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The year was 1945. Alexei Shostakhov was a twenty-one year old orphan, no purpose, no permanent job, but a patriot nonetheless. He wandered around Russia, taking the odd job here and here. But then he saw a sign for a medical experiment, one that vowed to change everything for the participants, and it changed his life forever.
His enlistment had been denied. So he saw this as the way to earn glory for his family name. For his mother, because his father had been a right asshole.
*
The year was 2027. Alexei Shostakhov was older, more scarred, and grief-weary. He had had to give his daughters to the Red Room. He’d had to let one go to where he could not go- whatever comes after death. He had faced prison time. But now he faced what Project Prosperity had promised him, eighty two years ago: glory,
But the Soviet Union was gone. Communism was all but dead. Stalin and Gorbachev and the lot were deceased. The Russia of Alexei’s childhood was gone. So now Alexei had ended up semi-permanently in the United States; a hero for the capitalists, nonetheless. Oh, how his parents would have thought of him had they seen him like this!
Old, but wearing a much younger face. A broken soldier, clinging to the only thing that survived time: ego, because he had nothing else. Oh, sure, he had a new time now, with his only surviving daughter, but he knew it couldn’t last. Nothing good ever did.
*
They said he was weak. That one had to defeat that weakness in order to be great; that was what the serum would do. So Alexei spat out the blood that bubbled in his mouth onto the floor without a grimace. In the height of his serum induced fever, writhing on the table, he did not say a word or even make a noise. He was as silent as a mouse.
Sacrifices had to be made, they said. So when he woke up and they told him he wouldn’t be able to have children, he took it in stride. But a part of him was broken. He’d always wanted to be a father. He wanted to be better than his own father- to speak ill of the dead- had been. But now he never could.
*
He trained with an American, once, after Alexei had fully recovered from the serum’s negative effects. The Winter Soldier, they called him. He was tall, and dark, with long hair and dark eyes. One of his arms was made of metal. He fought well.
Alexei only lasted five minutes in the ring with him, the American was that good. But when they made eye contact, Alexei saw a bit of himself in the other operative: an aching emptiness that seemed impossible to fill, a yearning for something everyone around them kept away from them.
*
When he met James Buchanan Barnes all those years later, he did not seem to remember him. But oh, did Alexei remember him. He remembered the pain, the blood, but most of all the admiration. The Winter Soldier had taught him to kill, thow to fight different styles unused by the Russians, and how to use the serum to his utmost advantage. And Alexei was grateful for that. He wouldn’t have lasted this long without that knowledge.
*
He trained with girls, part of the Widow programme. They were even younger than he had been when this had started, and they had been taken against their will. Alexei’s heart ached looking at them and he wondered briefly what the point of this pain was. He forced the thought down, not wanting to be punished. Thinking was for the intellectuals, and Alexei was not one of those. He was only a descendant of mere serfs, a peasant and a nobody. He was only the brawn.
*
He hated giving his girls to Dreykov. He knew they weren’t his, not biologically; but they were his nonetheless, Natasaha and Yelena. And he knew all too well the cruelty of the Red Room. Before it was the Red Room, before Dreykov, it had started with Project Prosperity and Alexei. They had taught him necessary skills, but they had beaten him blue and bloody, and he didn’t want that for his daughters. Never.
But he had no choice. No good soldier, no good subject of the Widow programme and Project Prosperity (of which he was the only survivor), ever did. But he felt horribly guilty all the same, watching his girls cry and scream and try to fight back. He felt guilty as he convinced Natasha to put down the gun. He felt guilty as he watched Dreykov walk off with his only family.
*
‘Harder, faster!’ His trainer urged.
Alexei tried. He really did. But he made a mistake and tripped, landing flat on his face.
‘Fucking useless!’ His trainer screamed at him, whacking him hard with a wooden staff and drawing blood. ‘Get up, you lazy lump! Repeat that move again and again! If you are not perfect, what is the point of you?’
Alexei’s body ached but he complied, knowing the punishment for disobedience would be far worse than simply a good thumping with a wooden rod. He got back into the stance and pushed his focus all onto the move, ignoring the blood and the pain. Pain was something the weak felt. And Alexei was not weak. Not anymore.
*
The decades after losing his girls were horrific. He was depressed. Self-loathing. And when the government locked him up in a prison, pretending he had never existed, he sank deeper into it, finding solace only in crass humor and vodka and tattoos.
When his girls came for him, he smiled for the first time in years.
But then Natasha died, and he feels broken. Like nothing will ever be alright again. This loss, on top of decades of other ones, breaks him. He throws himself into work but he cannot hide from the memories.
*
‘Mrs. Carter,’ Alexei greeted, shaking the Director’s hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you. Mr. Gorbachev sends his regrets at not being able to attend. He is ill. But he sent me in his stead to attend your space meeting.’
The silver-haired woman studied Alexei briefly. Alexei straightened under the woman’s gaze. He could not afford to give anything away, even if the woman had kind eyes and seemed like a good person (for a British capitalist, anyway).
‘Well, Mr. Romanov,’ the Director of Shield smiled softly, ‘I am sure you will be entertained. Come with me. It is about to begin.’
Alexei followed, genuinely interested in this intelligent woman and the world she had built around herself. He envied her. He had no such freedom, no such strength. No such courage to stand tall and tell the world to fuck off.
*
After joining Project Prosperity, he had left his father’s name behind. And he had chosen Romanov as his new surname, because he was a patriot after all. He wanted to signal a rebirth, like Russia had when the Romanovs fell and Lenin took over. Alexei Shostakov was dead. Alexei Romanov, the Red Guardian, was thriving.