Chapter Text
The Asset goes to find one of his handlers. He can’t help it. A moth drawn to flame.
He smacks the side of his head. Moth drawn to flame? Recalibrate. Weapons don’t think that way.
He stakes out the handler’s apartment in D.C., a mid-level political employee planted as an assistant to various military personnel.
There’s various points of entry to the apartment. An existing but incompetent security detail, they pick him up every morning in a sleek black full-sized Range Rover SUV with tinted windows and then drop him back off in the evening.
He was always told the handlers were the smartest people, the most capable people, so he found himself pondering why anyone who could have such a large target on their back would have the same rituals every day and an apartment with such clear sight lines.
Well, clear to those on roofs. The wind whips through his hair. He had brought his sniper. He still isn’t sure why. Someone has to tell him what to do. But nobody knows where he is, who he is. What he is.
So, the handler. Easy choice to make. Go to him, turn himself over, scratch the itch in his brain that just won’t go away please make it go away—
The Asset smacks the side of his head with his metal arm this time. Recalibrate. The cogs whir and snap at the quick action.
The wind whips through his hair and he takes up the sniper. Totally clear shot, but this wind could cause error if not properly taken into account. Target engaged in TV, unlikely to take quick action, area of operation clear of witnesses.
Or innocents.
Or innocents.
It’s the feeling of the cold barrel warming beneath his human hand that makes it begin to shake. He thinks. He never shakes. The Asset doesn’t shake. But when had he last eaten?
No, mission focused. Target in the scope. Hands shaking, strong wind, not the proper conditions for this MO.
For a moment the Asset stares through the crosshairs, watches the handler laugh at cartoons. He came here to turn himself over but now? But now?
The Asset slides himself down to the fire escape, leaves the sniper behind for post-op collection, and leaps to the next building. And the next, until he’s on the roof of the handler’s condominium.
He had been staking this location for two weeks. This is short work.
He breaks the lock of the maintenance roof hatch, the metal squishes and breaks like warm butter in his hand. Warm butter. He shakes his head like a dog trying to shake fleas.
Similes? You talkin’ in similes now? I always told ya, you could be some kinda poet.
Can it, Steve, you don’t know what I am.
I do know you’re takin’ too long getting this handled, shit for brains. You on vacation or somethin’?
The Asset had, for the time being, accepted this new development. Steve Rogers was in his head.
Without cryo, with no resets, the Asset sometimes remembers a life that isn’t his, and the man from the bridge, Steve, making fun of him like the Asset isn’t something to fear. To hate.
So he talks to Steve. Or lets Steve talk to him in his head like he’s a new handler. Or something. He doesn’t know. Blue eyes seem to follow him everywhere like the laser of a sniper pointed at his chest.
Now, he listens to Steve as usual; he really has been frozen too long.
He lays flat on the gravel and listens for any movement in the hallway. Peers inside. Always avoid witnesses. Avoid needless bloodshed for minimal suspicion.
There is no one in the hallway. He slips down, silent as a shadow (another simile, jerk) and pulls the maintenance hatch closed behind him.
Crouches low to the ground, avoid being seen through peep holes, no witnesses.
Moves forward, finds the door, stares at it for a second too long. The door is already unlocked when he lightly pushes the handle.
Could be a trap, ol’ boy. You remember the picture where they get the jump on the Howlies? It’d be exactly like that, pal, except you don’t got backup.
You know I haven’t seen that stupid picture.
Seen it? Buddy, you lived it.
The Asset isn’t in the pictures.
Says who?
Says him.
The handler is staring at him with poorly concealed fear in his eyes.
The Asset doesn’t remember getting into the living room. Time sometimes slips past him this way.
Through a shaky breath trying to sound calm, the handler says in Russian, “We- we knew you’d come home, soldier.”
The Asset sees his hand twitch toward the direction of the tablet phone on the side table. The Asset pounces.
Humans are so fragile. So delicate.
The Asset feels the meat beneath his palm flutter with the very pulse of panicked human life leeching out, both hands gripped around the handler’s neck, knee pinning the arm to the couch.
The handler dies this way, surprised and alone, strangled by his own weapon and pissing himself as he goes.
He slips off the couch. Stares at the body for a moment. T minus 7 hours until it’s discovered. Approximately.
With a shock, he realizes he hadn’t checked for security alarms. His capabilities are slipping. Heading toward compromised.
Finds security alarm and finds it isn’t armed. His head whirls. Why? Why was this so easy?
Instinct takes over. He opens the dead man’s fridge and finds many take out boxes. He pulls out one from a Chinese restaurant in Georgetown. Lo Mein. Satisfactory nutrition. Out of Cryo he’s always so hungry.
He eats while he sweeps the condo. He finds one camera in the corner bookshelf that isn’t even plugged in.
He had been so scared of this one, with his electric prodding and maniacal smile, but he died like a fat turkey on the morning before Thanksgiving.
They had expected him. They had underestimated him. They thought he loved them. Does he not?
We knew you’d come home, soldier.
But why? They thought he was coming to surrender himself.
He had been, he thought he had been, but then he had the handler beneath the weight of his scope and hands and things changed quickly. Why?
Because they’re no good Nazi scum, ya nitwit. You could smell the stink of it on ‘em.
But they made me, Stevie, I am what they made me.
The lo mein drops to the floor. Too much. He smacks the side of his head. Recalibrate. It’s time to go. The Asset is compromised.
The Asset slips back through the maintenance hatch, several manila folders in hand.
Mission complete, Sarge. Make your way home now.
The Asset is on route, Cap.
The Asset enjoys stalking Steve.
He hadn’t done it at first. He had left DC after the last fight, after the river. He had gone to Russia.
He didn’t go into HYDRA bases but he staked them out, seeing who still worked there, when, how many guards were stationed and he noticed it was substantially more than when he had last been there.
Extra security for extra threat. Clearly, hey didn’t know what to expect when the Asset decided to come home.
He eliminated eight HYDRA operatives who were unrelated to the Asset, low level ones, enough to cause paranoia in the higher ranking members. The more nervous a target is, the more susceptible. He doesn’t know why he killed them. Then he punished himself by touching the live electric rail line in Kiev.
It was crude, but the assassinations had helped. Or something. Kept him focused on the mission, which was— which was—
He still isn’t sure. He was operating off instinct. Still is.
So he came back to DC after three months (he thinks, can never be certain) of this work to find Steve. Amongst other things.
He watches Steve from the best vantage points he can find. Steve was sometimes on missions, missions that the Asset didn’t always know the nature of. Most of them, though, were to do with finding the Winter Soldier.
When Steve had left for a mission in the early days of his first stake out, the Asset broke into the apartment easily, took out the very rudimentary security system. Looked around.
Who was the man who wouldn’t fight the Asset? Who was this man, the one with the death wish who called him Bucky?
He had found a photograph of someone who must be him and Steve with an arm wrapped around each others shoulder, laughing together. They were wearing vintage combats. It was a very old photograph, fraying on the edges, black ink fading fast.
Until the end of the line.
The voice was loud and clear as anything, but Steve was nowhere to be found. It was the first time he heard him talk upstairs, heard anyone else but the handlers in his head.
The Asset had hightailed it outta there at once. Compromised.
He’s been back since. The voice only got louder. He’s not so scared of it anymore. It took some adjusting.
Columbia Heights reminds him of Brooklyn. In some ways. The Asset was there for an assassination a few years ago. Or decades. He can’t ever be sure.
He thinks it’s fitting Steve lives here. Steve looks natural here.
Today, Steve’s packing up for a mission. He’s very clinical about it. Always exactly the amount of shirts per day he’s gone, sparse but adequate hygienic items, an old Luger and a SIG Sauer M17 tucked into holsters. Cold climate if the coat is anything to go by.
The Steve in the other guy’s memory doesn’t have a beard, but this Steve does. The Steve in his memory has the same storming eyes and gritting set to his jaw that the Asset sees now in his scope. Does he feel the crosshairs on him? Maybe. He should, the Asset feels like he should.
If he does, he makes no indication as he leaves.
He’s not going to kill Steve.
Kill Captain America.
A voice that’s not Steve’s. Piercing blue eyes, not comforting, scary blue eyes, not stormy, but he knows him—
He slams his metal hand into his temple. Then he lays on the roof, watching the clouds spin in dizzying circles.
When his vision corrects itself, Asset slinks to the apartment. He doesn’t do much while he’s here but uses it as a temporary base. Easiest location for quick hot shower (he longs for longer ones but can’t do it can’t do it) and quick meals (he longs for something for something like fried potato pancakes with onions with with) like stealing small amounts of protein shake powder.
He doesn’t like stealing. It’s strange. But he sets that line. Digs around trash cans and hunts fish in the harbor and rats in the alleys.
But then he still steals from Steve. And it feels fine. He knows him. Recalibrate.
He smacks himself upside the head in the shower. Turns it off and gets out. Meticulously rearranges everything to be exactly the way he found it.
Steals a protein shake. Stares at the record player. He reaches out his hand toward it, like he knows what to do.
Then he’s on the street again. When had he gotten here? Time slips past him. What had he been doing?
He has a baseball cap low on his head. He looks at himself in a store window. When had he gotten this? It’s blue with large lettering that says METS!
Seriously, Buck? The Mets? You’re breakin’ my heart over here, sweetheart.
Where d’you think the Dodgers are, Stevie? News flash, old man, cuz’ they sure ain’t here.
It’s confusing. How does he know that? Too casual. Recalibrate.
He loses the hat and loses time again.