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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“Yeah, Yeah,” Tony replied as if it wasn’t a big deal and he was used to these sorts of threats. “Like I said, just planning my weekend. I have a presentation on Tuesday and if you guys decide to break my reactor casing again, I’ll have to push it back. Again. Your bosses won’t like that.” He could give it as good as he got. He was haughty. And just as arrogant as Howard had been. Steve liked him and hated him at the same time.

And it made him miss Howard in a way he didn’t think was possible. Nostalgia was an odd creature.

Across the hall, something as tall as a man and looking a little like a crane crossed in front of them and Tony reached out to pat it in passing. “DUM-E, get the Scotch. The good kind, not the illegal import,” Tony said, brazenly glancing at Bucky like it was so big, amusing secret that he had access to things he shouldn’t.

Steve couldn’t help but pause to watch the robot go and Tony noticed the way he lingered instead of keeping in step with his superior. It made him tense up a little. He hated surprises.

And he made that clear once they were downstairs in his lab with the door shut and no record being made of their conversation. “Who are you two really?”

Okay, good.

At least they were inside the lab, that was a good step. Now he had to figure out how to play this, because Stark seemed to be insinuating that he had visits like this before. He could tell Stark outright that they were looking for the resistance, but it could be a trap, and any mention of it would get HYDRA called immediately.

Somehow, the Soldier had quite an aversion to going back, even after only three days of relative freedom.

So that left intimidation.

James allowed the plates on his metal arm to flex and expand, a useful little tool that was usually used for breaking out of restraints, but in this case it merely split the seams of his hoodie to show the gleaming metal underneath. His eyes were hard, deadly. Stark would remember this arm and the voice to go with it, even if nothing else.

"You know who I am."

He was fairly confident, in fact almost positive, that anyone outside of the top level of HYDRA wouldn't know the Soldier had gone rogue. They'd never risk that information getting out, it would be a disaster.

Tony looked like he was made of salt, like he had turned to gaze down upon Sodom and Gomorrah and was completely frozen in place forever. Steve had seen real fear in the eyes of men before, especially those whose guts had been spilled out and who were dying as dirt from shells filled their wounds.

He’d never, however, seen that particular fear immediately glazed over and replaced with a sort of solemn acceptance. Not even the done for men in the trenches had looked so at peace.

“Was wondering when I’d see you again,” Tony said, rolling his shoulders. “Out of curiosity, before you kill me, tell me what tipped them off?”

A tiny part of James' mind baulked at the fear he inspired, like he was looking upon a monster. But a large part of him still didn't care. He was a weapon, and at the moment his sole purpose was taking care of Steve Rogers (though fuck only knew why), and if that meant scaring or even killing people, then so be it.

"They suspect, they don't know. I'm not here to kill you."

He hesitated a moment, possibly the most human thing he'd done in decades when he'd never hesitated before.

"I need you to hide someone in the resistance."

There was perhaps no one with more animated a face than Tony Stark and Steve found this second transformation, from acceptance to outright surprise to be almost laughable. The man already had massive eyes. This just made him look like a child’s drawing.

“I feel like this is a trick question,” Tony mumbled, glancing for the first time at him, and Steve made sure not to look away. He’d been doing his best to hide and now he was just tired of it. “I thought you guys took care of the resistance...”

It wasn’t an attempt to back peddle, Steve realized. Tony wasn’t just playing dumb. He was actively protecting something. The way he breathed gave it away, though most people would never guess that by looking at him. His eyes could see more. See deeper.

“Please.” Accent and everything, Steve went for it. “We need your help. James and I.” Aren’t you proud of him, Buck? He didn’t use your nickname.

That, if nothing else, might clue Stark in to something very weird going on here. The Soldier didn't have a name. The Soldier was a weapon, that arm was proprietary StarkTech from when Howard had first designed it, before he had been killed. Not that the Starks had been allowed near it in decades, but the point was the same. This was not a man with a name.

Steve got a glare for that, poor man, not seeming to be able to do anything right.

"This is Steve Rogers, he needs to be hidden."

There was a subtle threat behind his words that said he wouldn't ask for much longer, he might move to other forms of persuasion that Stark would enjoy much less.

“I’m sorry. You stuttered,” Tony broke out immediately, once more taken aback. He had no idea what was happening here, but it wasn’t right. He could smell the trap. “Or I’ve gone temporarily insane.”

The man glaring daggers at him had tortured him for over two days. He’d been young then, younger than the Soldier appeared to be without change, but he remembered most of it.

The Soldier hadn’t let him sleep. He’d been an instrument. Not a man.

Tony wasn’t sure what he was looking at now. Whom he was dealing with. “What happened to you? Programming on the fritz or something?” Most people, Tony included, thought the Soldier was a robot in people skin. “Are you saying this is...” And Tony had to lower his voice here. “Captain America?”

“That’s right,” Steve said, thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Or had been. Steve Rogers. Good to meet you. I knew your dad.”

“Oh my god, I’m already dead, aren’t I?!”

James really needed to resist the urge to punch both of these assholes, tie them up, and do this his way. Steve Rogers clearly couldn't follow orders, and how he had survived this long was a goddamn mystery. And Tony Stark's refusal to believe what he was being told was, while understandable, something he didn't have time for.

Someone would have heard that password he gave, someone would have been checking if a person who should have that password was meant to be in Stark Tower, which meant someone would be investigating before too long.

He gave them half an hour. Tops.

His arm made a loud whirring noise and violence practically radiated off him, even if he kept his voice low and level.

"No arguments. No explanations. You take Rogers and hide him in the resistance, or I'll kill you now and we'll leave."

It wasn't even a threat, just a matter of fact explanation of the two options in this scenario. Because if Stark wasn't going to help them, then he was a witness and a danger, and therefore needed to be dealt with.

Tony realized just about that same time what was happening here and his already large eyes grew even wider. “You went rogue. You used HYDRA codes. They’re going to figure out that I really am not scheduled for an inspection, pull the tapes and— Come on man!” And if the Soldier was here, HYDRA had to suspect, or even know, about his ties with the Resistance.

He was fucked either way.

“Didn’t you do enough to me?” Tony was so worked up he pushed between the Soldier and Captain Fucking America. “I say no to you and you kill me. I take you where you want to go and I can’t come back. Shit. If I bring the Soldier anywhere close, they’ll think I turned on them...”

Tony was already at one of the consoles, pushing all sorts of buttons that Steve didn’t understand. The blond glanced at James and frowned.

“We go together. If you can’t help us, you can’t,” Steve said. “And I would understand that. It’s still war out there for some people. This isn’t a country I fought to protect.”

This was the first time that he had been referred to as the Soldier in front of Rogers, and he shook his head slightly at Stark, completely ignoring how rightfully frightened the poor bastard was. After all, in ten minutes flat, James had made sure that he couldn't continue on here. He was a dead man either way.

"James is the name I've chosen for this mission, remember that from here on. The resistance won't know me."

Not unless they got a look at his arm, or someone gave him away. He was good at infiltration when he had to be.

"I'm not rogue," for some reason that almost offended him. He was a weapon, finely tuned, he didn't go rogue. That implied feeling. "This is a mission. When Rogers is secure, I'll go back to my handlers."

Oh, let Steve fuck it all now for you, James. As if he hadn’t been doing so since he woke up. Rogers immediately turned towards his old friend and shook his head.

“We’re not quite at the end of the line here, pal,” Steve said, so sharply that even Tony jumped before going right back to whatever it was he was doing. Steve couldn’t even hazard a guess. It was too complicated over there, colored lights swirling all around. “I’m not going somewhere without you. That’s what keeps getting us in all of this mess.”

He scowled like the person he used to be, the art student before the war. Bucky left him to join the army and go to war. They were better together.

Their lives proved that.

“You can’t go back to them.”

What was it about those words that dug in like tiny hooks all over his skin? Like Steve was suddenly the magnetic pole and he had no choice but to face north, no matter what his instincts were telling him. His face took on a rather hunted expression, though it was muted beneath that stoic mask that hadn't really cracked completely.

If Stark had thought the Soldier was a robot in people skin before, he might be starting to realise that wasn't quite the truth.

"...I belong to them, Rogers." Surely that was obvious. "I'm a weapon, and they're my owners. A weapon doesn't have a choice."

Just ignore that he had chosen to dig Rogers out of the ice and gone fully rogue for the last few days.

That was miserable and heartbreaking. Steve wasn’t some super man that could snap his fingers and make Bucky understand how wrong he was about his life, but he could at least get his fingers into the cracks in that facade he could see forming all of Bucky’s face and peel off another layer.

“You only belong to yourself. People don’t own other people. They’ve made you think that you’re something you aren’t. You’re not a weapon. You don’t have to do anything they tell you to do. You don’t have handlers anymore.”

Steve could go on but Tony zipped past them towards rows of red and gold suits of armor. The blond couldn’t help but glance up.

“Make out later, hurry up and get over here.”

That was too much too fast, and he reacted on instinct, throwing his second punch right into Rogers' jaw and knocking him to the ground with the force of it, especially since it had come from the metal arm.

He turned to Stark then, all hard eyes and no mercy, and spoke in German since he knew the other man would understand.

"Protect him. His life is your life now."

And with that, he turned and started to stalk out. Steve pushed up to his feet quickly and tried to go after him, expression stricken.

"Buck-- James! Hey-- come back, you can't just--"

But apparently he could. Sliding out of the door and disappearing like a ghost, leaving the other two men alone. Steve glanced sidelong at Tony and then, unable to help himself, punched the doorframe. Hard.

Thankfully, the walls were made of vibranium. How he had gotten his hands on so much was a secret not even HYDRA was privy to. The older man turned back to the scene, surprised that Rogers was even still alive, and tried not to be a smart ass.

That wasn’t going to happen here.

He frowned at the blond as he picked himself up and set his hands on his hips. “So I’m not sure how I’m supposed to protect you when the Soldier obviously wants you dead. But I guess it’s a moot point now anyway. We’re both going to die sooner rather than later. Thanks for ruining my life.”

It was too late now to stop the launch sequence and though Rogers was probably too big to fit comfortably in any of the armors he had created and was testing, they didn’t have a choice. One of the suits opened up like a clam shell and Tony impatiently waited for Steve to look his way.

“In. They’re coming.”

"What?"

Steve's eyes were still fixed on where Bucky had disappeared. He wanted to tear this whole world apart looking for him, like he should have done when Bucky fell from that train. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice, wouldn't fail him again.

"We're not leaving without him, what are you talking about? He'll-- he's coming back."

There was no way Bucky just socked him in the jaw so that he could willingly return to HYDRA? It made hot rage seep inside his skin in a way that made him feel sick, like he had when he had been destroying all those bases before.

“And he’ll bring a squad. He knows about me and he’ll tell them about you. Now get the fuck inside!” If the Soldier wasn’t going to be pulling any punches, Tony Stark wasn’t either. The armors were all coming to life already and after a few more distress coordinates added, he pressed back into one of them.

Leaving Steve here to be captured wasn’t an option though. He’d be a rallying point for the Resistance, so Tony had one of the larger suits of power armor scoop him up.

He hadn’t actually contemplated leaving before. He had everything here. But now there was no choice.

“JARVIS, start Protocol Clean Slate.” There wouldn’t be any time between his last word and the explosions. And that should provide enough cover to get them started.

Steve thought he had seen everything, but if anything could convince him that he was living in a science fiction future, it was being scooped up by a flying robot. And one of them even had Stark inside it! It was like Superman or something, flying through the air like no man should have the capability to do.

But any wonder he felt was subsumed by fear and anger and worry. Bucky needed him. That idiot had always watched his back, and had apparently even saved his life when he didn't know who he was, but now that it was Steve's turn to be the strong one and do the saving, he was messing it all up.

He dare not struggle, because he had no idea if these things were stable and he didn't want to cause Stark to get hurt, but he felt like part of his soul were being ripped away and left behind as they took off with a medley of explosions, sirens, and panic below.

This... this really couldn't be happening.

Tony was thinking the exact same thing. How could this be happening? His Tower was rigged to implode so it wouldn’t cause a whole lot of damage to the surrounding area, but the dust cloud would likely harm enough people that he didn’t feel great by their triumphant flight to safety.

HYDRA would use this for propaganda (since they obviously couldn’t use the fact that Steve Rogers somehow survived the war over sixty years ago) and Tony would become the new face of terror.

Not his best look.

The armors scattered and crash landed, jamming signals as they went. It was their best shot at escape. Their only shot. Tony dropped onto a beach out of sight as two more suits whizzed by and he dropped Steve into a palm grove before landing himself. The sand kicked up around him and JARVIS assured him they had not been tracked or followed.

Thankfully. This was only the first step to safety.

Steve rolled as he landed on instincts given to him by the serum.

Even now, it still amazed him that he could fall even that small distance and not break a few ribs, not be out of breath by the sand kicked up. People thought he had acclimatised to the body given to him by the army, but how could he? He had spent most of his life in his other body, only a few years in this one, was it any wonder that every day still felt like a miracle?

"Hey-- hey, stop. We have to talk about this, all of this."

Maybe this was hell.

It felt like hell, to see Bucky walk away like that, to see a world run by HYDRA.

"We have to go back there and get him, don't you have any damn conscience? They're keeping him as a slave."

“How do you want me to find a ghost?” Tony was out of his suit, kneeling in the sand to try and uncover something. It looked ridiculous, a grown man playing in the sand, facial hair covered in grit. He didn’t have to answer to Steve for anything. He didn’t know the guy, he just knew that they were screwed unless he could get their journey started away from the life he’d always known.

There were some pretty dark thoughts going on in his head right now, and none had to do with the sand in his shoes or the nausea he felt having to start over.

His thoughts, like Steve’s were wrapped around the Soldier.

“You don’t know that guy’s motivations. The Soldier has been around since the beginning. He’s been alive since I was a kid. Just consider yourself lucky that you met him and didn’t die. It’s a small club we’re in. Barely any members. Help me dig.”

It was incredibly disturbing to hear Bucky spoken of like this, with a title instead of a name and a bone deep fear. Like the people of his time had spoken about the possibility of an atom bomb (which he had no idea had been actually used after he had gone into the ice).

"Hey-- stop it. He's a man, and he has a name, quit calling him that."

It was a stupid thing to fixate on, given the rest of the mess that he found himself in, but Steve had always been one to fight every battle no matter how futile. And this one was important to him. Saving Bucky was something he just had to do, saving the world could come later.

He did bend to help dig, however, though he had no idea what he was trying to uncover.

“Men don’t live as long without changing like he did. He’s not a man.” Tony wasn’t impressed by Steve’s little outburst. “You don’t know him. I guess no one knows him.” Tony’s hands sunk into the sand around where Steve was digging and he pulled up a wired transponder. Shaking it clean, he yanked open the waterproof casing and fiddled with the wires inside.

He could feel Steve glaring at him, feel those icy blue eyes stare steely into the top of his head, so he braced himself, one hand on his thigh, and glared right back.

“What? You died. The world went to shit. The Soldier exists. You don’t get to remake history just because you think it’s unfair.”

For just a moment, Steve's shoulders slumped as he felt the weight of those words. Tony Stark wasn't wrong, the whole world was different and the war he had to fight now was far greater than the one he had left behind. How could one man, supposedly dead, combat something that ruled most of the world with technology he could never have dreamed of?

But it was just for that moment, because then Steve's shoulders squared and his back straightened, determination radiating off him. He had never backed down from an opponent bigger than him, and he wasn't about to start now.

"Maybe so, but I'm not dead. So I reckon other things maybe aren't so written in stone either, like the world being a mess for good."

He paused, voice growing softer and sadder. "And you're wrong, I do know him. I know him better than I've ever known anyone, and he still knows me somewhere inside. Whatever they did to him, and whatever you call him now, a part of him is still Bucky Barnes. He ran from them to save me, that means something, and I'm not giving up on him."

“Bucky Barnes?” Why did all the crazy people he knew have so much alliteration in their names? Tony rubbed the sand from one palm onto his jeans and sat back on his heels to cradle the device and begin to work again. “Huh. So brainwashed. Not a robot. Doesn’t explain the anti-aging, though,” he thought out loud, before glancing in Steve’s direction again. “I was a teenager the first time I met him. He wore a mask but his eyes... people age the most around their eyes.” And they were hard but young. The same eyes. Tony still had nightmares about it when he didn’t drink enough to have no dreams at all.

There was a spark in the box and then a voice crackled from inside of it. “What happened? Protocol Alpha initiated.” It was a demanding sort of voice, hard and angry.

Tony rolled his eyes. “One-two-three-four-five. World’s worst password,” he muttered as an aside to Steve. “I had to blow everything up. The Soldier came. He dropped off a baby on the doorstep, rang the bell and left. Tell me where to go next.”

“What?!” There was some crackling that seemed to happen conveniently over the cursing. “Don’t have time for— Stay put. Tomorrow we’ll drop new coordinates.”

“Tomorrow? No. I’m not sleeping on the beach without supplies—“

“Too dangerous, Stark. Hold for further instructions.”

Tony cursed without the radio to bleep over it and threw the tethered box into the sand. “Great. You’re a ray of sunshine. So glad you came to visit with your old war buddy, Captain. No one is gonna want to hear that Captain America and the Winter Soldier used to be butt buddies. I’d keep that to yourself.”

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