This is a genderbend AU with the same concept as Lost Sight of Shore – equal rights acts passed during the Great Depression, so by the time the 2000s roll around gender equality is pretty much ingrained into society. (It's idealistic, sue me.)

General warnings for: untreated depression, past rape, past forced pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, depersonalization and general violence. Anything graphic will be summarized in end notes.

Updates on Thursdays.

This time, it wasn't the asset's fault that the breeding failed. How could it be, when Pierce had shackled its hands to the head of the bed, and its feet spread wide at the base? – and who could forget the shock collar that kept it from falling into unconsciousness?

No, the breeding failed because Pierce was old and proud: she wouldn't let anyone else fuck it but her pet agents. She declared a disgusted defeat after four months – four whole months! – and dispatched the asset back to cryo.

Pierce was old and proud: she'd bound it to prevent the freedom of movement that had killed most previous breeding efforts, but she forgot all of Zola's other notes. She forgot to administer stimulants to prevent a light unconscious state the asset had learned over years of shocks; she forgot to order a wipe before cryo; she forgot to institute higher security measures in the cryo facility.

Her mistakes. Not its.

She waved goodbye to the other techs on the tarmac and plodded off towards the parking lot, where the car would be parked. The others had commiserated that she alone didn't have a chartered ride back to the office. No, she'd go home, kiss her wife and child and write her debrief tomorrow.

That wouldn't happen; she'd write no debrief.

She waited a couple hours to leave. The other techs, when their comrade was reported missing tomorrow, would explain the discrepancy as a nap: she'd slept on the flight home but it was a rough ride – undoubtedly she was still tired, and didn't want to fall asleep at the wheel.

In reality she searched the phone for information on her location, the weather, the date, the news.

A hundred and thirty-two minutes later she started the car, set the GPS for "home" and placed a pair of sunglasses over her eyes. She scanned out of the parking lot with her ID and turned her head so that the camera would capture the least amount of her face.

The car had heating, something she treasured deeply, but she kept the temperature low and winter jacket covering her chin and mouth as she followed the GPS through backroads. All bases such as these stayed away from developments to avoid detection but were never that far from cities.

Cities meant poverty, meant lack of police, meant crime.

She pulled off the highway and parked under the overpass. She found a nail on the road and jammed it into one of the tires, smashed in the driver's side window and took the emergency $200 in the glove box before walking away into the dark.

The car would be picked clean by morning, if this neighborhood was as poor as the phone had told her. She'd been poor once, in her past life. She'd eaten soup more water than broth, stolen from the markets and filched the wallets of fellows when they opened them to pay for the five minutes she'd given them on her knees.

Poor people weren't bad, just unlucky, and they did what they had to survive.

She exchanged the clothes with a set from a donations box. The phone she pawned for $150, glasses for $60, watch $280 and jewelry $135, and split the proceeds with the boy with an infected gunshot wound who went into the pawn shop for her. He looked at her arm for longer than she liked but scampered off soon enough when she gave him an extra $40.

Maybe she should cover herself before day broke. Sleeves over the metal arm were uncomfortable but the loose jacket she found in a return trip to the clothes box didn't impede her motion unnecessarily – and besides, what would she be doing with the killing arm? For once in this life she wasn't out in the world on a mission.

Day broke and her stomach growled. She bought breakfast from a diner, something her past life had loved to do, and walked around the tall buildings eating street-vendor hot dogs. Without a mission time stretched on into infinity; by the time night fell she'd ridden buses the length of the city five times.

She settled down behind a dumpster and the sleep she'd gotten in breeding paled in comparison to the cold, hard concrete.

In the morning she found a church, because something during the night had recovered more of those past-life memories, but she didn't know what she was supposed to do and left. She caught a glimpse of the boy from the pawn shop – playing truant, she'd never done that but her best friend had – when she bought lunch, tacos, from a vendor.

Tacos were better than hot dogs. Much better. More flavors, more choices – oh, how she loved choices.

She made a promise, a choice, that tomorrow would be the last day. The morning afterwards she'd walk back to the base, enjoying the stillness of the woods, and turn herself in. But these three days were hers and hers alone.

She didn't last three days.

During the afternoon she sat at the harbor, on the steps looking out into the bay. A musician played for tips behind her, songs she didn't know but knew she loved, and she left a twenty in the woman's cup when she left to hunker down for the night.

Routines were bad but last night's dumpster resided in a surveillance-free zone and her training prioritized the latter. Still, she pulled a corner of dumpster back towards the wall and left herself a triangle-slice of space: one entrance, one exit, and unremarkable in this corner of the alley.

The ground was cold, again, but now it bothered her. She took far too long to fall asleep.

She woke when the dumpster shifted. Her little sliver of an exit slammed shut as the figure opened up the other end of her triangle.

She didn't resist; she'd not meant to escape, after all. No matter how many times the handlers called her "it" she knew she was human, and humans couldn't go too long cooped up. Pierce had kept her in her bedroom, agents pounding into her for four months, and she couldn't resist the impulse to taste the outside world.

A woman was dead because of her. Not for any greater good, just because she couldn't follow fucking standing orders. She'd just wanted to feel the sun on her face, wind biting her cheeks, water running down her throat from something other than a waterboarding session.

Whatever hell there was to pay for this, it had been worth it.

A needle pinched her neck and the world fell into darkness.

Fury's words echoed in Steve's ears: "Got a lead on the Winter Soldier. Baltimore, on the harbor. She pawned the missing scientist's things night before last."

The assistant director hadn't said anything about the Winter Soldier being, well, Steve's wife.

His dead wife, to be exact.

Fury sent a tech with him, a biochem student from the Science Academy with wide bright eyes who enthusiastically explained to him how her sedative would affect the legendary assassin-slash-spy he was supposed to track down. Not-an-agent Simmons took the mission very seriously and insisted on going over every detail before Captain Rogers met up with Fury's tail.

"Why don't you have Barton track her down?" he'd asked, when given the assignment. "I'm not a spy. She'll make me in seconds."

"Barton's on assignment. And the intel on the Soldier tells us she's as strong as you. You're the only one who stands a chance," replied Fury. She handed him the folder and added, " 'sides, I already have someone tailing her, and she hasn't made him yet."

What Fury didn't say was that Barton had only been recruited three years ago and hadn't proved himself trustworthy enough yet. Steve read between the lines on that, and for the admission that she trusted the man out of time, only in this century for six months, over a seasoned operative.

Okay then.

The tail, a teenage boy almost as thin as Steve had been growing up, approached him at the appointed meeting place and time. "Not bad," commented the kid, "but you still stand out."

"Is it 'cuz I'm white?" Steve asked.

"And you're not dressed right. But otherwise I wouldn't'a figured it was you. Least with the beard."

Ah yes, the beard: a remnant of the two weeks he was too depressed to get out of bed, let alone shave, and Fury took one look at his face once he'd pulled himself together and said, "Keep it. Barton can train you in espionage."

His first non-combat mission, and this was bound to be his last. Hell, he was probably going to retire after all this to take care of Jamie. At least he had the backpay money for it.

Steve and the tail conversed for a few minutes about poverty, neglected city neighborhoods and how yes, he really should take the $500 Steve offered to take care of that gunshot wound because he shouldn't trust Fury to take care of him, not when she had him stick to a tail instead of going to the hospital. The tail swapped with Steve, money for a little map and diagram: alley with a dumpster.

The Winter Soldier had hunkered down behind the dumpster, positioning it so no one would've thought anything off about it unless they were looking. Steve confirmed it was her by the metal arm – she didn't stir when he pushed her sleeve back, her other arm flung over her face – before shifting the dumpster and dragging her out to administer the sedative.

She didn't fight him, didn't even tense at the needle to her throat.

Steve checked her pulse, removed the weapons he could find and carried her like a baby to the waiting car. He didn't look down until they passed under a street light, and –

And his world fell apart.

Simmons, to her credit, only stuttered for a few seconds when she caught sight of the woman in Captain Rogers' arms. She helped him slide the assassin into the back seat of their truck and cuff her, and climbed into the front to drive them back to the safehouse.

The windows were tinted; Steve didn't bother to cover Jamie's arm with a blanket or hide her face against his leg as he cradled her head. He leaned against the backseat door and watched Simmons drive a winding path around the city.

He carried his wife inside the safehouse.

"I need to do a physical exam," Simmons said.

"And?"

"You need to consent."

"Why?"

"Because, legally..."

She stuttered to a stop at Steve's stare. "We kidnapped her," he told her. "This isn't legal."

"We're SHIELD agents," she insisted, "and she's unconscious so I need you to consent to my exam."

Steve looked down at the bed, the sleeping assassin on it, and nodded. "Okay."

An exam had always been the plan, after all. He had no problem with it now. Nothing had changed.