Chapter Text
Three.
He had never known numbers to be anything but facts – distances, calibers, levels, and body counts. Now, he thought perhaps numbers could be more. Three was certainly not a number he cared for at the moment. It was three in the morning. He was three kilometers from his target, the third HYDRA base he had come to strike, and, incidentally, the first one he had failed to infiltrate.
Looking down from his perch atop the high retaining wall, he counted just three vehicles he might use to escape.
Three.
What a fucking asshole of a number.
A frown tugged at his mouth as the thought came without prompting through his head. Without orders, he had only his own instincts and thoughts to drive him. On occasion, such as now, those thoughts came up with phrases too colorful or informal to have ever been part of his programming. He clung to those thoughts, for he knew they were him. The him he was striving to recover. The him he was desperate to know. The him now letting loose a string of highly unusual idioms that he was certain were not commonly used by anyone.
The cursing subsided long enough for him to catch the sound of an engine revving hard. His hearing was acute, enhanced like the rest of his body. The engine was growing louder but was still two minutes away. He had time to choose his getaway vehicle.
In less than three seconds, he surveyed the three cars below.
The gas station was lit up like it was three in the afternoon, not three in the morning; the glaring florescent lights illuminated the vehicles and their owners, allowing him to assess the threat level and likelihood of success in his attempt to commandeer a ride.
At pump eight was a tall, boxy behemoth of a vehicle, neither truck nor car. He had no name for it aside from hideous. It was gun metal grey, which was reason enough to dislike it. The woman filling the thing with gasoline was short and round, her underarms flapped against her sides as she threw the door open and shouted at an unseen passenger. He narrowed his eyes and peered through the window, easily tracing the outline of a teenager, head bent and face lit in the dull glow of a phone. The woman was no threat; she would be easy to overpower, but the child would be a problem. The child could cry out, could capture his image or call the authorities in the time it would take him to seize control of the hideous grey box.
Pump eight was out.
He looked to pump five, where an elderly man leaned his unsubstantial weight against the side of his sedan. The car, like its owner, was an older model. The car, rather unlike its owner, had been very well cared for. The silver sides shined under the fluorescents, sleek and free of even the smallest scratch or dent. He studied the old man. He was pushing eighty, with papery skin and wisps of white hair circling his head like a drooping halo. He was thin, little more than bones beneath clothes that were far too large. Something about the fragile body in oversized clothing tugged at him, some unknown memory trying to force its way to the front of his mind from the vault buried deep in the back, but it was too fragmented; all he had was a feeling and no actual memory to explain it. He shook his head and continued his threat assessment. Old, frail, alone. His training had taught him that there was no such thing as a zero threat level, but he was certain he had just found it.
For thoroughness and to avoid surprises, he turned to the last option. Pump three and a tiny car in a vibrant and eye-catching blue. That alone raised the threat level. People noticed bright things. The car was too conspicuous. The driver was just as bad. A woman, early twenties, lips painted red and body swaying to a song only she could hear. She was not large, but she was young enough and strong enough to put up a fight.
No, pump five. The old man. That was the safe option. The car was inconspicuous. The driver easy to overpower. Tactically, he knew it was the best choice, yet as he dropped down into the shadow of the dumpster he kept his eye trained on pump three. As he crept along the wall avoiding the surveillance cameras he moved closer to pump three. As he broke into a run, he ran to pump three.
He was on her in under three seconds, but she had seen him, had dove for the open door and slammed it shut, had thrust the key into the ignition. All too slow. He was closing the door as she peeled out of the parking lot.
“Out,” he ordered.
“No way!”
“OUT!” he demanded, holding the gun for her to see but not pointing it at her.
“Fuck off!” she replied, oddly calm in the face of a 9 millimeter.
“I need the car and don’t want to kill you.” It was true. His new orders, his new mission, given to him by himself and no one else, did not permit killing of anyone outside of HYDRA and its agents. Still, he hoped the threat would be enough to at least gain control of the car.
“No way,” she said again, chin jutting out in stubbornness. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the settings on this thing just right? Three months! I am not going to have some paramilitary wack job undoing all my good work because he just had to move the driver’s seat back.”
He couldn’t think of a reply. He wasn’t sure there was one even if he had been playing with a full deck. So he just stared at her face reflected in the rear view mirror as she pulled onto the highway and drove.
HYRDA would be looking for a man alone. A couple might slip through their net more easily, and he had no doubt there would be repercussions for his failure this night.
The woman, sensing his acceptance or perhaps just too much of a civilian to understand the danger she had put herself into, spoke. She spoke in a tone of pleasant brightness he had forgotten existed. “So, where are we going?”
“North.”
“Already on that one, Major Monosyllable,” the woman said with something of a snort. “Got specifics for me?”
He studied her a moment before shifting himself into the front passenger’s seat. “New York.”
“What a coincidence! That’s where I’m headed, too.” She sounded both sarcastic and completely genuine at the same time. “And how in the hell did you fit through there? I can’t even fit my purse between the seats half the time.”
Again, he had no response to her. He opted for surly and antisocial demands instead. “Can’t this tub go any faster?”
“Do not sass, Tremayne.” She raised an eyebrow and a finger in warning.
“Tremayne?” He frowned his lack of understanding until she pet the dash and cooed at her car. “You named this dinky little thing Tremayne?”
“You ought to be nicer to my car. You two have quite a bit in common.” That warning finger fell against his arm, tapping pointedly against the metal plates that had been exposed when he deflected rounds from the guards. He had not realized the silver was visible.
He stared down at that red lacquered fingernail as it hit against his arm. He should not have let her get that close, but he had absolutely no inclination to stop her. Probably just because she was so little threat to him, he thought, though even that seemed inadequate. It was more a curiosity about her. Her hand did not shake, not when trespassed upon by a man twice her size, not when he put a gun in her face, not when she saw he had a fully-articulated metal arm.
“Who are you?”
“Darcy, world’s greatest assistant and granddaughter, and I have the mugs to prove it,” she said, holding her hand out for him to shake. He took it in his flesh and bone hand, though he offered no name in return. “And you are?”
“No one.”
He had no name to give. He was no longer the Asset, but he was not the man in the museum either. He was not James Buchanan Barnes. Not yet.
“You say so.”
Her hand returned to the wheel, tapping out an irregular rhythm that he recognized as a song and not an attempt to release her nervous energy. The fact that her red lips were silently forming words in time with the tapping of her fingers helped him in that deduction considerably.
“So,” Darcy said after some miles of her silent song, “where’d the super cool metal arm come from?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Where in New York are you going?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Major Monosyllable,” she sighed. “We have a long drive ahead of us. Loooong. You might want to get with the sharing before I bust out the showtunes until I break you. And believe me, I’ve broken better men than you with my Best of Cats medley.” She raised a smug eyebrow over the top of her glasses and offered an even smugger smile. “I will break you.”
He turned away in time to see the headlights reflect off Georgia mile marker three.
Three. Fucking asshole of a number.