the sound it made. It certainly didn't crumple, and there was an odd little gong that came from it like a large symbol ringing. It gave him information before he engaged, and that was how he planned on winning this contest in the first place.

He was underdog, the lesser of their pair of weapons. His skills didn't lay in brute strength, though he could activity engage. He decided quite simply not to. He let his other shadowy and questionable talents show instead.

He jumped the foot that swung out to trip him, dancing away neatly as he twisted so his metal arm flashed into the light of the room. He kept a few paces ahead, forcing this weapon to come to him rather than the other way around, drawing Steve in and displaying those powerful deadly skills to the betting audience. He hadn't even drawn a knife.

He was being played - he knew he was. Yet at the same time, he wasn't quite sure what to do about it. He hadn't been trained for subtlety, he'd been trained to use his superior physical attributes to their best advantage. However, all that training had proceeded under the assumption that none of his targets would be his equal - the Soldier was the closest possible.

It was...hard, trying to think in anything other than straight lines. Harder than it should be? It didn't matter. He needed to get in close, no matter what tricks his opponent might be planning or hiding. That was non-negotiable. That was the mission. To stay back galled at all his learned instincts. He couldn't subdue his target at a range...

The barest flicker would betray his sudden revelation, before it was immediately followed up with a hard toss of his shield straight at his opponent's head. He was already anticipating the rebound from the high ceiling if an impact failed, moving to meet it. If an impact didn't fail, then so much the better for him.

If nothing else, he knew that he should also get a proper sense of that arm and what it was capable of, above and beyond the fact that it was perhaps stronger even than him. Yet he didn't know for certain, and that was dangerous even in a training situation. They had told him that the shield wouldn't crumple under any impact. But even he was not half so durable.

While he wasn't paying that much attention, he sensed a stirring in the crowd when they didn't immediately move in and pummel each other. It seemed that the other weapon was also uncertain of what to do now that he wouldn't simply rush in and engage to show off his arm. However, his arm was a weapon upon a weapon; he used it when it was most beneficial for him to complete his mission. Right now, he was studying his opponent, so there was no point wasting himself on flashing it about.

Like now. He threw his metal arm up like a shield of his own in front of his head, knocking away the shield before he realized his slight error. He watched it ricochet away and return to the other weapon's hand, and he knew he should have caught it and perhaps used it for himself. Next time, he thought.

While the man was slightly distracted getting in place to grasp the shield, he drew a knife and threw it with deadly accuracy the distance that was between them.

((ooc: I'm cool with Bucky winning this, btw. Brings up some potentially interesting possibilities.))

This was good. It wasn't what they were expected to do, but it was better. More efficient, more productive. Surely that was worth more to their data, to their understanding, than simply pummeling one another into senselessness? He'd been given this weapon all of six hours ago - what could he do but experiment a little with it?

Better now than in combat. Better punishment for not performing according to specs than death for it. This was the first fight he could ever remembering having where he needed to think.

He'd been braced for the knife coming, piercingly aware of the inevitable threat, entirely conscious of the fact that there could be no guarantee of non-lethality where blades were concerned. Unfortunately, as he moved to retrieve his shield, momentum was against him, especially as he was naturally slower on his feet than the other weapon. He compensated well, and quickly, but not quite enough - the blade drew a long, deep gash across his shoulder, before embedding itself in the floor.

The pain was merely a flicker, something he spared an instant of thought for and a moment of gratitude that the wound hadn't been to his dominant arm before returning his attention to the fight. The Soldier wouldn't be getting that knife back. He had plenty more, obviously, but his reserves couldn't be infinite. That was something to keep in mind, at least.

Meanwhile, he knew it was nothing short of unforgivably dumb luck that had allowed him to retrieve his weapon at all. He hadn't expected the other weapon's reflexes to be quite so fast, even with the metal arm. He'd been wrong. A trick to remember for future missions against weaker men, perhaps, but not now.

While he was entirely aware that to get in close would be to play right into his opponent's hands, he was also cognizant of not really having a proper choice. He had been ordered to fight. It would be dangerous, but as long as he was confident in completing his objective, that should not concern him. He would learn. He would adapt.

He would survive.

All thoughts that flickered through his head in a blur, before he settled on his next move.

This being to heft the shield into a position to protect as many vital areas as it could, keeping it between him and the other man, and rushing in hard and fast. He would almost certainly get stabbed and slashed for it, but he probably wouldn't die and that was what mattered. The Soldier couldn't retreat forever in these confined quarters - bringing the scientists into the fight was unacceptable. He knew he had to get in close and stay there, to even have a hope of bringing this fight onto his terms.

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