Chapter Text
Steve’s fists strike the punching bag with a dull thud. The steady rhythm does nothing to clear his racing mind.
Thud.
Why would Hydra do it?
Thud.
They had to know it wouldn’t work.
Thud.
No matter how good their surgeons were.
Thud. Thud.
As if he could be fooled by a familiar face—as if they could trick him into thinking he’s looking at his omega .
Thud.
He smells wrong.
Thud .
This… this pale imitation, this fucking insult to Bucky’s memory, to his mate’s memory, this abomination out of some goddamn Nazi laboratory–
The bag explodes in a shower of sawdust. Steve’s hands, knuckles bloodied, flex and release. He stares at them, lost.
“That’s the third bag you’ve shredded in the past two days.”
Natasha’s voice is dry, uninterested, or at least it would sound that way to anyone who doesn’t know her. Steve knows her. He grits his teeth and doesn’t meet her gaze.
“I’m just saying, maybe it’s time for a break. Go home. Get some sleep. Give Tony time to design some better punching bags, at least.”
Steve shakes his head.
“I don’t need a break,” he says, heading for the showers. “I need to know who the fuck this asshole is, and what Hydra was planning to do with him.”
It’s been three days since they brought the Winter Soldier in. Three days since they shoved him into a reinforced cell in a sub-basement of Stark Tower. Three days since Steve pulled that mask, that fucking muzzle off and saw his dead mate’s face staring back at him, eyes blank. A fucking nightmare come to life.
Good enough to fool him, too, if they hadn’t gotten the smell all wrong.
The Winter Soldier smells of gunpowder and blood, sharp and metallic and something sickly sweet under it all that turns Steve’s stomach every time he tastes it in the air. The techs told him that was probably from all the drugs the guy’s been taking, uppers, downers, some kind of anti-psychotic, god knows what else. Withdrawal’s gonna be a bitch, and Steve doesn’t have the least bit of sympathy for the bastard who stole Bucky’s face.
Bucky…
Bucky smelled like coffee and cream, like fresh laundry strung high across a Brooklyn street, like whiskey and cigarettes. Sure, during the war his scent took on an edge of gunpowder, but that wasn’t part of him, not really. That was the rifle in his hand and the ash smeared on his skin as he wiped the sweat out of his eyes. It would have gone away, if only they’d made it home. If only Steve hadn’t taken his eyes off his omega for that one split second on the train. If only Steve hadn’t moved too slow, hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t just watched as the railing broke free and sent his mate tumbling into an icy ravine, too frightened to even scream, dying alone and broken without Steve there to comfort him…
Steve turns the shower on, cold as it will go, and steps under the stream, bowing his head and shivering. His eyes feel hot, his throat tight—his knuckles throb as they heal, broken skin closing over, shiny pink turning to clear, unblemished skin by the time he turns the water off. He stands for a moment in the stall, rubs his hands over his face, presses the heels of his palms into his eyes.
Maybe Natasha has a point.
He hasn’t left Stark Tower since they brought the Soldier in. He’s been in charge of every interrogation so far. He doesn’t quite trust anyone else to handle it.
Not that he’s been doing so hot.
He tried the silent treatment first, staring at the Soldier for hours, waiting for him to break, to speak, to do anything at all but sit, sullen and still, on the metal cot built into the cell’s reinforced wall. They sat like that for a full eight hours before Steve gave up and tried something else.
The Soldier didn’t so much as flinch when Steve shouted at him, smashing a fist into the wall next to his head. Demanding that he give them all the intel he’s got on Hydra, that he explain why the fuck he has Bucky’s goddamn face, got the exact same reaction. He won’t eat, either. He stares blankly at the food they offer, turning his back on peanut butter and jam sandwiches and pudding cups, egg salad and celery sticks. If his scent hadn’t been enough to convince Steve that the Soldier wasn’t Bucky, that would have proved it—the only reason Bucky ever skipped a meal was to make sure Steve ate instead, the stubborn bastard. Steve’s pretty sure Buck wouldn’t have lasted even an hour on a hunger strike, but the Soldier seems prepared to go on without food indefinitely.
The sickly-sweet note in his scent has only gotten stronger as he sweats through his withdrawal, but his face stays as blank as ever. And still, he just stares at Steve with those cold, clear grey eyes. The same colour as Bucky’s, but dulled somehow, deadened and empty. They look like that sometimes in Steve’s nightmares, when his mind decides to conjure new horrors after he watches Bucky fall. He sees them, open and staring as red-stained snow drifts across his mate’s face…
Steve grimaces, scrubbing his hair roughly with a towel as he pushes the thought away. Hydra wants to disorient him, make him vulnerable. Well, they’ll have to do a damn sight better than this… this half-assed approximation of a man who’s been dead for seventy years. Whatever they’re planning, whatever hellish scheme they’ve concocted to use Bucky’s face against him, it’s not going to work. One way or another, he’ll get his answers. And then he’s going to make every last one of them regret defiling Bucky’s memory.
Starting with the Winter Soldier.
*
Steve stalks out of the locker room and heads for the garage. He’s trying to be reasonable here, and no good ever comes from ignoring Nat’s advice. The techs seem to think the Soldier might be more vulnerable to interrogation as the withdrawal gets worse, anyway. Steve should go home, get some rest and a home-cooked meal, or at least some decent takeout. He can come back in a few days when the Soldier can’t keep his tough guy act up anymore. Maybe he’ll take the long way home, feel the wind in his hair, look at the city lights as the sun goes down.
Bucky loved this city. Bucky would have loved Steve’s bike, too, would have made all sorts of jokes about getting some real power between his legs. He always loved to tease, to push Steve until he pinned him up against a wall and reminded Bucky who the alpha was. Bucky always let him, too, even when Steve was too small to really pin him, too small to even lock his teeth into Bucky’s bond bite when they were standing up, unless Buck bent his knees. Steve may have weighed 95 pounds soaking wet, but Bucky always made him feel strong.
Steve climbs onto his bike—the engine purrs beneath him and he takes a deep breath, ready to ride out into the cool evening air. His cell phone buzzes in his pocket and he growls as he fishes it out, not bothering to switch the bike off as he raises the phone to his ear.
“Rogers,” he says, fully aware that he sounds annoyed as all hell.
The rumble of the engine doesn’t quite drown out the voice on the other end. One of the techs who’s been monitoring the Winter Soldier—Steve can’t remember his name, though he has a vague mental image of a skinny man in a labcoat, making notes on a clipboard. Then again, that could be a lot of Tony’s techs. This one sounds uncomfortable.
“Uh, hi Captain Rogers—we, uh, we wanted to let you know that there’s been a… um. A development. With the Soldier.”
Steve sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, and then reaches down to switch off the engine, pocketing his keys as he turns and heads back into the tower.
“What is it?” he says, words clipped. He really needs to get out of here—tomorrow, maybe.
“Well, sir…” the tech says hesitantly. Incongruously, Steve hears laughter in the background. “We guess one of the drugs he was on must have been a suppressant. It looks like he’s going into heat, and, uh, it’s gonna be a doozy.”
More giggling in the background. Nervous laughter, Steve thinks, or hopes, at least. He abruptly feels sick to his stomach. It doesn’t mean anything, of course it doesn’t mean anything—it makes sense that Hydra would choose an omega for this scheme, or maybe even bitch a beta or an alpha. Bucky’s designation was never exactly public, but after the experiments at Kreischberg, Hydra must have known. Maybe this is all part of their plan.
“What do you want me to do about it?” he asks. He hits the elevator button for the sub-basement where they’ve been holding the Soldier a bit harder than necessary, though at least he manages not to damage anything and glares at the ocular scanner until it verifies his identity. It pings, the light going green, and the elevator begins its descent. On the other end of the call, the tech clears his throat.
“I… Well, we… We don’t think you can do anything about it, sir,” the tech says, to another round of nervous laughter from his colleagues. “But a heat this bad in the condition he’s in? Honestly, sir, he might not survive. If we’re going to get any intel out of him, it kind of has to happen now.”
The elevator dings again. The doors slide open to reveal the narrow, low-ceilinged halls of a level that was originally designed to contain the Hulk. The reinforced walls and ceiling, not to mention the vibranium alloy laced through the walls of the actual detention cell, are more than enough to contain the Winter Soldier. Especially now. Steve swallows hard, ignoring the churning discomfort in his gut—he’s just hungry, is all. He hasn’t had a proper meal since they brought this guy in.
“I’ll be right there,” Steve says, not bothering to hide the resignation in his voice. He hangs up, cutting off the sound of more nervous giggles from the techs—god, these guys are supposed to be professionals. His footsteps echo oddly as he walks down the featureless, fluorescent-lit hall to the observation room. He hasn’t been down here since last night, when he’d stalked off without a word to the techs and the guards on duty after another six hours of fruitless interrogation. He’d come this close to grabbing the Soldier, shaking him, slapping him maybe. He only just pulling himself back as he loomed over the man, shouting again, demanding answers. The Soldier had just stared blankly at some point beyond Steve’s shoulder, giving no indication that he even knew Steve was talking to him. Hell, given all the drugs working their way out of his system, maybe he didn’t. And now…
Well.
If Steve’s only getting one more shot at this, he’s gonna make it count.
*
The Asset cannot stop shaking. It needs maintenance, needs the icy peace of the cryogenic tube. It cannot remember how to sleep. It has been so long since there was time to sleep, time between the chair and the ice to lie down somewhere. There used to be time, it thinks. It remembers lying down in an alley, a basement, even a bed sometimes. It can’t trust the memory, can’t imagine closing its eyes and feeling everything slip away, even for a few minutes at a time.
It tries to close its eyes now. They pop open again immediately, the hum of the fluorescent lights, its own violent shivering and the crawling, desperate feeling in its guts too much to allow for rest. It’s too hot. It strips off the jumpsuit they gave it, the fabric stiff and heavy, damp under the arms and around the groin, and shoves it into a corner of the cell, curling up around it, eyes wide open, watching the door. It wonders when the alpha will come back, whether he will hurt it this time, or if it will just be more of the staring, or the shouting. It doesn’t mind the staring, doesn’t even mind the shouting, really—someone’s always shouting.
But it doesn’t know how to answer his questions. It doesn’t know who Bucky Barnes is. The name makes it sick. It doesn’t understand why it hurts so much, muscles twitching, head throbbing, ice in the veins whenever the alpha says it, bad enough that it wants to beg, plead with the alpha to hit it instead, beat it, cut it, use it, put it in the chair, just please, please, stop saying that name. The name is dangerous. The name almost makes it feel like a person. It doesn’t want to even imagine how the alpha would punish it if he found out.
It can still smell traces of the alpha in the holding cell, comforting and frightening, familiar in a way that makes it feel like it might throw up. It thinks the alpha might be the new handler. It must have a handler, always has a handler, and the last one died in the raid where they took it. It would make sense, though it can’t quite articulate why. It likes thinking the big, blond alpha is the handler now, even though it knows he’s angry with it. That’s nothing new. Handlers are often angry with it.
Its stomach twists strangely as it thinks of him. It doesn’t know what the feeling means, can’t identify it, but. But then, it doesn’t know what a lot of feelings mean. It’s not supposed to have them, they tell it all the time that it doesn’t. No hungry, no cold, no sad, no scared, but it can’t seem to stop, so they put it in the chair, they freeze it and beat it and make it kneel, bend over, open your mouth, little omega bitch, like this don’t you, slut, like being a nice, wet hole for us, say it, bitch…
The Asset shakes its head, trying to clear it. The world gets fuzzy sometimes. Memory and imagination and hallucination all blend together until it can’t tell what’s happening and what isn’t, what’s memory and what’s imagination (it doesn’t have an imagination). It wants to ask, to beg for help understanding what’s real and what isn’t. But it’s not the Asset’s place to ask those sorts of questions. Especially not if the big alpha is his new handler. They never like it when the Asset has questions. It breathes deep, picking up traces of fresh cut grass under the harsh, sharp charcoal of the alpha’s scent. Fresh grass and cardamom, pencil shavings and paper and it knows that scent, it knows it , and its cunt throbs hot and heavy between the legs, head aching like a spike in the centre of the forehead and…
It bends forward suddenly, empty stomach churning as it spits up frothy bile, just outside of the pathetic excuse for a nest it fashioned out of the jumpsuit. The world seems to sway, black spots dancing across the visual field and didn’t they used to go dancing, come on, Stevie, it’ll be fun, I promise , but that can’t be real. He—it, it —sits back, wiping its mouth on the back of its flesh arm. It’s already used up the water they gave it that day. It should be more careful, ration it more effectively. Another wave of shivering rolls through its body, hot and cold and aching all over. It tucks itself back into the corner, as tight as it can get, trying to pull the soiled jumpsuit around itself, trying to hide— no hiding, hiding’s not allowed, what do you think you’re doing, stupid bitch, get it in the chair, wipe it, wipe it …
The door swings open, the alpha’s scent loud as a foghorn in the little space and the Asset gags— sunlight on a fire escape, cigarette in bony fingers and blue eyes sparkling, little alpha, too small, skinny, hand wrapped around a pencil, grinning up at him, laughing, hair’s too long, it’s in his eyes and they’re blue, blue, blue —and leans forward to throw up again, more bile, spitting and gagging again. The big alpha, stares at him, eyes wide, blue-blue-blue like the little one on the fire escape but the Asset’s sure it made that one up, dreams him sometimes, flashes from someone else’s happy life, too real to exist in the Asset’s alien, untethered world…
“Oh, god,” the alpha says, and then he turns away, slamming the door behind him as he leaves.
*
Steve stumbles back to the control room, mind racing. It can’t be. It’s not possible. It’s a trick, some sort of trap that Hydra must have spent years perfecting, he thought so earlier, thought that maybe their plan was to have this… this thing go into heat, because it can’t be .
The techs look up, exchanging nervous glances as he grabs the one he spoke to earlier, the one who called him by the arm—mousey brown hair, a StarkTech branded lab coat and a smile that makes Steve think someone should have told this kid “no” a hell of a lot more often when he was growing up. He remembers at the last minute not to grab too tight, not to shake the young man who’s now staring at him with wide, worried eyes.
“You said he wouldn’t make it,” Steve says and the words come out half-garbled, tongue thick in his mouth. The tech blinks, glancing at his colleagues again, and Steve has never wanted to shake someone so badly in his entire life. He doesn’t, doesn’t even squeeze the kid’s arm—he’s pretty sure he’ll break it if he does. The tech smiles at Steve, sympathetic but obviously confused.
“I’m afraid that’s right, sir,” he says, still smiling that fucking smile that makes Steve want to rip his fucking arm off and beat him with it. “Not without an alpha, at any rate, and not just any alpha, either—we were able to get some pretty clear readings of his pheromones off the sensors Mister Stark designed for that cell. His numbers are off the charts—his last heat must’ve been years ago, decades even, from the looks of it. He’d have to have a bondmate for a heat this bad. Otherwise, there’s no way to stabilize the hormones that are causing the fever. His whole body’s breaking down from it. But, I mean, what are the odds the Winter Soldier is bonded, right? And even if he is, what are we gonna do, go charging into another Hydra base to find his alpha? It’s too bad, I know, but honestly, sir, we were all talking and the fact is, we weren’t likely to get any good info out of him anyway. I mean, no offense, Cap, you’re a great interrogator, but this guy’s barely human. And at least this way we don’t have to figure out what to do with him long-term—that was gonna be one hell of a headache, you know?”
The tech grins like he’s made a great joke, though it fades a little when Steve just stares at him, jaw flexing. He lets go of the tech’s arm before he really does rip it off and turns back to the reinforced door to the heavily booby-trapped hall to the sterile metal cell where they’re keeping the Winter Soldier.
Where they’re keeping Bucky .
He wants to think this is some Hydra trick to get his guard down, to compromise him, to… to… God, whatever the hell… He can’t even come up with half a reason for them to create some goddamn facsimile of his mate—it doesn’t make sense. It never made any sense. And now, it doesn’t matter. Steve knew the instant he opened that cell, the instant that heat-scent hit his open mouth, fresh laundry and coffee grounds, whiskey and tobacco, sweet and dark and oh-so-fucking-familiar beneath the sickly artificial sweetness of the drugs leaching out of his omega.
That’s Bucky .