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It started as a normal mission.
Eliminate two targets. Their names aren't important, his handler says, pointedly to the others in the room. This is strange, but not that strange. Soldat does not bother to wonder anymore. if he does not wonder, they don't have any reason to wipe him, and even worse than the pain is what happens after. A fresh slate that burns, minty and cold, like holding a poker to his forehead, and the inexplicable urge that he's forgetting something.
They’ll be driving down a scenic back road, back from a fundraiser charity ball, and they will crash. Hydra will assure it, and he’ll go in, and he’ll kill him. Easy job. Just don't leave marks. It will look like a car accident.
Soldat gets dropped off, drives to the point and lies in wait, in the dark, eyes closed, listening to the birds twitter sleepily in the forest above. He's in New York, they called it, But it doesn't feel right, calling it New York, like the sleepy green definition doesn't fit.
He likes it all the same. It's peaceful.
The car crashes, as expected, and does so in a blur of chrome firefly sparks. Soldat blinks; thinks of something very far away, through the ice and the fog.
He must stay there for too long, thinking about it, because “Soldat, move,” his comms crackle, commander spitting harsh Russian, so he starts the engine on his bike.
He wheels closer, gravel crunching under his tires.
The woman first. She’s in the passenger seat, closest to him. Efficiency is how Soldat functions.
Whenever he sees one like her, fitting a certain typecast (Italian, forties, red-lipped) sometimes there's a spark. It's the one thing Soldat allows himself, but he does not let himself ask who he sees in the visions that float at the edge of his consciousness then rush forward and floods him with scenes like the door closing, the gust of cold, a voice rings out: I got a good deal at the deli ! She definitely fits the type, with the laugh lines around her eyes and the little heeled shoes she wears, so he waits, fixated on her face, but it’s not working this time. Maybe it's the bleeding.
He writes it off and reaches forward with his cold arm and snaps her neck. It’s quick. She barely cries out.
Next is the man in the driver's seat. Soldat looks past his wife’s dead body, sees him bowed over the wheel and figures he's not going anywhere with that head wound.
He walks round to the other side of the car leisurely, and moves to strangle him when his target looks up groggily, blinking blood out of his eyes and —
It's so bright. Big band music crashes over him, saxophones and bass. Gold light everywhere, and there's a pretty girl with red lips smiling up at him, then taking another’s arm, and slipping into the crowd. They are with people, watching a stage. His hip, his side are pushed up against more skin -- somewhat by the crush (of the crowd) and somewhat by pleasant familiarity that makes Soldat’s fingers ache, just at the mere thought. “Steve,” someone says, from underwater, and the guy next to him turns, eyes wide and blue, hair falling over his forehead. His shoulders are lithe, slanted like the rest of him. He is a man made of tentative angles and uncertainties, like parts of him aren't sure they should be there, they haven't properly committed to living yet — except his smile. That bit of him is absolutely true.
Soldat staggers back, away from the man, away from what he thinks might be memories. His head aches, and he groans, doubling over, holding it. He's leaving himself vulnerable, but he can't.
Ladies and gentlemen, what if I told you that in just a few short years, your automobile won’t even have to touch the ground at all !
Soldat blinks, gasping in fresh air. “Steve?” he asks, desperate. Is that man Steve? “Steve!” he shouts again.
It's not Steve. Soldat doesn't even know who Steve is, but he knows it's not Steve.
The man mumbles something about the arctic, about ice, about expeditions. Soldat isn't listening anymore. These are the kind of thoughts he gets before they put him back under, that's all he remembers from it, never the thoughts, just the repercussions.
Another wave hits him, a woman screaming, I love you, Howard! Everyone is laughing, the man on stage grinning, nodding in recognition. God, Soldat wanted to be him.
“Howard?” he asks, questioning. It’s English, an English name. It's been so many years since he's spoken English. Any language but English, Rumlow says to his handler, don't want to stir anything up, hey? He laughed, and tapped Soldat’s temple.
It’s a remote mission. He's safe. His handler is watching his tracker on a screen, he's not here.
The man groans. His head is bleeding more now, and for a moment Soldat’s vision fragments into newspaper against his fingers, the rumple of the paper as he opens it up, words emblazoned in black and white and a cartoon blimp drifting across the advertisement: World Exposition Of Tomorrow, 1943
“Howard?” he asks again, mechanically.
“Yeah?” he says, and tries to lift his head. Then he moans, blood trickling thickly down his face, running into an eye. “Yeah? Maria?”
The car falls. The crowd laughs. I did say a few years, didn’t I?
He makes a kind of strangled noise. Howard does manage to look up, this time. Howard's eyes are so wide, trying to process it all. Soldat thinks of spinning tires. “Sergeant?” he asks, and Bucky is blown back in time, to the train, to the ice, to Steve. Steve. Steve.
They lived in a little creaky homey apartment, with candle wax dripping onto the coffee table, the one he found on the street while walking home from work, and hauled all the way from downtown. He closes his eyes, and he sees Steve grunting as he wenches the window to the fire escape open, because the frame always swells in summer. Sometimes Bucky had to help him wrench it open. He didn't really mind, at all, just to be next to Steve for a moment. The city quieting down as they watch from up high, legs swinging in the breeze. Their grumpy landlord, and the nice lady down the hall, and all the girls he never really clicked with, never really tried. and drinking with Steve at a bar, dancing with him all hot and gross and good, and then coming home together, falling into the same bed but that's all — but that's all. Soldat can taste it, pencil lead and charcoal and sweat and salt and working on the docks and coming home to sweet, sweet Steve, talking about some gossip he’s heard or that his mother’s coming by later with a pie. He knows he used to pick his moments to look at him, study the back of his head in the light, his eyelashes, his freckles, the way shirts hang off his shoulders, pants off his hips, and then has to get away; locks the bathroom door behind him just to live with the guilt and the knowledge that Steve doesn't want him. Soldat knows the pain in his chest as he sets Steve up with girl after girl, the hope that blooms when it doesn't work out yet again, and the crushing cycle continues.
“Soldat, make your kill,” the handler commands, over his comm. Bucky thinks of what they’ll do to wipe him. If he spares him, they’ll know.
Howard is still talking, “I can’t believe you're alive, I — how are you alive? You fell, and they never found you. God, even if you survived, how? How ?”
They’ll take Steve from him, again. He reaches out, takes Howard by the throat with his warm hand, the one that has touched Steve. It feels like betrayal, but what isn't, at this point?
“What?” Howard says, confused, and then recognition lights up in his eyes, “no,” he says, horror dawning in his throat, “no, Sergeant, don't do this, please. I can help you, you know.” One hand climbs up to his throat to fight uselessly at Bucky's hand, “I can save you, please let me save you,” he begs, almost gentle, if not raw and animalistic. People get like that when they're about to die. Soldat tilts his head. If he could be saved it would have happened by now.
Soldat tightens his grip, flicks his eyes to the left of Howard’s face, because if he looks too closely at him a young, idealistic Howard laughs and charms a crowd, flickering like a halloween mask over reality.
Bucky flexes his fingers, to make sure he can do it, and Howard gasps in fear, babbling, “I have a son, Tony, and he—”
Howard stops talking. Soldat drops his hand, arranges the bodies carefully.
Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.
You’re taking all the stupid with you.
You’re a punk.