fossilised | HYDRA world AU

HYDRA world AU

The world changed the day that Steve Rogers went into the ice.

Troops that had been following his exploits across the Allied Nations lost hope and lost morale, thinking that if even a super soldier could be defeated then what was the good of them fighting? Conversely, the Axis Powers grew more confident, hailing the defeat of Captain America, and that became a symbol for them to rally around. Technically, the Nazi Party won that war, but they were only in power for a year before HYDRA grew tired of being merely a part of a whole and decided to subsume their former masters.

They, after all, had no real interest in eugenics or genocide, that was the way to rule a single country. They wanted world domination, and they got there through careful promises, through underhand dealings, and by convincing the public that the freedoms they were giving over were for the greater good. After all, how could HYDRA protect them without knowledge, without obedience?

Years turned into decades and what had begun as a tentative regime had become all-powerful and tyrannical as technology boomed and citizens were born into this new world order. Children were taught from a young age, scared with stories of the Soldier. A boogieman to most, a whispered secret of its actual existence to others, the Weapon sent in when all else had failed. At least fifteen organised rebellions had been quelled by its deadly presence alone, and now most feared to even try.

The Soldier was an obedient tool.

Until the day it disappeared.

It had been a fairly routine mission, just reconnaissance on a boarding school down in Texas to make sure that nothing subversive was being taught on the curriculum after rumours to the contrary had reached powerful ears. It had sat and stared down a scope for 72 hours and seen nothing, heard nothing, and so it left as ordered, neither disappointed or elated at not having to kill that day. Its next mission was to take out a tanker of supplies on the Arctic ocean, kill all souls aboard, and make it look as though one of their enemies to the East had done it.

Simple.

The Soldier didn't like the cold. It wasn't supposed to like or dislike anything, and so it carefully guarded that secret, but it didn't like the cold. It was reminiscent of storage, and of a place coated in snow that was synonymous with pain. But that dislike didn't cause any hesitation, and the Soldier dived into the frigid waters from its dinghy to swim toward the ship. But something stopped that progress. Something sighted under the water, something inside frozen ice. A face that caused more pain than even the freezing water, that made the Soldier believe its heart was about to stop dead. Something in its head broke, a reset button to the orders given, and suddenly nothing seemed more important than to collect that someone frozen in ice and protect him. Keep him.

It took nearly 40 hours to drag the ice floe to the surface and chip away enough to retrieve the body inside, and another 24 to get to shore. Even the Soldier's enhanced body was pushed to its limits from the prolonged exposure to the cold, and the extreme physical effort it took. But eventually the Soldier and its captive (Ste--?) were ensconced in a small abandoned building.

Steve would wake up naked, on the floor, and being stared at by a man all in black leather with a mask hiding his face.

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Trying not to think about the restraints now that they were off, or about the dark places his mind had taken him while he had been left alone, Steve dressed quickly, aware that the clothing only just about fit him. The slogans were off, but he couldn’t see the small HYDRA University logo so he picked that tee and tried not to think about it too much.

He wasn’t planning on saying anything to James, not even glancing up into dark, smudged black ringed eyes once his fly was done up and he and forced his feet into the sneakers.

Not until he’d mentioned that Steve was just as dead now as his friends likely were. “Everyone I know is dead,” he said, distant and deep. “Probably for the better. No one would want to live in this world. I’m guessing they’ll be looking for you though. What’s the game plan?”

"I don't know."

The Soldier should start to change too, but there was reluctance to put on the new clothing. This body armour, these weapons, these were the materiel allowed and given. So many rules had already been broken, but it was hard to break them all. Willpower had to be scavenged and saved for the important rules.

"I don't know why I pulled you out of that ice. It wasn't my mission, I've never failed a mission before, I've never not gone back."

So why now? What the hell was so special about Steve that he superseded an order given directly by a handler?

HYDRA operatives, from all Steve had learned, were either loyal or cowardly. That’s how the Allies felt about the Axis too. It was in all of their propaganda. Evil was evil by default. It was in their nature. But this man, this Russian, he seemed to have been born and bred into HYDRA. Maybe everyone in this world was and Steve didn’t have a chance. Then again, look at him. Loyal to a fault. He’d never failed a mission.

But here he was, proving himself to be a decent man, rescuing him.

There was a chance that the whole world was like this, or enough that Steve could maybe affect change. He had to steel himself, stay focused.

“Listen pal, I don’t know. Maybe when you found me and figured out who I was, you decided that the symbol of good was worth going against orders. We can try to fix all of this, together. We just have to trust each other. Or try to. I’m guessing history wrote me in as some sort of monster.”

He couldn’t help but smirk. He kind of was a monster in a way. Like Frankenstein’s creature.

“You’re doing the right thing, son.”

Son. God that was irritating, Steve was such a little--

"I'm older than you, pal."

The words just seemed to come from nowhere, like the Soldier wasn't even consciously aware of having said anything. It certainly wasn't something planned to say, especially when the words came tinged with a Brooklyn accent instead of the Russian one that had been chosen before. This wasn't normal. The Soldier never slipped, never forgot little details, and never did anything not preplanned. Besides, it was nonsense, for all the Soldier knew, Steve was the elder of the two of them.

There was a moment of silence before the Russian accent was back, stronger, almost as if in defiance of what had just happened.

"And I didn't figure out who you were, you told me. Steve, an American soldier."

No. That was cruel. As cruel as using the name James against him. Steve was trying to stretch the shoes out on his feet, rocking forward on his toes now that his rousing speech had ended and nearly stayed up there, looking somewhat like a puffed up goose. Slowly, he rolled himself back down on his heels.

It hadn’t been too long ago, to him, that he’d heard Bucky’s voice. He knew it like he knew he was right handed and all of the stats of the Dodgers from their ‘42 season. The man might have just switched back to a now really phony sounding (to Steve) Russian accent, but the damage had been done.

“I’m Steve Rogers.”

And Bucky Barnes had fallen to his death sixty-five years ago. Steve hadn’t been able to catch him. And yet, here he was.

“And yeah. You might be older than me so I guess that counts,” he tries, voice weak. “Age before beauty.”

There was something about the way that Rogers was looking at him that made him think that he'd made a very big mistake. But how big? Did Rogers recognise the Soldier (no, impossible, even the Soldier didn't predate the war)? Was it just that the accent shift was obvious?

Urgh, he could kick himself.

Not that any of this showed on his face, the Soldier had become extraordinarily good at keeping any thoughts below the surface. A weapon wasn't supposed to occasionally think irritated or snarky comments, after all.

"How is Steve Rogers a symbol of hope?"

“He’s not,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice even. He couldn’t. It threatened to crack at every syllable. “I’m not anything. Never was meant to be anything at all, but I had to be real stupid and try to follow you to war, didn’t I? A lot of real good people make up the symbol of hope. I just wear the clown suit and carry the shield.”

He wasn’t close enough to reach out and take off the mask, but he wanted to do so. Badly. He pressed forward on a throbbing foot, the weird rubber sole of his shoe sticking to the dirty floor.

“Stop sassing me, Buck.”

Something had definitely changed here, Rogers was singing from a hymn sheet that the Soldier hadn't got a copy of. It looked like the damn idiot was going to cry all over his stupidly massive face.

"James."

Was this like the Jimmy thing from earlier? Though why Buck, that made no sense? Then again, none of this crazy few days made any kind of sense, and the sense meter was just dropping ever since Rogers opened his blue eyes.

"You were a symbol for the US army during the war, that's why your suit looks like the old flag?"

Maybe he really would cry. Steve had always been sensitive. The army had beaten a lot of that out of him and Bucky’s death might as well have sealed the deal for him and tears forever. It felt like just a few days ago that it had happened and for him, it really had just been a few days ago. No matter what accent James used, Steve could still hear his real voice through it. And it stabbed at him with every pause.

If ‘James’ was going to insist on the name, Steve wouldn’t push him. Something had happened when he fell, just as it had happened to Steve when he went in the ice. Their bodies, the serum, it wouldn’t let them die. Not easily. And now Bucky was back. Just changed. HYDRA had gotten to him, but he was still in there. All of this proved to Steve it had.

He lowered his long eyelashes before he pushed too much. His breathing shook, but he commanded it to stop. Just for now.

“Something like that.” This could all be a ploy. This could all be an elaborate HYDRA plot. But should Bucky be alive and they both be stuck in a future neither understood, Steve would be there for them both. And that required more strength than he could muster right now. Best be at least a little wary. “That mask probably gives you away. Get changed.”

The whole outfit gave him away. Nobody just walked around in combat leathers and a high durability mask, let alone sported as many weapons as he did. But to hear it spelled out so blatantly was a bit annoying. This order giving would have to be nipped in the bud, the Soldier was the head of this particular mission.

God, wasn't that a scary thought, the Soldier shouldn't be the head of any mission.

There was no reason to be suspicious of that observation, though he was naturally on edge now because of whatever had changed. Every aspect of Rogers had shifted, right down to his body language and tone of voice, but it wasn't a puzzle that could be unpicked now.

So, almost reluctantly, the Soldier did as he was told. The mask came off, and the face beneath was blank, a hardness to the lines of it that spoke of long years of violence. Then the tactical vest, unveiling the arm, and finally his pants. The new clothes weren't ideal, too tight in the legs, but they'd have to do and so he pulled them on, slowly but surely.

All the while, Steve Rogers stared. There was nothing else that morbidly fascinated look he was giving James could be called. The person that pulled him from the drink, that saved him from the ice, that touted HYDRA propaganda and could speak in a convincing Russian accent, was Bucky Barnes.

It took everything in Steve not to collapse, though his knees felt weak in a way that they hadn’t since Peggy kissed him. Or he kissed her? She came and went from his mind in mere moments. He was much too focused on the man dressing in front of him.

“What happened to you,” he asked, swallowing back pain.

The Soldier would have had to be made of wood to not notice that creepy staring, and he was seriously considering punching Steve right in his stupid face to stop it. It was unnerving. It's not like people never watched before, people often observed the weapon, but they never stared and saw him, like he was a long lost pet or something.

The look he shot Steve at the question was equal parts irritation, confusion, and blank non-recognition. It should be obvious that he wasn't playing games here. What happened to him? When? Maybe Rogers meant the arm, not many civilians had seen such an advanced prosthetic before.

So he flexed the fingers and shrugged. "I don't remember. Why?"

It didn’t actually matter that James didn’t know him. Steve was never the sort of guy that could shut his feelings off because they were one way only. He just sucked it up and moved on. He’d done it with Bucky before. Mostly out of shared necessity. And now he could do it again.

It just wasn’t so easy now. Losing him once had been a kick to the system. Gaining him back to lose him again had been all the push he needed to go on his final suicide mission.

And now this.

“It’s... advanced. More advanced than you’d think you’d ever see. Does it hurt?” He had to ask questions or he’d babble. Or try to hug a guy who probably hadn’t been able to recognize anyone in decades.

"Pain levels are at baseline."

There was always some level of pain with the arm, it was attached to him in a way that prosthetics should never be, and only his super soldier serum kept it from completely wrecking his back or even tearing muscle as it pulled its way off.

James finished dressing, looking no less dangerous in jeans and a shirt than he had in his combat leathers. He proceeded to remove no less than four guns, six knives, and a grenade from his previous clothes and start to stash them about his body.

"You should eat. A body requires sustenance following defreezing."

Steve felt like he had to sit on his hands, and the next best thing to that was to shove them into the pockets of his jeans. This whole thing was surreal and if he had been any other man, he might have thought that he was actually dead. This couldn’t be heaven and he didn’t think he qualified for Hell, unless the Bible got it all wrong and evil as he knew it had turned upside down. This seemed a little subdued for demonic torture anyway. And Bucky was the last person Hell would ever let inside.

Breathing hurt again for an entirely different reason. Leave it to Bucky, even this Bucky, to insist that he ate. It was like they were teenagers again and Bucky purposefully claimed he was full from lunch (despite having two hollow legs in which his food could disappear) so Steve could have some of his sandwich.

“You’ve got to eat too,” Steve said, making use of useless hands to grab the bag of room temperature burgers and offer one yellow and red wrapped monstrosity to his old friend.

James had a hand half reached out towards the burger when one of the windows shattered and a smoke grenade launched inside. Damn it, they'd been found. The Soldier moved on instinct, faster than thought, to grab the mask and push it onto Steve's face to filter out the worst of it and stagger for the back door.

"Go left. Hit back roads, head low, don't move too fast. They're not looking for you. Head east out of town, I'll find you."

Why?

Why was he so insistent to find Steve Rogers again and keep running? He belonged to HYDRA, he should let them take him in for reconditioning because something had clearly gone badly wrong in his programming. But for some reason he was driven now by an imperative far deeper than anything he'd ever experienced before. Protect Steve Rogers. And apparently that meant keeping him out of HYDRA hands, despite HYDRA being the ones in charge of everything.

He didn't even wait to see if Steve listened, he just grabbed the rest of his stuff and took off out front like a bat out of hell, already firing his gun.

Running was more comfortable to Steve than many people in the propaganda department liked to think. When cornered, when standing up for someone else, he stood his ground. This was less about being right and defending that righteousness and more about escape. He was perfectly capable of escaping, especially when he didn’t have enough information to do otherwise.

Trying to pace himself, to run more like a normal human being, however, wasn’t something Steve had a lot of practice with. He gave it his all, holding back only due to safety of others. Trying to mimic them, however, wasn’t so easy. He’d broken a lot of things at first until he trained his hands not to exert so much strength, but he’d never had to train his legs for that.

Steve took off, banking cars and jumping over dumpsters. People in masks and red HYDRA kraken symbols came after him, but Steve stayed just ahead and tried to give them no reason to keep after him. Especially when Bucky ramped up behind him.

At least he had his shield, scooped up on the way out. He shimmied up a drain pipe to a second story building overlooking the rocky shore of the ocean by the coast when he was sure no one was after him and hunkered down in the shade.

He didn’t know to stay clear of Big Brother. He didn’t even know what surveillance was, but he did know to keep out of sight and in the shadow.

God damnit, did Captain fucking America not know how to take an order? He said don't move too fast!!!! The Soldier saw HYDRA battalions peel off after the clearly super human secondary target, and that meant his face would be captured and run through facial recognition and then they'd know who he was and that he wasn't dead.

Anger gave him an extra boost and one by the time he got away into the back streets himself, he had brain matter lodged between the knuckles of his metal hand. He was panting as if he'd been running too hard, but it was weird in that it wasn't abating even when he slowed up. Shaking, too. He had no idea that it was panic, sheer terror at going against the people that owned him when everything down to a molecular level had been taught very painfully never to do that.

He even threw up down a drain.

But by nightfall he'd made it out of the city, and nearing midnight he came across Steve's hiding spot, scowling and pale.

"I said go slow and keep your head down."

Asshole.

“I did what I could,” Steve muttered, not lying. He could smell gore and sick, the smells of war, and oddly enough, it calmed him. Relieved him almost. He’d heard tales of wounded soldiers going home without the ability to blend back into life, unable to step to the beat of Not War. Steve hadn’t understood that until now. He was used to being under fire. He was used to the fight. It was comfortable. Even hiding, in a way, had been comfortable.

Pushing the ballcap back over his head, mask at his feet, he looked towards Bucky’s scowling face with a smirk. At least he was covered. They might still be able to recognize him, though knowing a man just by his eyes was still difficult. And no one would believe that Steve Rogers was actually alive.

If anything, they might assume the Soldier has liberated one of their test subjects. They had tried to make sure none were blond or blue eyed like all of the Soldier’s handlers, made sure none looked somewhat of Steve Rogers, but suitable candidates for the resurrected Project Rebirth were few and far between.

“Buck, I don’t know what happened between the train and now, and I’m not gonna press because it’s probably been a lot longer for you than it has been for me, but can you drop the accent? It’s weird.”

Steve pulled himself up and shouldered his shield. It was a natural move, though he had been carrying it under his arm during his run to at least attempt to disguise it.

Okay, that was the second time that he had been called Buck and he did not like it. The name did weird things to the inside of his head, it gave him vertigo even when he was standing still on solid ground, and it gave him a simultaneous urge to both punch something and scream until his lungs bled.

He did none of those things, instead he just delivered a swift and vicious punch to Steve's stupidly oversized face.

"James."

Despite the punch, his words were as soft and virtually without inflection as before, though he did allow the Russian accent to fade out more. The accent he was left with was... odd. Half Russian and half Brooklyn, fading in and out of each like a bad gramophone record, but it also sounded truthful and natural.

Though Steve might admit that he deserved that punch, he was honestly surprised by how quickly he tasted blood and how his whole body had been forced back. That was new. His left foot had slid behind him to keep him from falling over, and he pushed off of that to stand straight again.

“You never liked James. And now I’m getting punched for it? Not sure how that’s fair.” Steve was overcompensating. Or maybe he was too easily falling back into the camaraderie that he and Bucky had always shared.

Being near him just made it click, but obviously the other man didn’t care for the implication. Maybe he didn’t remember him. Or maybe he hated him. Sixty-five years was impossibly long but Bucky didn’t have the answers to any of this and so Steve wasn’t going to ask him. He licked the blood off of his lip instead and cleared his head with a shake.

He didn’t like this accent either, but he couldn’t go back to staring longingly at a friend that might not actually exist.

“Fine. We’ll say I deserved it, all right?”

A small part of him was very satisfied at getting to knock Rogers back. As if he had been wanting to knock sense into him for time immemorial but had never been able to before now. But that was dumb, they had only just met.

"It's a name. I don't like it, I don't dislike it. But it's the cover I've chosen for this mission, so it's important to stick to it for continuity. People hear a different name, they think liar."

That wasn't entirely true. He was somehow attached to James, but he could never admit that. A part of him still thought that when this was over, when he had done whatever he was supposed to do with Steve, then he'd go back and give up his name and his irreverent thoughts and go back to being the weapon he was.

A life of freedom was for humans, after all. And he wasn't that.

Healing quickly, Steve didn’t even bother to wipe at his lip with his hand. His tongue had done the work and the swelling had taken care of the rest. In an hour or two, he’d even forget the ringing in his ears or the copper tasting pain at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. It had been quite awhile since anyone had gotten a good hit on him, other than the Red Skull.

But he was gone now. More gone than Bucky had been, and certainly not capable of suddenly rematerializing the way his friend had out of no where in the future. Or so he hoped.

Steve let his shoulders fall.

“You really don’t know me,” he said with a poignant sadness to his voice. “I’m gonna fix that for you soon, James—“ Uh it felt so wrong to even think let alone say, “but I think we ought to get a move on now.” He’d handle the whole mission issue once they had settled.

He really wasn’t a fan of this new patient Rogers with a desperate sadness behind his eyes. He didn’t understand this one, he understood the one that had woken up with him, all suspicious and cautious, that made sense. This just made him mad because it was probably true that they had known each other once, the Soldier was wiped frequently and aware that memories were often a fleeting thing. But he was rarely confronted with someone who knew him when he had no briefing in return. It wasn’t fun.

Instead of arguing, the Soldier just nodded with a grim expression and set off down the road, keeping to the shadows by the cliff verge.

“You need to learn to follow orders if we’re gonna survive this.”

Just saying. That escape sucked.

“We’re gonna have a problem,” Steve conceded. “I’m not known for following orders.” It wasn’t just a tease. He was pretty sure that if he hadn’t been helping the troops to win the war, he’d be court marshaled for the amount of times he’d gone against a directive by someone higher up the chain of command than he himself was.

After a moment, the blond did at least follow Bucky, did at least attempt to stay hidden. It would become a lot less easy to do so as the dawn broke, both because of the sunlight and because they had more or less run out of town. Hamlets dotted the Alaska coast, but there were stretches of a hundred or so miles of bleakness in between.

They’d be sitting ducks in the open. No one in Alaska walked. And God knew what the Canadian border looked like these days. Steve shielded his eyes from the sun as they headed towards the sign pointing back towards the town they had just left.

“Where are we going? I don’t think we can just walk to DC and demand a surrender.”

Edited 2019-03-19 11:15 (UTC)

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