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.