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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“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)

The obvious answer would be that they needed to get out of the country to one of the few parts of the world not under HYDRA control, but that brought with it a host of its own problems. They'd also be hunting him, but for war crimes, so they wouldn't be much better off than staying here.

"We going to find a car."

Steal a car, was what he meant.

All those decades of training to be a ghost, now he would find out if they were good enough to even hide from the ones who ruled the world. If he were on his own then he'd be confident, but with Steve "I am loud and stupid and don't follow orders" Rogers, then it might be more difficult.

"You learn to follow orders, or you'll be left behind."

Honestly, Steve didn’t think so. James remembered him, or part of him did. Something compelled him to snap out of HYDRA brainwashing for long enough to pull him out of his grave and see that he was revived. He’d have to work on him, though that certainly would not be easy while they were fleeing a world government super power.

Something being hard was not reason enough for Steve Rogers to back down. In fact, he wasn’t exactly the type to back down for anything.

James would have his super human hands full with this one.

At least he could read between the lines on what borrowing would mean. And in this case, he was fine with it. Sometimes being in war made you do some bad things. Plus—

“It’s all HYDRA. Got to say I don’t feel bad for stealing from them.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about everyone being part of the bad guys, though. He’d process that and war with it later. Right now, they would have to borrow that car soon. They were becoming few and far between. Luckily, one of the more country houses didn’t have just a pick up truck in the driveway. Steve approached the bright blue compact car with a frown.

“People drive these...?” He was used to something far bigger.

Steve had no idea just how right he was with thinking of brainwashing, and yet no clue just how bad the whole world had become. James Barnes died a long time ago after falling from a train; he resisted for a long time, for months during which Captain America went on a rampage slaughtering any HYDRA bases he came across, but then the idiot had put his plane in the ice.

The day they told him that Steve was dead, that was the day they broke him.

James eyed the car sceptically for a few minutes, assessing it for how inconspicuous it would be, how well it would run, and if it might be a trap. He got down on his knees and pulled a few wires free from under the car and then nodded.

"It'll do for now, get in."

He was driving. No arguments.

"...we're going south, and then I'll draw up a more complete plan."

Bucky had never exactly been a strategic mastermind. Or much of a drawer. The thought was painfully funny to Steve, who found himself grinning before biting it all back again. James would be lost on the humor, or he’d pretend to be, or he’d hate Steve more for it.

The slope was slippery and ill-defined. It would be treacherous to proceed and so he wouldn’t. Schooling his face back down easy, too. Bucky wasn’t Bucky anymore.

He was a ghost. A shell. In there, somewhere, Steve was sure of it, but this hurt.

And finding him would take a good, safe place... he needed to focus on this mission. “You should drive. Do you know where we’re going? I’ve never been through Canada. Do they still check for passports like at Niagara Falls?” He’d always wanted to see those and honeymoon there like everyone else his age did.

What was this guy? Some sort of talk show host, he never shut the hell up and it was grating on James' ears. Or maybe that was just the sound of his voice, so alien to him after all of these years and yet familiar in a way that made him want to peel his own skin off.

"No. It's all HYDRA territory here, no borders."

Although thinking about his irritation with Steve's voice did bring him to an important point.

"You're gonna have to work on your accent, it'll make you stand out. Nobody talks like that. And grow a beard, hide your face."

A beard? Steve touched his face, thinking about it. Growing a beard wouldn’t be a problem. It’s not like he had his shave kit on him and lice probably weren’t a huge problem in the cold the way they had been in the Forests of Europe. Changing his accent might be tougher, but Steve had served with a lot of guys. He could probably mimic most of them if he tried.

“What’s wrong with it?” He asked, trying to sort through it all. “There’s got to be a Brooklyn still.”

Now he was just being difficult because of Alaska had signs in both English and German and it had been sixty years since Germany took over the world... he was a smart guy. He could put two and two together. He just didn’t want to.

The thought was so foreign.

He wasn’t going to affect a German accent.

He wasn’t even sure he could fully drop the Brooklyn vowels.

It was harder even than just a full German accent. Because HYDRA had operatives everywhere, and generations of native language were almost impossible to wipe out, the accent of the USA was now a bizarre combination of German and American. James could mimic it, though his natural accent was Russian (and apparently an old-school Brooklyn occasionally around Steve), and so he shifted to the correct accent so Steve could study and mimic it.

"Sure, there's a Brooklyn, but this is how people talk now. And you've gotta be able to speak German, do you speak German?"

This could be really difficult if not.

"And you need a cover. A name, a profession, papers."

“Never had a lot of use for it,” Steve said, watching Bucky rewire the car so it would start. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, or how something this small would go, but he wasn’t much of a driver himself. He preferred a bike if he could get it. That might be even more conspicuous though.

He stood with his hands on his hips, frowning. He liked the new accent Bucky was using even less than the last one. It made his skin crawl.

“But whatever you say, pal. If I need a new name for now and documentation, just point me in the right direction.” Steve would find that faking credentials now, however, was much tougher than it had been when he was trying to join the army.

Urgh, how did he get stuck with the one person in pretty much the whole civilised world who didn't speak German? Even the people in non-HYDRA occupied countries learned it as standard, since the probability of having to travel to, or do business with, those nations was extremely high.

It was additionally annoying because he would be relying on Steve for most of the physical interactions with people. Just one glimpse of James' face on surveillance and the whole of HYDRA would come down on them.

"--we'll go to Stark."

Howard Stark, after the war, had become a giant in telecommunications, weapons, and other technology. He and his wife had been killed as subversives for having too much contact with Peggy Carter, a woman who lived in the underground and ran a moderately successful resistance movement.

Tony Stark had only been a teenager at the time, and he had been paid a visit by the Soldier to make sure he had no subversive tendencies of his own. James was fairly sure the guy probably still had bed-wetting nightmares about him years later. But he was as good as shot as any. Even if he hadn't been pulled in yet - he made donations to the right places, he did the salute at official events, he toed the party line - he had a bunch of minor infractions against him and there was pretty strong evidence he might have subversive contacts.

The car sputtered into life and James pulled out, expertly moving through the gears, and floored the accelerator while there was nobody around.

"And practise the damn accent."

“Howard’s still alive?!” How could be practice the damned accent if he was excited? Did HYDRA crack some sort of immortality gene? Is that why Bucky looked (sort of) like he had when Steve lost him? And if Howard was alive now too? That was pretty much the most exciting thing he’d heard all day. Well, everything pretty much beat ‘we are all HYDRA now and we all speak German and you’ve got to grow a beard like a lumberjack.” Steve wasn’t sure if he’d do that or not.

He got into the car before Bucky could correct him, thinking back on how much he admired and hated that man. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Would he be young, like Bucky, or old? Maybe he was some brain in a jar?!

Excuse his imagination but they were decades in the future and dime store novels taught him to expect jet packs and time machines.

"No. Howard and Maria Stark were eliminated in 1991 for arranging subversive meetings, speaking against the appointed HYDRA government, and connections with undesirables. I executed them."

James delivered all of that with a blank, non emotional tone. Though he had somewhat broken through his programming to rescue Steve, he was far from human again. He was still a weapon, and a weapon felt no guilt or sorrow over completing a designated task.

"I also tortured Tony Stark, their son, for 52 hours to determine his involvement. That's who we're going to see."

Any thrill, any amusement that might have been felt was now completely gone from Steve’s body. He stared at Bucky for much too long before he turned to gaze through the windshield. He didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t have anything to say for once, either.

As he settled back, an alarm went off in the car since he had not put on his seatbelt, but having no frame of reference, Steve Rogers did what he thought best. This alarm could only be an alert about incoming hostiles from what evidently was a radar system inside of the car. A good piece of technology, translated from tanks and planes likely.

He went for the handle of the car door, to find that it would not open on its own. Self locking had not been invented in his time.

So, Steve did the next best thing he could and kicked open the car door before rolling out. It was very grand indeed, but luckily it occurred in an area devoid of most people. There were no cameras to catch the act, or to catch Steve looking for enemies like an idiot, car door still in hand in case he needed a shield.

What the fuck?

Instinct had him slamming the brakes on a second before Rogers kicked the door out and rolled onto the tarmac, so the car only stopped a short distance down the road. At first he thought they might be under attack and so he exited the car himself with a weapon in each hand, but... no.

"Why did you do that?"

Idiot.

Goddamn stupid idiot.

Even if his words were still locked behind the Soldier facade, understated and flat, his expression very clearly said that Rogers had never looked so punchable.

That was a look that Steve had seen many, many times. Bucky used to want to beat him senseless twice a week, mostly because Steve deserved it, and it was only because he was such a good fella that he didn’t kill his sickly, small, infuriating friend a thousand times over. Steve was no longer sickly or small, and Bucky had already punched him yesterday so they were off to a fine start at this new, impossible life they had together now.

Blue eyes turned sharp when Bucky approached, though he lowered the car door instead of lift it towards the man carrying two guns and stalking down the road in his direction.

“Your radar went off, but I think it’s not working,” Steve said, no longer worked up enough to try and sound out his words into a more Midwestern tongue. Neutral. Bland. God it was hard. “What can you tell me about their technology now?”

"That was an alarm to say you didn't have your safety belt on."

Even the Soldier, kept sequestered from the world, knew that. It was hard knowing that Rogers was from too far back to know this stuff, because James had been wiped too many times in the interim to really know what was modern and what wasn't.

Seemed like this would be a learning experience for them both.

"You saw me pull out the tracking system before we got in."

That was the wires he had tugged free to begin with. "Now we need another one."

Oh. Steve frowned, almost concerned. “Why would the car care if I was... uh. I guess that’s pretty clever...”. He ditched the door by throwing it across the street and it landed mostly covered by tall grass. Good enough.

There would be a lot of walking until they got to the next suitable car and this time, Steve clicked the belt into place as soon as he got inside the passenger door.

No need to cause a fuss with the safety system.

Traveling after that was more monotonous than difficult. Neither man needed to sleep that much and they could usually find abandoned buildings to sleep in as they took the back roads mapped out by a small television set inside the car. Steve was fascinated by it, and watched it more than he did the passing scenery.

When they needed to eat, there was more stealing. Steve didn’t feel too good about that though.

“These people look like they can’t spare it,” he complained. “Don’t you remember being hungry?”

Even if Steve found the road travel monotonous, the Soldier found it soothing. Though there was an ever present itch at the back of its head warning about how much punishment would come at the end of this off-script road trip, it was-- nice for once to be going somewhere with the intent of helping rather than harming.

That was an incredibly illegal way of thinking, though, so he tried not to think about it directly just in case there was something in his head that would be able to track his thoughts.

James merely continued to pack food away into his pockets and a small bag that had been in the back of their second car, without any guilt.

"Yes." Frequently. Hunger had been used as a punishment before, and the Soldier was only ever given enough to function and never enough to feel fully satiated thanks to the serum. "It's irrelevant. We require it for the mission, that's all that matters."

“People’s lives matter,” Steve responded. He was the guy that believed in the good of all, not the good of some. Or even the good of most. That had always been a sticking point between himself and those above him in the chain of command.

It was why he never played real well with others. Not even the people that called him their leader. Those days were likely really far behind him now.

Just as well.

Steve stood in the home of the people Bucky was stealing from, looking at photographs on the wall. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen them, these modern day photos. So realistic, like you could reach out and touch someone. He frowned at how happy these people looked and then followed Bucky back to the car.

It wouldn’t be long now before they hit civilization again, he was told. They were almost out of the wastes of Canada. There had been a bomb dropped here decades ago. It was safe enough, but no one had moved back. Perhaps understandable. It all just made Steve sad. And quiet.

Steve didn't understand.

If the people who lived in this house knew who was here, they'd empty their larders themselves. Everybody knew that the Soldier was to be obeyed, and if the weapon of HYDRA showed up then someone was about to die. Although they might not have recognised him like this, out of his combat clothing and without a mask.

Steve would begin to notice the real differences as they hit their first major city in America. There were flags, but none of what used to be the stars and stripes. This was the flag of the HYDRA nation. Two silhouettes standing side on, facing each other, making the HYDRA salute, they stood either side of the HYDRA emblem, the odd octopus skull creature. And in the top right corner of the flag, the Nazi swastika, as a remembrance of how they had formed.

Road signs and building names were in both English and German, and the gleam of camera lenses was everywhere. Technology, cell phones and transport and a million other things besides were everywhere, as people bustled about their lives. Occasionally stopping and saluting to one another.

The closer they approached civilization, the more that Steve wished they weren’t. This made the wastelands of Canada look appealing in all of the very worst ways, but to Steve Rogers, he couldn’t help but feel saddened by the things he saw from the window. It was more reason to look at what Bucky called their GPS system, but he forced himself to take note of this crazy nightmare dream he was forced to live in now.

“This isn’t real,” he whispered to himself, as if it could make it true.

Crossing into New York itself was even worse. The buildings were tall and beautiful. There were moving signs all over the place. Traffic was intense. Clothing was strange. The thump of the city, the vibe it gave off, was still the same despite the time that had passed.

“How much longer?” He was trying not to be disaheartened but two days of not speaking and experiencing this mess was ruining his usual cheer.

This was a dangerous place to be, it was a densely populated place and there were cameras everywhere that could catch a glimpse of him. The only piece of luck he had was that nobody outside of very high level operatives had seen him without a mask, even Tony Stark wouldn't recognise his torturer without a mask and combat leathers and the arm on display.

He had stolen them both an array of brimmed hats to hide their faces, and when he finally pulled the car into the docks of Stark Tower (Innovation for the Future of HYDRA), he was wound almost as tightly as Rogers.

"Stay behind me, keep your head down, and don't speak."

Two days hadn't done much to improve the accent.

Head down? What was the point of that. He had three days worth of scruff and surely, no one knew what he looked like. Especially without the uniform on. He gave Bucky half of a glance before deciding better than to tell him off for being a general asshole. It wouldn’t do a lick of good anyway.

Meekness did not come easily to Steve, however, and neither was he able to really keep a lid on his boyish wonder at the things he was seeing in the loading area either. Floating skiffs, boxes with green light pouring from them, vehicles he couldn’t even imagine—

Once they were on the elevator, Steve even came face to face (or voice to ear) with JARVIS, though he had no idea that the person speaking to them once the doors closed didn’t have a body. And wasn’t a person at all really.

“Gentlemen, please state your business? We have no record of a meeting this afternoon with either person matching your description.”

Steve frowned and leaned towards Bucky. “How can he see us...?”

“Because I have the software to do so,” JARVIS replies. “Please state your names, identification serial numbers and business or I shall contact the proper authorities.”

James had no experience with JARVIS, but there were AI security systems at a number of high level HYDRA bases (though he had no idea just how advanced this one was compared to most of them), so he didn't jump or give any indication that he was rattled. He only shot a brief scowl sidelong at Steve. He said don't speak, what part of that was hard?

Steve didn't have the right accent, and an unregistered foreigner with the wrong sort of accent might also alert the authorities.

This was the part of the plan that was the riskiest. He knew a lot of passcodes from high level HYDRA operatives. Not because he was supposed to know them as the Soldier, but because people rarely thought to guard their tongues around what was supposed to be a mindless weapon. One of them, he was sure, would gain them access without an appointment, and Stark would believe he was meeting some top brass from the organisation that ruled the world.

"Hail HYDRA," he began, his voice switching to a smooth fully German accent, not even hesitating over it. This was something he was trained to do, after all, infiltrate with the best. "Mr. Stark will want to see us. Tell him that I've come regarding his Uncle Bill's geraniums."

Steve did his best to keep his head down, as instructed, since obviously someone could somehow see him (what the hell?!) and scrunched his face up so he didn’t look recognizable. He had a feeling that he was really poorly suited for this sort of thing. Captain America didn’t infiltrate in secret. He did so with fists and shield at the ready.

This confined space was making him nervous, if only because he couldn’t read the body language of the man next to him and because he had no idea what was going on. He didn’t like being at a loss.

There was a pause from the AI, who answered back in German that Mr. Stark would be waiting. And then the elevator started to move. When it stopped and the doors opened, a man that looked so much like Howard Stark net them, head tilted, eyes jerking between the pair. “Hail HYDRA,” he started. That was only proper.

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