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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"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."

"No."

There was nobody else there but him, no "friends" as Tony put it, nobody setting up a gallows further down the beach. He released his grip on the other man to let him turn around, for there was no threat to him even if he wasn't held. The thin light of the moon showed that the Soldier was coated head to toe in blood and gore, bits of bone and brain matter between the plates of his metal arm, and his hair slicked down by blood. It was impossible to tell if any was his.

"I can find anyone," he said, which was all the explanation he would give as to how he got there.

His brow furrowed in mild confusion before he continued, still speaking in the same very soft and mild voice, incongruous to the statements provided. "I killed my handlers when they tried to condition me. I don't know why."

The confession caused Tony's breath to quicken, his heart pounding in his chest. He could smell death, sickening in it's cloying sweetness. The Soldier looked utterly mad, streaked in muck and brown bits. If Tony had been hungry earlier, he'd be vomiting.

What he did, however, was back up in the sand, the wet grit sticking to the soles of bare feet as the cold waves licked at his toes.

Tony wasn't cut out of the same cloth as Steve and there was no pleasant, gentle coddling to come. "You killed your handlers because you're brainwashed. And you don't want to be brainwashed anymore." Shit, he hoped he was right about that. He hoped that this broken weapon wasn't going to self destruct. "I get it. Rogers is going to get it too. But you can't look like a massacre when you tell him. You have uh...." He wriggled his fingers. "You have bits of handler in your hair."

There was no reaction to having the gore painting his skin called out. The Asset had been covered in worse, and felt no discomfort from the sticking of the drying blood over his skin. The few wounds he had would heal, he had assessed them himself and none would prove ultimately fatal.

Why would his appearance matter to Rogers?

That tiny frown intensified, giving the Soldier a simultaneously dangerous and innocently bewildered expression.

"I brought something to assist in the mission."

Remember? The mission that was protect Steve Rogers, somehow given to himself and then buried too deeply to refuse. The Soldier drew a small set of wires and circuit boards and other electricals from his pocket, something Tony might intimately recognise as the heart of JARVIS. It was coated in rubble dust where the Asset had dug it out of the ruins of the tower, and had specks of blood down one side.

Tony's mouth hung open for a moment, his head tilting, before he reached out to gently take the device from the Soldier. He even clucked his tongue in his mouth, huffing a little in a way that might sound more like a coo or a sigh. JARVIS. He didn't mean to find any of this touching, but he was touched.

His work wasn't dead. JARVIS was alive and not in the hands of HYDRA. It meant more to him than he could actually express, if the way his face kept contorting proved it.

"This... This might just save us," Tony told the Soldier, holding the device to his chest like a child. "But you still need to wash that crud off of you."

He relinquished the prize without hesitation, even though everything JARVIS was would be of great interest to his owners-- former owners. He hated this new mission vehemently, it caused vertigo and feelings of fierce confusion, nothing like any mission before it. And even worse, he was incapable of finding the end, the way to stop it. And so he was helpless to merely hand this over and take a half step back.

Again, he didn't address exactly what Stark had said. Why did blood matter? Why was it so important he be clean?

"Don't tell him where you got it."

"He won't even know what it is," Tony said at first before he realized what the Soldier meant. "You can't just leave." He'd put his foot down about that. "You're the key to safe passage. And you can't kill anyone that comes to talk to us either."

Trying to give orders to a stoic man-child covered in gore was insanity. Tony was half expecting puppies to come running out of the bushes or a giant Statue of Liberty to come wading over for a tea party, it was just that crazy right now.

"This is part of the damned mission, got it?"

There was an obvious few moments where the Soldier digested the order from Stark, weighing it against his inner mission and determining if the other man held rank to give him orders, before his expression shut down. The bare flickers of humanity, of confusion and pain, were gone behind shuttered stoicism.

"I'll be watching."

Which is definitely not at all worrying and nightmare inducing.

"He's not to know."

It was part of the confusion, but something about seeing Rogers' stupid giant face on top of his stupid giant body just made everything that much more fractured.

"You're the worst," Tony said, basically to the wind, as the Soldier disappeared into the shadows. He didn't even know how he did it when the moon was so bright and reflected on the water. It took just one glance towards the tent on Stark's behalf for him to leave and there was no getting him back.

Tony was absolutely not going to be calling him either.

Hell. No. He hissed against the wind and then stalked his way back towards the tent. He was surprised Rogers slept through all of that, but there that damned blond was, still passed out, breathing evenly, blankets bunched over one leg and dragging in the sand. Tony bent to cover him better and then dropped on his own cot, slipping JARVIS under his lumpy pillow.

He wouldn't be sleeping any more tonight, that was for sure.

Steve's dreams were of Bucky. Of a time long ago, when they had been little kids sitting on a fire escape and passing a cigarette between them. He had coughed so much that blood had flecked his lips, but he had wanted so much to look as cool as Bucky had, with one of his Pa's cigarettes hanging from his lips effortlessly. He still didn't know that cigarettes were supposedly bad for people now.

When he woke with the dawn, yawning and stretching, he looked over at Tony in concern. The man looked godawful, pale with dark smudges under his eyes as if he hadn't slept a wink.

"...hey, you okay?"

‘I’m watching you.’ No more frightening phrase had ever been said to him and now he couldn’t get it out of his head. Everyone was watching. The Soldier. The Resistance. There was no where for him to go, still under constant watch even if his whole world was gone. Just his luck.

“We are stuck on an island?” Thankfully there really was something wrong here for Tony to draw on so that he didn’t come right out and tell Steve that he had been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. “And we don’t have any prosecco for mimosas with brunch.”

Speaking up about the device he had been given would alert both watching parties so Tony could not even hint to Steve about it.

“Other than that, and the gnats in the sand biting me all night, I’m fine.”

Steve didn't quite believe that was all there was to it, but there were a lot of reasons why Stark might have had a bad night that were too personal to talk about, and all of them started with him and Bucky showing up to the Tower.

He sat up properly and scrubbed his hands through his hair, brow furrowing as super soldier senses kicked in.

"Uh, are you hurt?"

He can smell blood and the faintest tinge of gunpowder in the air.

“Yeah I’m hurt,” Tony snapped, before trying to dial it back. “We’re stuck here with MREs and a tent and pretty soon, we are going to lose their interest or HYDRA will find us.” He didn’t sound hysterical, but that could change at any moment, he knew that. He could feel that. His voice was rising a little too high in his throat. It wasn’t Steve’s fault, not on paper, but Tony needed someone to blame.

He left the tent to head towards the fire Steve made the night before and knelt down next to it to add more provided kindling and set up a pot of coffee. For a rich kid, he thankfully knew how to improvise. It helped that he was a genius and that was pretty much his life’s work of course.

Trying to avoid answering questions was a fool’s errand. Twice in as many days, the Soldier had come along to fuck him without lube or a reach around and he was getting tired of it.

"Tony..."

Steve looked utterly unimpressed. He did feel for the other man, he could recognise that the fear in his voice and the hysteria in his eyes were real. But Tony wasn't a dumb man, he knew that wasn't what Steve was asking.

"I can smell the blood."

He was aware how creepy that could sound, but he couldn't help his super soldier senses and it was better that all the cards were on the table.

"It wasn't there last night."

Smell the blood? Tony's reaction was to hug himself, situating himself as far against the curve of the tent as possible. Was Steve like a shark? Was the Soldier? Did they splice fish DNA into their genomes? Tony tried to imagine Rogers with a shark fin but it wasn't as funny a thought as he would have hoped.

"I had a bad night so that's to be expected," Tony said, teeth clenched together so tightly that he could feel his jaw ache. "How about this...you don't ask me questions that aren't relevant to our situation and I don't have to be cute with you?"

And he was pretty cute. Of that he was certain.

"I'm pretty sure it's relevant when I wake up and smell gunpowder and blood."

In fact, he was fairly sure that literally everything was relevant right now, when all they had was each other on this tiny spit of beach, not knowing if they were going to be rescued or left to die.

"A bad night doesn't usually equal that, in my experience. Not unless there was someone else involved."

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