The Assets

/ONE

Up on the side of the cliff face, the metal door—opening onto a small ledge—is hidden in the blinding white. Outside the emergency exit, the Assets stand looking out on the deep-cut valley. Snow swirls past the ledge, driven by the wind; the tree-line below them is dark, unmoving in the silence. It's too cold for humans, but they can stand ten minutes in the chill that would make one of their handlers lose fingers and toes to frostbite. In an unhurried movement, the Winter Soldier retrieves a cigarette and lights it, the small glowing point cupped in the lee of his hand. He inhales, then breathes out and watches the smoke drift hidden into the snow-laden sky. Steve feels the minutes counting down. They're not forbidden to come here, exactly, but it's never a good idea to let them think you have preferences, any more than you can help it.

"Do you ever think about why we do this?" Steve asks at last. Twilight is coming on, stealing slow shadows across the Soldier's face. He lowers his hand, cigarette hidden behind his palm, and turns his head. There's a strangeness in the way night leeches colors from the world that never fails to unsettle Steve, a familiarity that is uncanny, not quite a memory.

"We were created to serve whoever owns us. Right now, that's HYDRA," he says.

"I don't mean why we were created. I mean—why we do this."

There's a lot of things the Winter Soldier could say, but he considers the question seriously. "To give the world the freedom it deserves."

It's a rote line, Steve knows, but he says it like he believes it.

"I do," he replies, when Steve says so. "But you don't."

It's a dangerous truth.

"We're not the good guys," Steve says at last. And thinks, how can any organization that doesn't understand the concept of freedom give freedom to anyone?

"Somebody's got to the dirty work. Might as well be us. The problem is, you want to be a hero."

"No," Steve says.

The sound almost hidden under the wind. Three minutes left. The cold reminds him of ice, of something dark and peaceful.

"Do you think heroes exist?"

"I don't know. They should."

The truth is: Steve lies. He does want to be a hero. It's a longing tied into his very being, something both selfless and selfish.

The cigarette has burned down, and the Winter Soldier snuffs it out, tosses it over the edge. Steve watches it fall, a speck in the darkness, impossible to call back. Smoking is an unnecessary and extraneous behavior, when the drug will not even affect them, and all such behaviors have been trained out of their habits.

The Soldier smokes every time he gets a chance. He would deny it is a gesture of defiance.

/TWO

The other Asset. For a long time the Winter Soldier was the only one, and now they are talking about this. The new one.

He does not think another Asset is necessary.

The figure lies recumbent under ice, chipped slowly away by eager scientists. They talk about an amazing find, a blow to the opposition that no one will ever know about. There is awe in some of their hushed voices. The heartbeat monitor blips softly, the red line continuing in an even pattern.

He stands at the side of the metal table and watches. He is present for security. The new Asset is recovering from a deep stasis, bodily functions restoring themselves incrementally as it reacts to the change in temperature. The position is calm, restful. They say the other Asset was thought to be dead for a long time. They brought him in an eerie creature, visible as though floating, fossilized in the blue-green ice. With every shard chipped away, that shield is dismantled; but the body, exposed for study, is still immutable. Death might have been expected, but even in the harsh glow of the overhead lights, he looks more like a sculpture than a dead man.

Perhaps he thought he would die, when he laid himself down and felt his breathing slow, the cold creeping up his limbs, stealing away all sensation and thought. He has not been that lucky.

/THREE

There is no before. However he was created, Steve has no memory of it, only waking up and what came after. But sometimes when he dreams he can almost see something else, another life that seems as tangible as this one.

The first time he sees the Winter Soldier without his mask on, he is strapped to a table, momentarily ignored by scientists congregated on the other side of the room. The Soldier is bored, Steve can tell. He has been made for more than babysitting the other Asset, but he is the only one both strong enough and trusted enough to do so. The other Winter Soldiers are stronger and more dangerous, but no one ever made the mistake of trusting them. They are feral dogs. The only time Steve has ever faced them was when they were in the cage, and they were as liable to turn on the handlers and even each other as they were to do anything else. They could only take orders up to a point before they snapped and started killing anything in their reach.

The Winter Soldier is always on guard, but he is never quite as wary around Steve. Steve thinks he recognizes that Steve was made more upon his own lines, and so, after 56 hours at his side, he moves from his position of utter stillness to cast a look at the scientists who have congregated to ooh and aah on the results of the latest tests and growls a low, and very annoyed, sigh. Then he takes off his goggles and mask, placing them beside him.

And Steve blinks. It is as though the world wavers for an instant, his dreams laying themselves over his reality in negative color. "…Bucky?" he whispers.

The other Asset looks at him dismissively. "What?" he says. And it's him, down to every detail. This was the man he had fought beside, who had taken care of him when…

The faded pictures, without anything to cling to, drift away, and Steve is left with the impression of his face and a terrified giddy feeling he can't identify. "Bucky, it's you," he says.

The Winter Soldier stares at him blankly. "Who," he says, "the hell is Bucky?"

"In my dreams," Steve begins. "You're there…"

"Oh, will you just shut up about your dreams?" the Soldier says with palpable annoyance. He glances over at the scientists again, already ungrouping to walk back to their position, and all at once he is as expressionless and calm as a mountain lake, sitting as still as he had been for the past 56 hours.

The scientists walking over catch sight of the Soldier's mask sitting beside him and freeze, looking with terrified eyes from Asset to Asset. But the Soldier only stares at them blankly in a way that almost dares a comment, and Steve's bewilderment is clear on his face. At last, they seem to realize that whatever they are afraid of isn't going to happen, and un-tense slowly, darting nervous, boastful glances back and forth.

"Well," someone says at last. "That went better than could be expected."

/FOUR

It isn't long before the other Asset is let out of the torture chambers. Maybe it's his model behavior. "Hardly any memory to wipe," he hears them whisper. "What a stroke of luck."

The Asset doesn't know why they seem to love him so much. He's not as deadly as the other Winter Soldiers, not half as reliable as the Asset. He doubts this new one could even pull off an assassination.

They call him the Captain.

The Asset resolves to hate him. But it's hard, when he seems to follow every movement the Asset makes with studied concentration, like he's trying to learn how he's built, like he's compiling references in his head, watching him with his cool blue eyes that always seem like they belong somewhere else. He still looks like a sculpture, unreal except when he smiles.

The Asset wonders what the Captain has gone through that he put himself into the ice, yet is still capable of smiling like that.

/FIVE

The other Winter Soldiers are not really capable of working together. So it falls to them when a team is needed. The Asset understands that sometimes a two-man unit might be preferable, but he has never found it necessary.

The Captain outlines the plan with careful precision, emphasis on how the mission will play out, how to reach the target. It is the usual info he would expect from a handler, but coming from the other Asset it rankles. He finishes blacking around his eyes and reaches for his mask.

"Just shut up and stay out of my way," he says, and the other Asset's lips thin in something that could be annoyance, or disappointment.

/SIX

The Winter Soldier is sent more often to the chair than Steve is. While they might appreciate hints of personality from Steve, who is kept around more for tactical reasons than anything else, if the Soldier starts showing any autonomous thinking they start feeling nervous.

When he comes out his face never varies from its blank expression, and he stares at Steve when he makes jokes without a hint of disapproval or even understanding. Instead he goes over to his weapons and checks them obsessively. They say he works better as an assassin when he's just been wiped. Steve doesn't know, but he thinks he would disagree. When the Soldier is in more of his right mind he seems much more flexible, able to change plans to give more chance of success.

"Hey Buck," he says once when the Soldier stands beside his bunk, unstrapping the pieces of his armours. The Soldier falters, looks at him. "Who… are you?" he says, his voice rusty from screaming.

"Steve," Steve says, and instead of contradicting him, the Soldier nods. "Steve," he says, slowly, as though considering the name.

"I'm glad you're all right," Steve adds, because the Soldier won't scoff at him and tell him to mind his own business.

The Soldier blinks, looking almost endearingly thrown. "…Thank you," he says at last, flatly, as though he's not sure if that's the proper term.

Steve smiles. "I know it's hard at first," he says. "Do you want me to tell you anything? To help you remember," he clarifies.

The Soldier stares at him and sits down on the edge of the bunk. "Tell me," he repeats.

Steve takes it as an invitation. "Your name is Bucky," he begins, and lets his mind drift off to his dreams. "I've known you all my life," he says. "Ever since we were made. We used to live in a city, on the edge of the sea…" it's almost like a fairytale.

Once he's taken advantage once, it's hard to stop. As though every time they erase who the Soldier is now, he has to try to recreate some of his dream through him.

"When are you going to get tired of that lie?" the Soldier says once, preparing for another mission. His movements are as automatic as ever but the inflection has crept back into his voice, along with his memories. The wipes, and the suggestible state it puts him in, never last for long.

Steve, standing in the corner of the aircraft hangar, looks out toward the blinding white. "When you stop believing it."

.

.

.