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

For Tony, there was never a before HYDRA. He couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow at the blond, bending to dump the sand from his shoes. “If you’re asking for a history lesson, I can only give you the standard stuff we were taught in school. After the glorious defeat of Captain America, the world succumbed country by country to the many heads of HYDRA and a new prosperity came to all those who accepted HYDRA rule.”

It felt like a quote, especially with Tony using a sort of hifalutin bravado to his words.

“Mostly we memorized a whole lot of laws and the years they were passed. I didn’t learn a lot about the pre-war until I found some books in Dad’s bedroom. I grew up thinking HYDRA built the pyramids.”

Kill enough adults and raise enough kids as HYDRA and it’s all they knew, Steve.

He should know this, he'd seen it before with the Hitler Youth and how kids raised in the Nazi regime had literally been raised with those ideals, how some had even turned over parents or friends because their ideology was that strong. But he didn't want to know it, it was sickening.

"...so what changed?"

His voice was softer, some of the rage and sorrow from earlier finally draining out of him. He might be annoying, but Stark wasn't his enemy in this, he had to remember that and try not to jump down his throat so much.

"If you believe everything they taught you, how come you're helping the resistance out?"

Tony could shrug. He could play it off as not really helping anyone but himself. He was lining his pockets, a great capitalist ideal. But that wasn’t true. Wholesome Steve Rogers could and would very likely see right through that. With both of his shoes off, Tony laid back on the sand and tried not to think about the things living in there. He just knew he’d wake up covered in bites tomorrow.

“Dad and Mom helped to start it. They decided to live in HYDRA controlled society and they were siphoning off money and resources to the group until the Soldier tortured and killed them.” Steve probably wouldn’t want to hear this and if it was true that the Soldier was a live human being brainwashed into being a weapon, then Tony could feel for him. A little.

But he still hated and feared the Soldier.

“He and I had a very long chat, during which he convinced me to keep my nose clean. But I was always pretty bad at following rules.”

"I know."

His voice was as heavy as his heart. It still stunned him to think of Bucky as a killer, stone cold assassin. Sure, he had killed for his country in the army, but he had been a hero. The greatest hero Steve had ever known, one of the best fellas at the heart of himself.

How could he have been reduced to this?

"He told me that he killed Howard, I'm-- I'm so sorry for your loss. And I'm sorry for what happened to you, but you have to know that isn't who he really is. He's a victim in this, just as much as anyone."

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it.” Tony wasn’t a hero. He had no intention of trying to ‘save’ anyone but himself at this point. And he didn’t think he had much of a shot at it. If he could keep Steve alive, there might be a little hope there but Tony didn’t believe he was doing something marked clearly right from wrong. And he stood by his assumption of the possibility that delivering Rogers to the Resistance would wipe them out. “He probably is back with them already. He’s probably telling them what he did. They haven’t found us yet. Or they’re letting us get you to safety first.”

He didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“If your friend used to be like you before he turned into this... then he’s gone. Scooped out like ice cream. You just have some drippings left. But he’s not yours anymore. He’s theirs. If you want to do anything, just hope that when he comes back, he kills you quickly.”

A part of Steve, tiny and traitorous, was terrified that Tony was right. The blankness on Bucky's face drove spikes through his heart, and to think that HYDRA might have permanently scooped away the wonderful, brave, charismatic man his best friend had been was an ache in his very soul.

But the rest of him refused to believe it. He still believed in the soul, in God, and Bucky's soul was there. The essence of him. Steve would find a way to help him remember, help him get to safety.

"Real ray of sunshine you are, huh?" He remarked, sardonically. "Maybe you should look for the hope of something better, rather than the darkness of now."

“Hope?” Tony propped himself up in the sand on his elbows. “Hope for what? That we aren’t found out? That we survive another day or two? And then what? Plan A worked fine. We got here. There’s no Plan B though. There had never been a Plan B. Plan Bs don’t work.” Steve was acting like he had all the answers. Like he knew a better way to live—

—because he did. Tony rolled his eyes to cover any sign of revelation on his face.

“You are the real deal, aren’t you?” His face lost some of its stress lines as he laid back down, arms behind his head to gaze at the stars you couldn’t see in the city from all of the light pollution. “I see how you got so many people to follow you. Here’s some hope for you. I hope you do what it says on the tin.”

Other people might be offended at the doubt Tony had before, or puffed up at being recognised as some kind of hero. Steve just shouldered the responsibility that put on him like it was a duty; because it was, in his eyes. Erskine had given him this body to do good with, to protect and fight the good fight. What kind of man would he be if he didn't give his all to that?

"I will."

It was quiet and assured, determination rolling off him in waves.

"This might not be the America I remember, but this is still the country I signed up to protect and it seems to me that the people here need freedom and liberty even more than back in my day."

Evidently it was possible to admire and hate a person at the same time. Tony had never felt strongly about much in his life before that moment, but there was a simultaneous swelling of pride and loathing that he couldn’t quite get a grip on. He tried. As he laid in that sand and thought about the lives he had destroyed (because HYDRA would be all over his former employees tracking down whatever information they could) and about how much he missed having the rarely taken option of sleeping in his own bed, the cold air of night yanked him to sleep.

When he woke up again, it was to a nudge of his shoulder and Tony gravitated towards that touch in a way that made the other person pull back. Tony made some sort of annoyed sound but drifted partially back off until he heard a voice with a soft, not quite British twang at the edges. “Mr. Stark? Could you wake up now please?” Male. Now that wasn’t right....

Eyes opened immediately, Tony startled himself and the other man, sand kicked up by his quick reaction.

“Mohinder Suresh. I believe you called us?” He’d already met the Captain. Steve Rogers. It was a miracle to have done so but Mohinder didn’t believe his eyes or most of what he heard. He was here for a reason. He was here to be a scientist.

“Hail HYDRA?” Tony offered and Mohinder chuckled, white teeth flashing across caramel colored lips. He was a short man, Indian or Middle Eastern. He wore glasses. He seemed so non-threatening.

“Let’s hope not. I’ll need blood samples from you both.”

Steve had woken up as soon as Mohinder had arrived. The man had come on a boat, much more silent than a helicopter or plane, though Steve surmised that they had likely left a sea-to-water light aircraft off the coast ready to shuttle them back out again. The softly spoken Indian man was accompanied by another man wearing glasses and dressed in a purple shirt. He had introduced himself as "Bruce", but other than that he had said very little.

It was odd to him that they hadn't seemed to have brought any muscle with them. He would have expected a bodyguard, but both of these men seemed non-combat ready, and Bruce seemed downright shy.

He shook his head as Mohinder approached him, apologetic but firm. "I'm sorry, son, but I can't do that. My blood is something a lot of people want to get their hands on, and I made a promise a long time since that I wouldn't let that happen. You'll have to take me at my word."

Bruce frowned thoughtfully, but he didn't intervene yet. He was honestly hoping he wouldn't have to. Because no matter what Steve thought, they had brought muscle, and it was him. He had been a proud HYDRA scientist only a decade or so ago, trying to develop serums and investigate gamma radiation to advance the nation, but then things had gone a bit wrong. And along with the addition of the Other Guy, he had also got a good look at the seedy truth of HYDRA's world. He honestly thought that the resistance would have killed him if they could, but since that wasn't possible, they had embraced him as a useful tool.

Mohinder had been prepared for Steve to be a bit difficult. They had no idea if he was whom he said he was, but giving everyone the initial benefit of the doubt was the plan here. The situation was delicate. It was why Mohinder had been sent. He was nonthreatening. His ideas could be devastating, but no one here knew him. He’d been some small time scientist in a black lab coat working alongside Bruce until his accident. He’d left his cushy job not long after that for reasons it had taken the Resistance a lot longer than he liked to think about to accept.

It didn’t matter. He was here now, part of Team Alpha. This was certainly the highest profile intake he’d ever done, even without the mythical Steve Rogers as part of the deal, but he wasn’t nervous in the slightest.

“I believe you’re in luck then. We can work with a cheek scraping if you’d rather?” There hadn’t even been DNA testing in Steve’s time, let alone the cheek swab method. He probably didn’t even know that he could prove who he said he was with a few cells.

Steve looked a bit mystified at what scraping his cheek was supposed to do, but he didn't see the harm in it. He had always been told that it was his blood that contained the serum now, so that was what he had to keep safe from people who wanted to recreate it in a dangerous manner.

He nodded and obediently opened his mouth to let Mohinder draw the cotton swab on the inside of his cheek.

Bruce moved a little closer to Tony Stark. He was smaller in person than Bruce had imagined, given the intel they had on him and the work he did with weapons for HYDRA, but no less arrogant in his bearing. He smiled, short and quick. "We're going to have to ask you to leave your suit here, it's possible that its electronic signal could be traced."

Tony was staring. He wasn’t even trying to play it cool at the moment, just outright staring. It hadn’t been Mohinder that had gotten to him so much as Bruce fucking Banner, in the flesh, telling him to do something in a voice deceptively deep. He hadn’t expected that.

Despite his usual no touch rule, Tony couldn’t help himself. He thrust out a hand, covered in yellow and black specks of sand, and grinned almost moronically.

“I’ve always wanted to meet you,” he said. It was the first time he could genuinely say that about anyone. “Your papers on thermodynamics changed my life. Really a fan of the way you turn into a giant green rage monster, too.”

Bruce was highly unnerved by this, as he had never met Stark before and he shouldn't be aware of the Hulk. How had he got this knowledge? It had been kept very under wraps within HYDRA, as they were embarrassed at not being able to contain or control the beast they had accidentally helped create, and the underground resistance was silent about pretty much everything as a necessity for survival.

As a consequence he didn't take that hand, he merely blinked furiously for a second or two and then swallowed hard.

"Some things are best kept quiet, Mr. Stark."

“I know,” Tony replied, obviously put out. Mohinder wasn’t listening to any of this, he tended to get wrapped up in his work, but Steve was curious enough to tilt his head as he tried to figure out what it was everyone was so invested in when it came to one of the shiest men he’d ever met. “Why do you think they never found you?”

Tony turned a thumb towards himself and then dropped his hand all together. He was disappointed. Evidently the Resistance didn’t share with Bruce the fact that Tony managed to keep his location hidden and private all while ‘actively’ tasked with hunting Banner down.

He’d really thought that they could be good friends.

Mohinder put Steve’s sample in a small vial with liquid that turned from red to bright blue almost instantly and he exclaimed something in Hindi that Tony didn’t follow. “It is him!”

Alas for Tony's hopes, nobody had ever told Bruce how he had managed to stay so well hidden. Most people in the resistance, Mohinder excluded, tended to see him as just the container for the Hulk. They rarely utilised his scientific background, hardly trusted him with information, and never socialised with him when they weren't on missions.

Tony's words did make him frown in confusion and thought, but he would have to take that up with them later, since Mohinder had just made a very startling discovery. That it actually was Steve Rogers.

Steve looked around the three other men, totally nonplussed. "Is something wrong?"

Was that an excited exclamation, or a sign they were about to be shot?

“You ought to be dead!” Mohinder was too excited to revert back to English. He was used to speaking his native tongue with Bruce. He’d always thought the other man enjoyed hiding his words since Hindi was one of the cultural languages that HYDRA tolerated but it wasn’t one that was offered in their global universities for study like English, German, Italian, Russian and Japanese were. Bruce was an outcast. Mohinder, despite his associations, was less so, but he managed to alienate himself anyway with his die hard work ethic.

He showed Bruce the results, the physical vial in the readout on his scanner. There were artifacts of Steve Rogers cast all about, his drawings and his uniforms and so on. There had been a lock of hair found in Howard Stark’s possession (labeled neatly and included with before and after but long corrupted blood samples from the Project Rebirth kit that HYDRA had taken control from not long after the war). It had afforded Mohinder a complete look at Captain America from the inside out.

He was utterly unique. The markers had mutated towards an almost inhumanity. And now he was looking at the same sequence here in the palm of his hand.

Tony rolled his eyes. “I think you check out.”

Steve didn't speak Hindi, he was only really fluent in English with a few words of French and a smattering of German from the war. He supposed, with a sick sensation in his stomach, that he should get more used to German in this twisted future that had befallen the world.

But Mohinder's tone was easy enough to decipher, even if the words weren't, so he didn't need Tony's acerbic translation.

"Seems so."

Bruce touched Mohinder on the arm briefly, gently, to try and recall him back to the task at hand. They needed to be cautious and diligent, excitement wouldn't help anyone here.

Switching to English took a small look from Bruce and so Mohinder had to repeat a few excited sentences, this time so much more subdued and soft. That didn’t stop him from smiling or staring at bit at Steve, though. “We’ll need to bring these findings back for verification,” he said, already packing up his bag. “And Mr. Stark will need to be more properly vetted...”

“Can you get us off of this beach?” Tony interjected, arms crossed and still slightly put off by Bruce’s brush off.

“Yes. I was getting to that. We have a place with heat and running water on an island nearby. You’ll have to wait there. And we will need to confiscate any technology—“

Tony rolled his eyes. “Shower?”

“I... yes. I believe there is...?”

“Then let’s go.”

While Steve was definitely relieved that they had passed the requisite tests to be taken to the resistance, or at least a resistance owned facility, there was something weighing on his mind and so he did the very thing that Tony had told him not to do. He stood up, tall and straight and looking like the poster child for goodness and truth, and looked earnestly at their two new companions.

"You should know that Bucky Barnes is alive as well, and I intend to make it my mission to help him. Of course I'll help in the fight against HYDRA, but you should know that this mission isn't optional."

His lips screwed up in distaste for the next bit. The code name actually felt like bile on his tongue.

"He goes by the Winter Soldier now. He's the one who saved me from the ice."

Why?! Tony’s eyes roll so far back into his head that it’s actually comical. His face contorts and he gives the softest groan, hands coming up to slip through his hair. Mohinder and Bruce are silent, given the fact that they hadn’t known what Steve was talking about. Whoever Bucky Barnes was, the leaders of the Resistance likely wouldn’t allow them to divert resources to extracting him from HYDRA controlled territory.

And then Steve mentioned the Soldier.

This had stopped being a miraculous win for their side and started becoming a fool’s errand.

Through his hands, Tony could see Mohinder Suresh back up from them, his whole body tightening. He said something to Bruce in two short, low sentences and held his gear to his chest. If there was some sort of consensus, Tony wasn’t sure. The pair weren’t looking at each other. All eyes were on Steve alone. Still, Mohinder spoke again and this time in English.

“The Soldier rescued you from the place your plane crashed and brought you to Stark?”

Tony knew where this was going. They were confirming HYDRA loyalty. They were dead. He had to speak up himself. “No. Okay, yes but listen. HYDRA doesn’t know. Hadn’t known—“ He took a breath and described how his day had been interrupted by the inspection. That the Soldier had been different from how he remembered as a boy. How he seemed only concerned that Steve not be given to HYDRA. “So I know how it looks. I know we look compromised, but we aren’t. I blew up my whole damned life to keep HYDRA from finding us. And you. We came here because there is no where for either of us to go. He still thinks it’s 1945.”

Bruce felt a slight sinking in his stomach, this seemed to be going the way in which the Hulk might be needed. While he was one of the only people alive that could withstand the Soldier, even he didn't want to go against that assassin, because he had the whole of HYDRA behind him.

"The Soldier doesn't act without orders," he said, tone deceptively mild. "I've met him, once, and he's nothing but a blank shell. He doesn't make choices. If he freed you, Captain Rogers, then he was told to do so."

Steve bristled, absolutely refusing to back down even with Tony looking like a dying duck beside him, and the two men clearly rethinking their position on whether to kill them where they stood or not.

"He wasn't told to do so, and he's not a blank shell. He's a man, a good man, that's been tortured. He needs help, and I intend to help him. If you know anything about me, then you know that I never have and never will work for HYDRA interests, and Tony Stark has helped me at great risk to himself."

Bruce and Mohinder glance at each other, almost as if on cue, and both looked grim. “What if you don’t know you’re part of a ruse?” Mohinder asked softly, almost like one night request clarification from a five year old who had been put up to stealing the cookie jar for his classmates. Steve might not be that naive, but Mohinder understood what it was like to sacrifice for someone you cared about and to turn a blind eye to something about them that was dangerous. “You’ve given us some good information, though. And it’s something we will look into. But you must understand that we need to protect our people too.”

Tony at least seemed to relax. Neither of them were about to be gunned down or smashed to a pulp by the Hulk. It didn’t secure their freedom but it was a start.

“What is Bucky short for?” Mohinder asked, pen and paper pulled from one of his pockets. Tony really needed some clarification first.

“Hey. Listen. We can give you information about who the Soldier used to be once you get us off of this beach and hooked up with some pizza. Deal?”

“I’m afraid you’ll need to stay on this island, but we will drop supplies to you,” Mohinder offered. “I can not promise pizza.”

It struck right at the heart of Steve that these people didn't remember who Bucky was, just from his name. It wasn't fair. They all knew who he was, the vaunted and famous Captain goddamn America, but he would have been nothing without Bucky. His best friend and brother in arms, always watching his six, always there for him. And now he was forgotten.

That wasn't right, there should be a museum exhibit to him, where people could go and learn about a brave soldier and a true hero. It made him scowl to hear the question, even though it wasn't Bruce and Mohinder's fault.

"James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes, born in Brooklyn in 1914. Part of the 107th during the war, and then a member of the Howling Commandos. He fought HYDRA, even after they'd tortured him, he didn't enlist with them."

Tony was probably going to kill him in a minute, continually shooting his mouth off and giving information out that Tony was trying to hold back in order to give them a better bargaining position. But Bucky could have told Tony that Steve was just like that, bull headed and stubborn.

Tony wanted to claw his face off. He could picture himself doing it, nails running down his cheeks, lower eyelids pulled down towards his chin. What. A. Joke. If he could fit his hands around Steve’s muscular neck, he would try to wring the life out of him. That just wasn’t going to happen.

So he threw his hands up and wandered back to the spot of sand he’d slept in and dropped back down, arms hanging over his knees.

Mohinder double-checked the spelling with Steve before he put his pad and pen away. “We will send something to make your stay here more comfortable in about an hour and we will do a little research.” Mohinder wasn’t going to give anyone false hope but there was no need to be rude about it. He gave Bruce a small smile and started back towards the way they had come, down the beach and down the bend in the coast where their boat waited. He didn’t expect either subject to follow them and so he didn’t tell them to stay put.

Tony kept his mouth shut as he fumed, as the two men disappeared from sight. He didn’t look up at Steve. He was too focused on the sand in front of him. If he stared hard enough, he was sure he could melt it into glass.

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