How They Make You a Weapon (4/?)
written for this prompt :
[spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier]Lovingly detailed dark!fic about the process by which Hydra turned Bucky into the Winter Soldier.
warnings: detailed torture, brainwashing, amnesia, second person POV
characters: The Winter Soldier, Natasha Romanoff
word-count: ~1,300 words this chapter
read on AO3
chapter 3
The target is slow-moving, unaware he's in any danger at all. You take him down as he's climbing into his limousine. One bullet to the back of the head. The driver gets out, staring anxiously up at the roof of the main building. He doesn't see you, nor does the valet or the screaming woman on the sidewalk. You stay where you are, looking out through the basement window, until the ambulance comes, until they zip up the body-bag.
You deliver your report, note the method of execution, and the confirmation of death. You await further instructions, but they have none, so you walk back to the maintenance room.
The blue-coats inspect your arm thoroughly, opening access panels to check the circuitry underneath. They close you back up and one of them leaves. The other stays behind, polishing your shoulder to a high gleam. He takes a step back, looking at his handiwork and clicks his tongue, satisfied.
"Where is the doctor?" you ask, wondering why nobody's examined the rest of you. They always do. The doctor himself always double-checks your vitals.
"Why, something wrong?" the tech asks.
"No."
Brow furrowed, the man walks across the room and presses a button on the intercom, mutters something into the phone attached to it. "He's on his way." He gives you a sloppy two-finger salute, and leaves the room.
Twenty minutes pass.
The door opens and a man in a white coat enters. The wheels of the blood pressure monitor squeak as he rolls it close to your chair. He wraps the cuff over your upper arm and checks your heartbeat with his stethoscope. "Vitals normal." He straightens and undoes the cuff on your arm. "Did you sustain any injuries?"
"No." There's a prickle of anger brewing in your gut. "Where's the doctor?" you ask again. It's not a hard question. The doctor's always close.
"I'm the doctor," the white-coat says.
"No, you're not."
"Dr. Zola is dead," says a new voice from the door. An older man with a goatee enters. He's dressed in uniform: a general, high-ranking, Russian colors and pips though the cut is different than you remember. "He passed away ten years ago, while you were resting."
The doctor was sick, you remember that much.
"He was very ill." The dark-haired man tilts his head to the side. "Does that trouble you?"
You consider the question and the expected response. "No."
"Recalibration sequence ready," says the white-coat, looking to the general for approval. "Should I charge the magnets?"
"Нет. His next mission is a related level four target. Current short term memory may be crucial." The general leans down and looks you in the eyes. "We have another mission for you tomorrow. Go to your room and await instructions."
***
After running through your second round of strength drills, dinner arrives. Three bottles of sweetened, chalky milk. You drink them and sit on your bed, waiting. The lights turn off. A slideshow begins a few seconds later, projected onto the wall across from you.
The first image is a target data-sheet. Ivan Petrovitch, age fifty-six, 110kg, 190cm. Photos of his face, a profile view, shots of him with a mustache, and one without. Skilled in hand-to-hand combat, bad left knee.
The second, third and fourth slide show other incidentals you're authorized to take down. Photos, names, notable skills. None seem like they'll pose a challenge.
The last slide shows a list of Hydra agents to protect. Three of them will be present during your mission, on assignments of their own. They're reinforcements should you need them; you won't, but they're useful for clean-up.
The slideshow restarts.
Eyes on the projected images, you jump straight up and wrap your fingers around the wall-mounted bar next to your bed. Legs up, legs down, center straight, stomach tight. The projector replays the three slides again and again. You time your movements to the switching of images, shins to forehead just as the picture flicks from one to the next.
The projector shuts down some time later, but the lights stay off. You switch from leg raises to twists, bringing your knees to your left, your center, your right and back again. It's not easy to tire yourself out, but you sleep better when your body's exhausted. Tonight, you need sleep. At least three hours.
Sleep used to be easier to come by, you think.
Sweat trickles down your forehead, and the room feels warmer. If you keep going until your limbs start to shake, then you'll feel cold when you stop. Cold helps you sleep.
The front wall lights up again, and a movie starts to play: sorrowful music and narration blaring in through the speakers above you.
"The world is diseased," says the voice, to the image of a broken city. "We live in a corpse filled with maggots and rot." The camera shows images of the dead. Bodies crushed and burned, draped across the rubble.
"There are those who would seek to break it further." The images shift to faces you know to be enemies. Men of power, men in costumes, wearing their countries' banners like armor.
"Nations grown fat with greed hide themselves behind their weapons, and their masked supermen." The image fills with white. A blizzard that gets stronger until it becomes one with the white wall of the room.
"They dwell in an endless summer, while here, we have nothing but our winter."
A single figure stands in the center of the snowy field. A man, or a small tree. Far in the distance is Mount Narodnaya, you recognize its shape, though you're not sure why.
"Winter was for a long time our enemy. It takes from us everything, and gives us nothing."
The music shifts and becomes gentler, more hopeful.
"But we have learned that it is also what makes us strong. We alone know how to endure it, we alone can harness its unforgiving strength."
The camera closes in on a black flag, decorated with the image of a red skull with six curved tentacles.
"Be like our winter. Wait out our enemies, isolate them, end them with silence. Be inevitable and merciless."
You drop to the floor as the movie reel finishes, and begin doing push-ups. Sweat trickles down your forehead, and drips onto the grey floor. You're still not tired.
"The world is diseased," says the voice, to the image of a broken city.
***
Your target escapes. He escapes because of unexpected interference. Someone else is hunting him. You see her once in the ballroom of the opera house, and again when your target falls dead while you're lining up your scope.
She took your mission from you. You're furious, and spend the rest of the night following her.
You can't deliver a proper report now. The target is dead, but you don't know by whose hand.
It's difficult to track her, but not impossible. She fades and hides the way you do, but you still see her, flitting along in the shadows; her red hair shines when she passes under a lamp, a lit match in the night.
Her movements become rushed and panicked, she knows you're tailing her. You follow her for over half an hour, keeping your distance. When she makes a run for it across Arbat Street, you take to the roofs, let her think she's lost you.
She delivers her report by phone, in her small, dimly lit motel room, and takes a shower. The window in the bathroom is barely the size of your hand.
The larger kitchen window slides open quietly and you slip inside. The weight of you makes the floorboards creak. You pause, wait for a reaction-but the water doesn't turn off. The woman's quiet singing continues uninterrupted.
There's a chair across from the bathroom door, next to a small table. You sit, set your sidearm down next to you, in clear view, and wait.
***
chapter 5
[spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier]Lovingly detailed dark!fic about the process by which Hydra turned Bucky into the Winter Soldier.
warnings: detailed torture, brainwashing, amnesia, second person POV
characters: The Winter Soldier, Natasha Romanoff
word-count: ~1,300 words this chapter
read on AO3
chapter 3
The target is slow-moving, unaware he's in any danger at all. You take him down as he's climbing into his limousine. One bullet to the back of the head. The driver gets out, staring anxiously up at the roof of the main building. He doesn't see you, nor does the valet or the screaming woman on the sidewalk. You stay where you are, looking out through the basement window, until the ambulance comes, until they zip up the body-bag.
You deliver your report, note the method of execution, and the confirmation of death. You await further instructions, but they have none, so you walk back to the maintenance room.
The blue-coats inspect your arm thoroughly, opening access panels to check the circuitry underneath. They close you back up and one of them leaves. The other stays behind, polishing your shoulder to a high gleam. He takes a step back, looking at his handiwork and clicks his tongue, satisfied.
"Where is the doctor?" you ask, wondering why nobody's examined the rest of you. They always do. The doctor himself always double-checks your vitals.
"Why, something wrong?" the tech asks.
"No."
Brow furrowed, the man walks across the room and presses a button on the intercom, mutters something into the phone attached to it. "He's on his way." He gives you a sloppy two-finger salute, and leaves the room.
Twenty minutes pass.
The door opens and a man in a white coat enters. The wheels of the blood pressure monitor squeak as he rolls it close to your chair. He wraps the cuff over your upper arm and checks your heartbeat with his stethoscope. "Vitals normal." He straightens and undoes the cuff on your arm. "Did you sustain any injuries?"
"No." There's a prickle of anger brewing in your gut. "Where's the doctor?" you ask again. It's not a hard question. The doctor's always close.
"I'm the doctor," the white-coat says.
"No, you're not."
"Dr. Zola is dead," says a new voice from the door. An older man with a goatee enters. He's dressed in uniform: a general, high-ranking, Russian colors and pips though the cut is different than you remember. "He passed away ten years ago, while you were resting."
The doctor was sick, you remember that much.
"He was very ill." The dark-haired man tilts his head to the side. "Does that trouble you?"
You consider the question and the expected response. "No."
"Recalibration sequence ready," says the white-coat, looking to the general for approval. "Should I charge the magnets?"
"Нет. His next mission is a related level four target. Current short term memory may be crucial." The general leans down and looks you in the eyes. "We have another mission for you tomorrow. Go to your room and await instructions."
***
After running through your second round of strength drills, dinner arrives. Three bottles of sweetened, chalky milk. You drink them and sit on your bed, waiting. The lights turn off. A slideshow begins a few seconds later, projected onto the wall across from you.
The first image is a target data-sheet. Ivan Petrovitch, age fifty-six, 110kg, 190cm. Photos of his face, a profile view, shots of him with a mustache, and one without. Skilled in hand-to-hand combat, bad left knee.
The second, third and fourth slide show other incidentals you're authorized to take down. Photos, names, notable skills. None seem like they'll pose a challenge.
The last slide shows a list of Hydra agents to protect. Three of them will be present during your mission, on assignments of their own. They're reinforcements should you need them; you won't, but they're useful for clean-up.
The slideshow restarts.
Eyes on the projected images, you jump straight up and wrap your fingers around the wall-mounted bar next to your bed. Legs up, legs down, center straight, stomach tight. The projector replays the three slides again and again. You time your movements to the switching of images, shins to forehead just as the picture flicks from one to the next.
The projector shuts down some time later, but the lights stay off. You switch from leg raises to twists, bringing your knees to your left, your center, your right and back again. It's not easy to tire yourself out, but you sleep better when your body's exhausted. Tonight, you need sleep. At least three hours.
Sleep used to be easier to come by, you think.
Sweat trickles down your forehead, and the room feels warmer. If you keep going until your limbs start to shake, then you'll feel cold when you stop. Cold helps you sleep.
The front wall lights up again, and a movie starts to play: sorrowful music and narration blaring in through the speakers above you.
"The world is diseased," says the voice, to the image of a broken city. "We live in a corpse filled with maggots and rot." The camera shows images of the dead. Bodies crushed and burned, draped across the rubble.
"There are those who would seek to break it further." The images shift to faces you know to be enemies. Men of power, men in costumes, wearing their countries' banners like armor.
"Nations grown fat with greed hide themselves behind their weapons, and their masked supermen." The image fills with white. A blizzard that gets stronger until it becomes one with the white wall of the room.
"They dwell in an endless summer, while here, we have nothing but our winter."
A single figure stands in the center of the snowy field. A man, or a small tree. Far in the distance is Mount Narodnaya, you recognize its shape, though you're not sure why.
"Winter was for a long time our enemy. It takes from us everything, and gives us nothing."
The music shifts and becomes gentler, more hopeful.
"But we have learned that it is also what makes us strong. We alone know how to endure it, we alone can harness its unforgiving strength."
The camera closes in on a black flag, decorated with the image of a red skull with six curved tentacles.
"Be like our winter. Wait out our enemies, isolate them, end them with silence. Be inevitable and merciless."
You drop to the floor as the movie reel finishes, and begin doing push-ups. Sweat trickles down your forehead, and drips onto the grey floor. You're still not tired.
"The world is diseased," says the voice, to the image of a broken city.
***
Your target escapes. He escapes because of unexpected interference. Someone else is hunting him. You see her once in the ballroom of the opera house, and again when your target falls dead while you're lining up your scope.
She took your mission from you. You're furious, and spend the rest of the night following her.
You can't deliver a proper report now. The target is dead, but you don't know by whose hand.
It's difficult to track her, but not impossible. She fades and hides the way you do, but you still see her, flitting along in the shadows; her red hair shines when she passes under a lamp, a lit match in the night.
Her movements become rushed and panicked, she knows you're tailing her. You follow her for over half an hour, keeping your distance. When she makes a run for it across Arbat Street, you take to the roofs, let her think she's lost you.
She delivers her report by phone, in her small, dimly lit motel room, and takes a shower. The window in the bathroom is barely the size of your hand.
The larger kitchen window slides open quietly and you slip inside. The weight of you makes the floorboards creak. You pause, wait for a reaction-but the water doesn't turn off. The woman's quiet singing continues uninterrupted.
There's a chair across from the bathroom door, next to a small table. You sit, set your sidearm down next to you, in clear view, and wait.
***
chapter 5