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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“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.

Steve could be bullheaded, but even he could tell that Tony was annoyed with him. But he waited until the two members of the resistance had departed their little island until he approached and sat down just a short distance from Tony.

"We're trying to work with them, what good is withholding information? I meant what I said, Tony. Buck needs help, and I intend to give it to him, no matter what else happens."

Though he was sorry that such a thing was apparently seen as a bad idea by literally everyone else.

"They'll come around, and we're safe enough here."

Going from everything to nothing had always been on the back burner, simmering along merrily. Tony knew it would always hang over him, the possibility of it, but he walked a line that erred more on caution and he thought himself invincible.

“The Soldier has a glitch in his programming for some reason. Something snapped while you were there but you aren’t there anymore, Captain. Out of sight, out of mind. He’s probably gone home and they’ve fixed whatever problem caused the glitch in the first place. There’s nothing but a ghost to save.” Tony had never been one for sugar coating. He took his contraband Scotch neat and fast. Tired, old eyes that no longer looked like his father’s glanced up him for a moment before he went back to watching calloused, hard worked hands that dangled between his legs.

There was so silence before the beeping started and Tony initially thought that they were dropping bombs on them.

The parcels floated to the ground about where the suit had crash landed the night before, one large crate and several smaller boxes. Tony didn’t get up from his spot the entire time, half expecting the crates to explode any moment now. There would be no explosives though, just a large tent, some bed rolls, food and water.

Steve could never know just how much Tony had sacrificed to get to this point. Not even just in material possessions and future wealth when he had to detonate it all, but in bucking the propaganda and brainwashing of his youth to get to a point where he had been willing to risk it all for the sake of helping out the resistance here and there.

Nor could he know how hard it must be for someone raised in that world to fully give it up. He had always known HYDRA as evil. But to someone raised under it, even if they had tried so hard to learn new ways, it had to hurt to betray their nation.

He moved to untie the packages and get things sorted out, setting up the tent and bed rolls, and then building a small campfire to cook some of the rations that had been sent to them. It wasn't until the stars were out above them that he spoke again, voice soft.

"I'm sorry for what happened to your folks, I really am. Howard and I might not have always seen eye to eye, but he was a good man."

“No he wasn’t,” Tony snapped back, not angrily so much as with resignation. “He did what he had to. That’s what we all do.” Maybe that wasn’t fair, his dad had saved many lives after HYDRA took over and helped set up the resistance. He provided jobs and opportunity to people, he made sure they were well taken care of. He had been a good man.

But he’d had no room for Tony in his life. His mother hadn’t either. They hadn’t meant to have a child but after the war, couples with good genetic makeup had been mandated to actively try to reproduce, mainly so that HYDRA could enforce compliance through child indoctrination. Maria and Howard did their civic duty. They had kept so much from their son to avoid him ever being able to spy on them that he had been neglected, unloved, a product of HYDRA society—

But he’d rebelled against everything. Even that. He was stronger than he looked. He was more camouflaged than the broken Soldier behind concrete layers of supposed philanthropy and hedonism.

But Steve didn’t even think of the people that were likely dead because of them. The people that worked for him, Thousands of men and women and their families, were all under the scrutiny of HYDRA now. Many would die because of it.

He didn’t want to eat, but he did join Steve in the tent, sitting on a low cot that was at least off of the sand. No more bites for him tonight at least. The fire flickered outside and painted shadows on Steve’s face.

He was so young. So lost. And he still stood firm on his beliefs. The guy was an idiot. Tony kept trying to hate him but he needed to use him instead. They were likely being monitored. Which meant that talking? That could be their way out. “What was Barnes like when you were kids?” He’d poke the bear and rip open wounds. He’d enjoy it too.

This wasn't where he had ever thought to be.

When he was a kid, he honestly didn't expect to live to be an adult. All the doctors always used to tut over his body and shake their heads sadly, and only sheer stubbornness pulled him through. And then he expected to just keep fighting as Captain America, always with Bucky at his shoulder. And then-- then he never expected to survive, put that plane in the ocean fully intending to die.

What would his Ma say if she could have seen him now? Stuck in the future, in a body fit for a true soldier, with the world gone to hell. It hurt a bit, a deep lonely ache in his chest. But it helped to talk, and he was gratified that Tony was at all interested given how he seemed to think that Bucky was irredeemable now.

"Smart, and kind. He was that one kid that all the mothers wished was their own, 'cause he could be real polite when he wanted to be. He used to give me half his lunch at school and say he was too full to eat it, even though I could hear his stomach grumbling. He split his knuckles on the butcher's kid for calling me puny. He learned to do all the latest hairstyles for his sisters, even though the other fellas teased him, and he always called my Mom 'ma'am'."

Okay. Okay this was actually going to work. Somehow. Through all of this, making the Soldier human could get them out of this truly awful jam. It was their only solution, as far as Tony could see. They had no way off of this island at present, his suit half destroyed and half confiscated. Nothing in those crates could be used for escape either. They had come apart into splinters.

He had to give it to the Resistance. They were smart. Or rather, they knew that Tony was smart enough to something if given raw materials.

He took off his sneakers as he listened and two days worth of body sweat made him almost regret it given the smell. Still, if was a relief to have his toes free. He shoved his socks into his shoes as an after thought and buried his toes in the sand at the bottom of the tent.

“So then he enlisted? And what, went off to war without you? Is that why you signed up for Rebirth?” HYDRA propaganda stated that Captain America had been forced into being, kidnapped from Coney Island and injected with a serum. A strong body was given to him but he’d had a weak mind. Tony hadn’t actually found the truth but he recalled a note in a hidden book from his father stating that Rogers had lied to get where he was.

"No."

Steve still had no idea that Bucky had been drafted, it was the one big secret between them. He imagined his friend had enlisted for the same reason that he had wanted to, because it was the right thing.

"I was trying to sign up for the army long before Bucky got involved with them. Went through most of the enlistment centres in the city using different names, but I kept getting 4F. I don't know if you know what that is--was-- it was a refusal to enlist me on medical grounds. I was a mess. Then on the night Buck shipped out, the night of the Stark Expo, I met a man called Dr. Erskine and he pulled some strings to get me into basic training. I didn't even really understand what Rebirth was, just that it was my opportunity to do the right thing and fight the Nazis like all the other men were doing, instead of sitting safe at home uselessly. Even after Rebirth, I didn't see Bucky for months, didn't even get to the front lines for a long time. I was just some glorified chorus girl they used to sell war bonds, right up until I did a show for what was left of the 107th, Bucky's company, and I realised he was captured."

His eyes took on a far away glaze as he talked about those past days, remembering the smell of perfume and talcum powder from the girls, and the smell of blood and mud from the front lines.

"That was the first time I really crossed with HYDRA, to get Bucky back from Azzano."

Leaning back against the cocoon of the tent, thankfully solidly anchored, Tony watched the way that Steve’s face shifted and he knew he’d struck gold. Whoever was listening in would probably be able the taste the heartbreak in the blonde’s voice and know he wasn’t making this up.

And it actually helped clear up some of Tony’s misconceptions from his days at HYDRA University and the frequently run programs on television about the war.

“So what then?” He had to keep pressing. “After you crashed the plane, Barnes was snatched up? I thought they killed all the Howling Commandos and strung up their families too after the war ended for crimes against humanity.”

"They--?!"

Naked shock, horror, and anger played across Steve's face on hearing that. How could anyone have executed the Howlies, and all of their families too? It made him burn inside with a desire to rip HYDRA bases apart with his bare hands again, to make the world understand the injustice done.

He swallowed hard, and shook his head, forcing himself to stillness.

"I didn't know that. I didn't even know Bucky had survived until I saw his face, I don't know anything about how they got him or what they did to him. All I know, is that my best friend fell from a train on a mountaintop while we were on a mission to capture Armin Zola, and we all thought he died."

But Bucky Barnes had not died. The realization hit all at once but Tony wasn’t surprised. Brainwashing was a known HYDRA tactic. It’s what they did to anyone that didn’t cooperate with fear alone and if it didn’t work, then people died because of it.

He wasn’t going to question Steve any more tonight. Not when the man looked about ready to crack open and spew lava. He could considerate, however, on hatred of HYDRA tactics. It burned him, even now, to know that his parents had died due to HYDRA, mostly because it opened him up to so much scrutiny. He had to spend the last twenty years constantly proving himself to their overlords because of them.

“HYDRA is cruel because it works. I don’t know how strong the Resistance is, actually. I don’t know what they’re doing or how they’re helping anyone. I second guess my loyalties every day. But I guess that’s where you come in. Back to being a chorus girl pulling people off the fence and into war bonds. Get some sleep. They’ll probably be back tomorrow to question you.”

Steve didn't want to go back to the days of panhandling for tiny little scraps towards victory, but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut about that for now. He also had no idea the scope of the resistance in this world, and how much good they could do without some serious numbers behind them.

It was a desperate position to be in.

So he laid down on the little cot that strained under the weight of a bulky super soldier, and closed his eyes, though sleep was a long time coming. And his dreams were restless, and upsetting.

It would be in the darkest hours of the early morning when Tony would awaken to a slight pressure on one foot, like someone had pinched one of his toes, and the silhouette in the gloom of the Soldier staring down at him. Little could be seen of him save for the scant gleam of metal from his arm, but the stench of blood and gunpowder would be overwhelming.

This was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not the first time in his life that Tony had woken up to the Soldier (or his specter) doing much the same thing. As he had been as a young man, Stark was petrified into silence, only his eyes wide and crystalline in the darkness as he looked up at the Soldier.

He didn’t hear Steve beside him, he was much too in his own head, much too worried about making a sudden noise. He’d been caught. What would the point be of the prey crying out now?

When the Soldier let up on his foot, however, Tony did the stupidest thing one could do when faced with a killer—. He got up and he ran, nearly pulling the tent down over him as he skidded out into the sand and down towards the water. Where could he possibly go?K

To run from the Soldier was a fool's errand, and none had ever successfully accomplished it when he had been set on their tail. But Tony might be tricked into thinking he had succeeded when he made it as far as the water's edge without reprisal for running, but it was only because the Soldier remained in the tent to look down on Steve Rogers sleeping form for a long few moments.

But the water's edge would be as far as Tony would make it.

The Asset would suddenly be there, like the ghost he was purported to be, flesh fingers curling in the back of Stark's collar to jerk him to a stop and keep him still.

“Make it fast. I did what you asked so you owe me to at least make it fast!” Tony wasn’t afraid of a lot of things but torture? He remembered what it tasted like, how thick the air was, how much blood filled his mouth from self inflicted wounds with his is. teeth on delicate flesh.

Tony wasn’t sure what would happen now. He’d been prepared to die right up until that moment, but he didn’t want to. No one really wanted to. Fighting back wasn’t exactly an option but his body, free from bondage save for his collar, twisted to grab hold of something.

He needed agency in his fate.

If the Soldier was at all concerned with Tony Stark's conviction that he were here to kill him, it didn't show for even a flicker of emotion. He merely retained hold on that collar as easily as a grown man might restrain a toddler. Tony might be a genius, and his suits a thing of wonder, but out of them he was just a man. Nothing of consequence to the Asset.

"Be silent."

The order was near silent itself, a sibilant hiss in the night.

"You did not do what I ordered. He is not with them."

Yeah, great. Tony is absolutely certain, now, that he did the wrong thing. He should have manned up and just let the Soldier kill him back in New York. Now, he had not only killed at least a hundred of his employees, but he probably was going to get the Resistance found out too.

"They're not as dumb as you think," Tony said, dangling like a kitten from his mother's teeth. His toes drug in the sand as he sought purchase and to face his attacker. He wanted to see it coming, perversely. "Your bestie told them all about you and now they're pretty sure he's a plant. I'm pretty sure he's a plant too, but he just doesn't know it. You're not helping to prove anyone wrong either."

That felt like he was throwing Steve under the bus, but he was sure that Steve could lift and throw that bus off of him anyway, so whatever.

"How did you even get here? Did you bring your little friends? I really don't want to deal with a public hanging right now, okay? I'm too good looking."

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