Archive of Our Own ^beta

Asset opens his eyes to fluorescent lights. Dropped ceiling tiles, water-stained in the corners, brown blooming into yellow. The hum is constant, has always been constant, will always be constant—a frequency that sits just behind his teeth, makes his jaw ache if he thinks about it.

Low ceiling. Industrial carpet, that specific blue-gray that exists only in office buildings and nowhere in nature, with darker pathways worn into it where feet have traveled the same routes for years, decades, forever. Cubicle walls, beige fabric over particle board, scratchy under his fingertips. The air smells like old coffee—burnt, hours past drinkable—and something antiseptic underneath. Ozone maybe. Or the chemical tang of copy machine toner. Something that stings the back of his throat.

Need to find exit.

He stands. The metal arm catches the fluorescent light, throws it back cold and white. The weight of it pulls at his shoulder, familiar, constant. He moves through the space. One cubicle, then another. Identical. The maze repeats itself with slight variations—a different colored chair (gray instead of black), a filing cabinet instead of a desk, a window that shows only gray, possibly sky, possibly nothing—but it's the same maze.

On the first desk: paper. Courier New, 12pt. Mission brief. The paper is that specific weight—20lb copy paper, slightly rough. A coffee ring stains the top right corner.

He knows this one. Remembers the rain, cold and thin. The way the car crumpled, specific sounds—glass, metal, the wet crunch of impact.

His metal fingers brush the paper's edge. A paperclip—the magnetic kind, silver—jumps from the desk surface and sticks to his thumb. He shakes his hand. It doesn't fall. He has to peel it off with his right hand, flesh fingers. It leaves a small mark on the metal, tiny scratch he can feel more than see.

Next cubicle. Another brief. This one has a sticky note attached, the adhesive failing, curling away from the paper. Someone's handwriting in Cyrillic: Подтверждено - confirmed. The ink is blue ballpoint, pressed hard enough to indent the paper beneath.

Yacht. Fire on water. No memory of why. Just the explosion, orange against blue, the way burning fiberglass smells.

The wall has more papers pinned to it. Overlapping, layered three and four deep. Different letterheads—some embossed, some just printed, some on proper stationery with watermarks he can see when he holds them to the light. Red pushpins. Clear pushpins. One thumbtack that's actually a small nail, driven crooked into the fabric-covered wall. Some with HYDRA insignia, the octopus skull clean and official. Some with shell company logos he doesn't recognize—corporate clip art, generic font choices, the aesthetic of plausible deniability. Some with no identification at all, just text on white paper.

Food truck, Queens - Client #555 - WHY???

That last one has a handwritten note in the margin, different pen, different hand. English this time, frustrated loops and a question mark pressed so hard it nearly punctures the paper.

Asset stops. Reads again.

Food truck.

He pulls the brief down. The pushpin falls, bounces on industrial carpet with no sound at all, lost. The paper is creased where it was folded, coffee-stained on one edge. The details are sparse. Target: mobile vendor, specialty tacos. Threat level: none listed. Payment: $50,000. Status: truck destroyed, owner hospitalized. Someone drew a small frustrated face next to the payment amount. Just two dots and a line. Even the handlers were confused.

Why.

Next room. More desks. More briefs. They cover every surface now—pinned to walls, stacked on desks, stuffed into filing cabinets that don't quite close. The metal drawers have dents, years of being slammed. One has a broken handle, just sharp edges.

Three yachts - Summer 2009 - Clients #673, #891, #902
(Sticky note: "bulk discount applied")

CEO mistress (domestic dispute?) - Client #901
(Margin note in German: Ernsthaft? - seriously?)

OPERATION IRON VEIL: Eliminate HYDRA cell commander, Berlin
(Official HYDRA letterhead, embossed, heavy paper stock)

He stops at that one. Reads it twice. The paper quality is better than the others. Expensive. The kind that makes a specific sound when you unfold it.

Eliminate HYDRA cell commander.

Three paperclips stick to his metal hand when he reaches for the next brief. He peels them off. They immediately reattach to his forearm. He ignores them.

Next brief: Protect HYDRA weapons convoy, Austria
(Same letterhead, same paper stock, different signature at the bottom)

Both marked complete. Both his missions. Both in his handwriting on the status line—the specific way he forms the letter 'C' in COMPLETE, sharp and angular. Contradictory.

The fluorescents flicker. One of them is dying, making a clicking sound underneath the hum, tick-tick-tick, irregular. Asset moves faster now, pulling briefs from walls, from desks, from filing cabinets that stick and then give way suddenly, metal screeching. The papers scatter. More paperclips attach to his arm—four, five, six of them, a small constellation of silver against dark metal. One yellow sticky note adheres to his wrist, the corner flapping.

Target: accountant (no other information, just a name and an address and a payment amount)

OPERATION WIDOW MAKER: Political assassination, Tokyo (margin note: "high-profile, media coverage expected")

Retrieval mission: Cat_Situation - Client #1.BL2 (someone spilled something on this one, brown ring, the paper warped and dried)

Cat.

He stares at that one. Tries to find the logic. Retrieval. High-value asset? No—the payment is listed. $25,000. The details describe a custody dispute. A pet. Persian, age 7, answers to "Duchess." Someone drew a small cat face next to the description. Just whiskers and triangle ears. He doesn't know if it was before or after the mission.

Asset used for pet retrieval.

The papers don't connect. Different clients. Different objectives. Different paper quality—fancy HYDRA letterhead next to cheap copy paper next to proper contract documents with legal headers. HYDRA missions mixed with contracts, political assassinations next to yacht explosions next to food trucks, next to accountants, next to cats. Different languages in the margins—Russian, German, English, once something that might be Romanian. Different handwriting. Different signatures, some careful and official, some just scrawled initials.

Pattern not found. Data insufficient.

He moves through another door into another room and it's the same room, or a different identical room, more cubicles, more fluorescent lights (three of them flickering now, the clicking sounds overlapping, arrhythmic), more mission briefs in Courier New that contradict and overlap and refuse to cohere into anything except:

You were used.

Not: you served a purpose.

Just: you were used.

For everything. For anything. For nothing that makes sense.

The metal fingers of his left hand flex. Seven paperclips attached now. They catch the light, small points of silver. Asset pulls another brief from a bulletin board, cork and fabric, the surface pocked with old holes. The thumbtack falls, bounces on industrial carpet, silent in the hum and the clicking and the ventilation system that moves stale air in circles.

(Letterhead: shell company, "König Security Solutions")

(Letterhead: HYDRA official, embossed octopus)

Same city. Same month. Same handler signature at the bottom—whoever signed both didn't notice or didn't care about the contradiction.

A sticky note on the second brief, yellow, the adhesive half-gone: "Reschedule? Conflict?" Someone noticed. Nobody fixed it. Both missions marked COMPLETE.

Need to find exit. Need to find pattern. Need to—

The door opens.

Not an office door. This one is different—wood, real wood, oak maybe, heavy and solid. With craftsmanship, actual joinery, the kind of work that takes time. Stained glass panels set into the top half, amber and green and deep red, throwing colored light across the beige carpet and the scattered papers and Asset's metal arm, making it look almost warm.

A man steps through. Class A uniform, WWII vintage, olive drab wool worn at the elbows and the cuffs. Dog tags visible at the collar, stamped metal catching the light. He looks tired—not just sleepy tired, but worn down tired, the kind that lives in the shoulders and the corners of the mouth. Older than Asset remembers being, but not old. Just... used up. He's got stubble coming in dark on his jaw, probably a day past needing a shave.

He rubs his face with both hands, the gesture slow and heavy. "Hey pal," he says. His voice has Brooklyn in it, rough edges and flat vowels, the specific accent of Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush, words slightly nasal. "C'mon, forget it. Just... you don't have to think about it right now."

Asset recognizes the face. The uniform. The dog tag number visible when he shifts— 32557038—drafted, not enlisted. Taken, not chosen. Conscripted.

"Briefs don't connect," Asset says. The paperclips on his arm catch the stained glass light, amber and green on silver. "Pattern not found."

"Yeah, I know." Bucky gestures at the scattered papers, the endless cubicles stretching back into fluorescent infinity. His hands are bare, flesh, normal. "That's the point. There is no pattern. They just used you for whatever paid. C'mon." He holds the door open wider. Light spills through, warmer than fluorescent, honey-colored through the amber glass. "You don't gotta be here."

Asset doesn't move. The carpet is scratchy under his boots. One of the dying fluorescents clicks, tick-tick-tick. "Need to understand—"

"You don't, though. You really don't." Bucky's jaw works, chewing the inside of his cheek, the muscle jumping. "Just... come on. Please."

Asset looks at the papers in his metal hand—three briefs, edges misaligned, different paper weights. Food truck. Three yachts. Cat retrieval. The paperclips still stuck to his forearm. HYDRA agent assassination. Contradictions. Petty violence. Geopolitical murder. All of it marked COMPLETE in his mission reports, his handwriting, sharp angular letters.

He follows Bucky through the door.

The paperclips fall off as he crosses the threshold, dropping silent to the carpet behind him.

The pool hall is warm. Low lights, amber-tinted bulbs in brass fixtures that maybe date to the 1930s or maybe just look like they do. The crack of balls breaking, sharp and clean, scattered laughter that echoes off pressed tin ceiling tiles. Smell of cigarette smoke—Lucky Strikes, Camels, the unfiltered kind—and beer, something cheap on tap, and the chalk dust from cue tips. Everything slightly hazy like old photographs, like the air itself has gone sepia.

The floor is wood, scarred and dark with old varnish and decades of boot traffic. Feels solid under Asset's feet, more real than the industrial carpet, but wrong somehow. Too perfect. All the details right but the gestalt off, like a stage set.

Bucky walks through the space like he knows it, like he's been here before, will be here again. His boots make the right sounds on the wood. He weaves between pool tables—green felt, leather pockets, the balls making soft clicking sounds as players line up shots. Maybe he does know it. Maybe this is memory, reconstructed from fragments. The way you remember a place when you're trying to fall asleep, building it from pieces.

His hands stay in his pockets.

They exit through another door—no stained glass this time, just a regular door, wood painted green (the paint chipping at the bottom edge), that should lead to a back alley behind a bar but instead opens onto Atlantic Avenue.

Brooklyn. The spine of it, busy and loud and alive. Cars moving past—a '39 Buick, then a '67 Mustang, then something modern with wrong proportions, too sleek—all of them sharing the road, decades overlapping, none of the drivers noticing. Storefronts Asset half-remembers: bakery with the painted sign (letters in gold leaf, flaking), pharmacy with the green cross, diner with the aluminum siding and the neon that says OPEN in cursive, currently flickering. People moving past in clothing from different eras, overlapping—a woman in a 1940s dress with the padded shoulders and the seamed stockings, translucent at the edges, passing through a kid in 1990s jeans and a Nets jersey, also translucent. Neither solid. Neither quite real. The buildings behind them shift slightly, brick façades changing height, windows appearing and disappearing.

The sky is overcast, that flat gray that could be any time of day, any season. No sun position. No clouds moving. Just gray.

"This is wrong," Asset says.

Bucky makes a frustrated gesture with both hands, pulls them from his pockets just long enough to wave at the street, the sky, the translucent people, everything. Five fingers on each hand. Flesh. No metal. The hands disappear back into his pockets quickly, before Asset can look too close. "Yeah, well, it's what I remember." He shoves them deep, shoulders hunching. Chews his lip, the gesture sharp, almost aggressive. "Beats being stuck in that basement office that smells like antiseptic."

Asset's eyes track the movement. The hands disappearing into pockets. He flexes the fingers of his metal hand, watching light catch on the plates—dull silver, scuffed from the paperclips, small scratches he can feel in the joints when he moves. Looks back at Bucky's uniform sleeves. Olive drab wool. Can't see his hands now. Can't see if they match. Can't see if the left one is metal or flesh or missing or—

"This is a lie," Asset says.

Bucky's shoulders tighten, the wool of the uniform pulling across his back. A muscle jumps in his jaw. "It's home," he says, and there's something bitter underneath it, defensive, like he's had this argument before and lost. "It's what we have left of it."

"Home is gone," Asset says. Flat. True. The way mission reports are true—simple statements of fact. Target eliminated. Home destroyed. Status: complete.

Bucky stops walking. The sidewalk under their feet is concrete, cracked in places, weeds growing through that might be dandelions or might just be the idea of weeds. Someone passes through him—a woman in a 1940s dress, same one from before or a different one, the pattern of her dress visible through Bucky's torso for a moment, floral print over olive drab, then she's gone, dissolved into the gray air. He doesn't seem to notice. Or he's stopped noticing. How many times has someone walked through him in this place?

"Yeah," he says quietly. A car honks somewhere, the sound wrong, too distant, like it's coming from underwater. "Yeah, it is. But—" He gestures at the street again, angry now, pulling his right hand out just long enough to wave, palm up, at Atlantic Avenue and the translucent people and the buildings that can't decide what decade they're from. "What do you want me to say? You wanna go back to the fluorescent lights? Read more mission briefs that don't make sense? Count how many yachts you blew up for pocket change? How many food trucks?"

"Need to find pattern. Need to understand—"

"There's no pattern!" Bucky's voice cracks on the word, goes sharp and high before dropping back down. Two translucent pedestrians flicker, disturbed by the sound, their outlines wavering like bad reception. "That's what you're not getting! They rented you out like—like a fucking tool! Sometimes it was Hydra. Sometimes it was some Russian oligarch mad about a poker game. Sometimes it was—Christ, sometimes it was a food truck dispute. There's nothing to understand. You were just—"

He stops. Looks away. Down Atlantic Avenue where it stretches too long, too far, buildings repeating in the distance. A car drives past that's definitely from the wrong decade, maybe two wrong decades—something with tail fins and also somehow a spoiler—and neither of them acknowledge it.

"You were just a thing they used," Bucky finishes quietly. The anger's gone out of his voice, just tired now, so tired. "However they wanted. For whatever. That's it. That's the whole truth. No ideology. No purpose. Just... whoever paid."

Asset processes this. The mission briefs scattered across desks and walls. The contradictions. HYDRA targets and HYDRA assets, same city, same month. Political assassinations on expensive letterhead and yacht explosions on cheap copy paper with coffee stains. Cat retrievals. Accountants. Food trucks. Sticky notes with frustrated questions. Margin notes in three languages. All of it marked COMPLETE in his handwriting. No ideology. No purpose. Just: Asset available for contract work. Asset available for rent.

"Need to find exit," he says.

Bucky laughs, sharp and painful, the sound of something breaking. "Exit to where?" He gestures at his head—temple, quick angry tap with two fingers—then at Asset's head, at the dreamscape Brooklyn falling apart at the edges where the buildings get translucent and the people dissolve into gray. "You think there's a door out of this? Some kind of—what, emergency escape hatch? We're in cryo, pal. We're in the chair. There is no exit. There's just... this." Gestures at Brooklyn. "And the fluorescent lights." Gestures back toward where they came from, where the stained glass door is already fading, harder to see. "And the wipe. And then back again."

"Mission incomplete," Asset says.

"There is no mission!" Bucky runs a hand through his hair—Asset catches a glimpse of it, normal hand, five fingers, flesh and bone and tendons moving under skin, before it disappears back toward his pocket. "Can't you just—just rest? Just take the fucking break? We get this—" gestures at Atlantic Avenue, at the pool hall behind them, at the diner with its flickering neon, "—we get this little bit of time before they wake us up and wipe us and send us out again. Can't you just... stay?"

"Insufficient rest time. Pattern not found. Mission parameters—"

"Stop talking like that!" Bucky shouts. His voice echoes wrong off the buildings, too flat, no reverb. A few translucent pedestrians flicker harder, their outlines breaking up like static. One disappears entirely, just gone. "Stop—you sound like the goddamn mission reports, you sound like—"

He stops himself. Breathing hard, the sound of it harsh in his throat. His hands are in fists now, visible, both of them, pressed against his sides.

Asset watches him. The exhaustion in every line of him—in the set of his shoulders, the way he holds his jaw, the darkness under his eyes that might be sleeplessness or might be something worse. The way he holds himself like someone who's been fighting too long, knows he's going to lose, is just trying to minimize damage now. Triage. Save what can be saved.

"Not the first time," Asset says slowly. Statement, not question. The traffic moves past, wrong cars, wrong decades, a bicycle that might be from the 1950s weaving between them.

Bucky closes his eyes. His fists unclench slowly. "No."

"Tried before. To find exit."

"Yeah." Bucky's voice is rough, scraped raw. "Yeah, we tried. I—you—we looked for patterns. Tried to hold onto memories long enough to make sense of them. Tried to..." He opens his eyes, looks at Asset with something that might be pity or might be grief or might be both, layered together until you can't separate them. "It doesn't work. The wipe comes and it's gone and we're back here and you don't remember trying, so you try again, and I just—"

He cuts himself off. Jaw working. Looking away, down the street, at the buildings that can't hold their shape.

"I remember," he finishes quietly. "I remember every time. Every fucking time. And it doesn't work. It never works. The chair always wins. The wipe always comes. And you wake up and you start looking for patterns again like it's the first time and I have to watch you—"

He stops. Breathes. The sound shaky.

Asset flexes his metal hand. Processes this. The joints make a small sound, servos or hydraulics or whatever machinery lets him move the fingers. Quiet, but present.

Bucky remembers. Asset doesn't. The wipe erases Asset's failures but leaves Bucky with the accumulated weight of every attempt. Every time Asset tried to find the exit, tried to understand the pattern, tried to break free. Every time it failed. Every time the wipe came. Every time Asset forgot and started over.

Bucky has given up because he remembers why to give up.

Asset will never give up because he can't remember failure.

The bound knight who can't learn from his mistakes because the mistakes are erased.

The conscript who remembers every battle lost.

"Need to try," Asset says.

"Why?" It comes out desperate, almost pleading. Bucky's hands come up, both of them, five fingers each, making an aborted gesture that might be reaching for Asset or might be pushing him away. "Why keep—you can't win. We can't win. The most we get is this—" gesturing at the degrading Brooklyn, the translucent people, the cars from wrong eras, the buildings that flicker between decades, "—and even this is falling apart. Look at it. Look." He points at a storefront that's currently three different stores simultaneously, the signs overlapping. "It's breaking down. I can't hold it together anymore. Just... stay. Rest. Let it be done. Please."

Asset looks at the street. Atlantic Avenue that isn't Atlantic Avenue. The diner that exists and doesn't exist, the neon OPEN sign flickering, dying. The people who are translucent, who walk through each other, who don't cast shadows because there's no sun to cast them. The cars from decades that don't align. Home that isn't home, built from fragments of memory by the part of him that still knows how to want comfort, how to choose surrender, how to build a refuge even if the refuge is a lie.

Looks back at Bucky. The drafted soldier. The conscript who didn't choose service, whose dog tags say 32557038, which means the government took him and told him where to go. Who's been trying to make the best of a bad situation for so long—decades, maybe, in this cryo dreamscape time that doesn't work right—that he can't remember what good situations feel like. Can't imagine escape anymore. Only mitigation. Only small comforts. Only the pool hall and the bar and Atlantic Avenue even as they fall apart around him.

The part of him that's still human enough to give up.

That still has enough self left to choose surrender.

"No," Asset says.

Bucky's face does something complicated. Anger and grief and resignation all at once, layered together, the muscles around his eyes tightening and his mouth going hard and then soft and then hard again. The expression of someone who knew the answer before he asked the question but had to ask anyway.

"Yeah," he says finally. Bitter. Tired. So fucking tired. "Yeah, I know. You never do."

He turns away, starts walking down Atlantic Avenue. The street shifts around him as he moves, buildings flickering between decades, brick façades becoming brownstone becoming modern glass becoming brick again, pavement cracking and repairing and cracking again, the whole dreamscape unstable, degrading, held together by memory that's failing.

"You coming?" he calls back without turning, without looking. His shoulders are tight. "Or you gonna go back to the file room?"

Asset follows. Because the lie is comfortable, even if Asset knows it's a lie. Even if the buildings flicker and the people are translucent and the cars are from wrong decades and the sky is flat gray nothing. Because the alternative is fluorescent lights and mission briefs in Courier New and the endless office maze that smells like antiseptic and ozone and burnt coffee. Because Bucky is walking away and some part of Asset—maybe the part that's still Bucky, buried deep—doesn't want to be alone in the clicking fluorescent maze.

Bucky's shoulders are tight. He keeps his hands in his pockets, hidden, where Asset can't see if they match or don't match, if they're metal or flesh or something else.

Neither of them mentions that this is temporary. That the wipe is coming. That Asset will forget this conversation—forget the mission briefs, forget the contradictions, forget the food trucks and the yachts and the cat named Duchess—and try again and Brooklyn Bucky will remember and try to stop him and they'll have this same fight in this same degrading dreamscape until the cryo finally fails or someone opens the pod or the end of the world, whichever comes first.

The street shifts. A storefront Asset almost remembers—bakery, the one with the wedding cakes in the window, three tiers with sugar flowers. Or maybe that was a different bakery. The memory is degrading too. A diner that might have existed once, red vinyl booths visible through the window, a waitress who's translucent, flickering. The neon OPEN sign gives one last sputter and goes dark.

Bucky keeps walking. Doesn't look back. His boots make sounds on pavement that might be concrete or might be asphalt or might be nothing, just the idea of a street.

Asset follows.

Behind them, through the walls, under the street, the fluorescent lights wait in the rooms they left behind. Humming constant. Clicking arrhythmic. Patient. Forever.

The mission briefs are still there, scattered across desks and pinned to walls and stuffed in filing cabinets. Courier New, 12pt. Different letterheads. Different languages. Contradictions and coffee stains and margin notes that ask why.

Waiting for Asset to come back.

Waiting for him to try again.

The paperclips still on the carpet where they fell, small points of silver, catching light that never changes.