The Solider and the Viper
A/N: Hey everyone! Welcome to my new fic, born from such excessive lusting over the Winter Soldier that I had to come out of hiatus and write something! Please fave/follow and leave me a review if you love it/ hate it/ just want to chat, and thanks for reading! I'm not sure how my posting schedule is going to be yet as I'm in college, but I'm going to try and aim for once a week. Anyways, enjoy!
One
On the first day, there is nothing.
She is shivering; she is cold, she thinks dully, twisting a strand of black-brown hair tightly around her finger. She can feel the slick of grease sliding pat her finger like a thin coat of candlewax, and her little nose wrinkles in contemplation for a second before her nostrils flare in surprise.
Suddenly, there is light.
On the second day, there is a little bit more.
The sound of metal hitting the hard stone floor echoes across the room she is kept in. She crawls forward tentatively on her hands and knees, mindful of the little roaches that scurry in fear at her sudden movements. She smiles to herself – she likes bugs. She remembers a woman in red then, and a big blue pail, and an earthworm wriggling against her palm like a little muscle.
There is a small plastic plate on the tray. A hard little apple, the stale heel of a loaf of bread, and a piece of chicken. She eats greedily, both hands coming up to shove food into her mouth. A deep chuckle fills the space; she cannot decide if it is harsh or gentle, so she buries a shy blush behind her bread, eyes cast to the ground.
"Already she has an appetite," someone says in her native tongue. She blinks; she has never heard German here, only ever the strange, deep language that all the guards speak when they talk amongst themselves. Emboldened by the familiarity, she crawls forward again, the remnants on her plate forgotten.
The man is light-haired, a scruff of stubble covering his cheeks. His monocle glints in the dim light he has brought with him into her space. She flinches when, suddenly, the light is pointed toward her; she anticipates pain.
He laughs again. "What are you afraid of, Mausi? I'm not going to hurt you." He kneels down, almost eye level with the child on the floor before him. Her large dark eyes bore into his expectantly, the depth of them catching him off guard for a second. He shakes it off, murmuring almost to himself, "No, mein Schatz, together we are going to do great things."
She scrunches up her nose, thinking. He recalls, amused, the same look on her face when he came to see her the day before. Then, she had shrunk back, pressed almost flat against the wall furthest from the door to her cell. It's good that she's gotten bolder; with a little training, she will make a fine asset.
"What are we going to do?" she asks finally, her voice high and lilting. He smiles, extending a hand, willing her to place her little palm into his. He knows this will be easier if she is complicit; they will not make the same mistakes they did before.
Baron Strucker considers the child before him and squeezes her hand. "Together, we are going to save the world."
On the third day, there is much more.
The same nice man from the day before comes to collect her after she eats.
"What did you have for breakfast today, Mausi?" he asks her as they walk down a long, brightly lit hallway. She contemplates the lights hanging from the ceiling, the grey concrete walls, the men in black that watch her with steely eyes. She stares back when she can, her curls swinging with every turn of her head.
"Bread and fruit and chicken," she replies, finally turning her gaze to her only friend in this strange place. He glances down at her, lips curling into the shadow of a smile.
"Fantastisch. What kind of fruit?"
She thinks. "Banana." He swallows a laugh; she is so serious, for such a small child. She will be easy to train.
Her friend stops in front of a white door with two small windows at the top, too high for her to see into. He raps twice, then enters, motioning for her to follow him. The room is sparse, but more furnished than her cell. There's an examination table fitted with a white plastic sheet in the center, surrounded with various contraptions that make her a little bit nervous.
"What are we doing here?" she asks.
"Sometimes, Mausi, children need to get checkups to make sure they're healthy and growing big and strong," he replies, lifting her onto the table. He observes her greasy, unwashed hair, hanging in clumps around her face. "And sometimes, little children need to take baths as well. Would you like that?"
She isn't sure she knows what a bath is, so she just nods in response, gaging from his reaction that he is pleased with her. She swallows a self-righteous smile; she likes impressing him.
The door opens again, revealing a new man in a long white coat, looking down his sharp, angular nose at her. Her friend turns to leave, exchanging a few words with the man before flashing her a comforting grin. "I'll send one of my friends to collect you when you're finished, Mausi."
She can't help the little pout that forms on her lips as he disappears through the door, nor the way it trembles as the new man approaches her. He does not smile.
"Who are you?" she asks him, but he ignores her. He takes a little pen out of his breast pocket and suddenly there's a very bright light shining in her eyes. She yelps, trying to squeeze them shut, noticing with dismay and fear that he has anticipated her reaction and has brought his other hand up to hold her lid open. After what feels like a long time he shuts the light off, and she breathes a tiny sigh of relief.
The man checks inside her ears and mouth before running his ungentle hands down her arms and legs, tapping here and there and prodding at the angry red marks that have yet to fade around her wrists. She winces, but sits very still.
"Are you giving me my checkup?" she tries again. This time he fixes her with an icy expression and snaps at her in a language she doesn't know. She casts her eyes to her bare feet, black with dirt; he doesn't speak German.
Without warning, he picks her up and carries her through a door in the back of the room; she is sitting again, this time in a white, egg-like pod, before she can react to his sudden movements. He pushes her down with a shove to her chest, the wind knocked out of her when he back hits the base of the pod with a smack. His hands are busy, tucking various limbs into restraints and buckling them tightly enough that she finds she can't move. Her eyes dart back and forth, her mouth open to scream… then the stranger shuts the pod with a hiss of escaping air, and she feels herself floating, floating, floating, floating…
Strucker returns while the child is still sleeping peacefully in cryo. He observes her in the glass, her little features polished like porcelain and ghost-white in the cold. He can see her skin regenerating as it freezes, creating the appearance of a flickering aurora across her skin.
"Report," he orders, in Russian.
The doctor consults his clipboard. "Her vitals read stable; her heartbeat is lower than normal for a child her age. She has suffered no neurological damage from her memory wipe, though it was very thorough; it's unlikely she will ever remember who she was before Hydra."
"And her abilities?" Strucker asks, fixated on the dancing patterns across her skin.
"Without further testing, it's almost impossible to tell. But I would say she's damn near indestructible. She heals almost as quickly as she takes damage."
It is only then that the baron allows a smirk to curl his lips. It's a day none of them thought was possible – a child, born with abilities beyond their capacity to manufacture. Even the Asset's advanced healing is child's play in comparison.
He has only one more question. "Is it transferrable?" The doctor only shrugs in response.
By the fourth day, she has been moved to a different room. This one is a few floors higher than the one she spent her first few days in, and it's much brighter. Windows span one wall, offering her a view of endless snow and sheets of white rock. She is given a bed and a desk, and a small closet filled with clothes. Her friend shows her where the bathroom is and tells her that for now, she mustn't leave her quarters without an adult.
"Why can't I?" she asks, sitting on the end of her new bed. His eyes harden, just a fraction.
"Because. There are some things that Mausis mustn't concern themselves with."
She has dozed off by the time Strucker returns with a stack of schoolbooks. He intends to start her lessons as soon as she has adjusted to her new living situation – there has never been a successful Hydra agent that doesn't speak a word of Russian. He will have her learn English as well, and perhaps another language like Chinese or Spanish. And of course, she will start her training soon too.
When the child awakens, she blinks at the books piled up on her desk, wondering what they're doing there. She wanders over, standing on the tips of her toes to pull the top one down from the pile. A jumble of unfamiliar characters stare back at her.
"That is Russian, Mausi." She jumps at the sound of her friend's voice, turning to face him.
"I don't know Russian," she informs him, gently tucking the book back into its place.
"You will learn." He takes her hand, leading her over to her closet. "Do you remember what your sparring clothes look like?"
She nods. It takes a minute of clumsy rummaging before she pulls out a black shirt and a pair of tight-fitting black pants. She looks up at him expectantly, a pleasant feeling warming her chest when he gives his approval.
"Good girl. Get changed."
"Where are we going?" she asks as he leads her down another hallway, indistinguishable from the others she has walked down in her four days.
"I am going to introduce you to a friend of mine," her friend responds. "He will begin your training."
"What are we training for?" she asks curiously.
"Enough questions." He opens a door to a large, dimly lit room, the floor dominated by a large, hard-looking mat. In the center stands a tall figure, dressed all in black. His long hair falls into his eyes, weeks-old stubble darkening his jawline. The child falters, her eyes wide and unblinking as they meet the soldier's, then flit a little further down, to the right. His left arm is steel; he is made of metal.
"Walk up to him," her friend orders, giving her a little push. "He won't bite."
She swallows her fear, allowing her curiosity to take over as she marches with slow, soft footsteps toward the soldier. He's wearing fatigues, the belts and buckles fascinating her for a moment, though nothing is as captivating as the guns strapped to his thighs in holsters. He watches her closely; when she finally looks up and meets his eyes, she is shocked to find something dead in them. He is not human, not like she is.
"What's his name?" she calls softly over her shoulder. Something instinctual tells her not to turn her back to him. The soldier continues to watch her, steel blue grating against deep brown.
"You can call him the Asset," Strucker says, watching the two closely. He briefed the Asset before their meeting with the girl; he knows the soldier is only waiting for his signal. When their eyes meet over the child's head, he gives it.
The Asset is a beautiful, terrible monster, Strucker muses, watching him spin with practiced fluidity, a knife appearing seemingly out of nowhere in the palm of his metal hand. The child squeals in surprise as he drives it toward her, her survival instincts strong enough to send her rolling to the mat as the Asset brings his knife down hard, aiming for her chest. He seems to anticipate this movement, his human hand reaching out to grip her arm before she can fully hit the floor. He lifts her in the air as easily as if she were a doll, an audible pop and a tearful cry indicating a possible shoulder dislocation. The Asset ignores her, his knife plunging deep into her stomach. They wait for a scream that never comes.
She feels the knife break her skin, and then… nothing. Slowly, she reaches down, feeling where the knife is lodged to the hilt, right below her rib cage. Gripping tightly with her good hand, she pulls. Her flesh seems to fold in on itself once it realizes the intruder is gone; suddenly she is holding a bloody knife in her hand, and beneath the tear on her black shirt, her stomach is smooth and white as before.
The fear gives way to anger when she realizes she is unhurt; she looks up to see the Asset looking down, eyes fixated hard on her stomach, on the phantom wound that should reside there but somehow doesn't. She feels a tickle in her throat, a childish temper rising in her – and before she realizes what she's done, she has driven the knife upwards, its blade carving a fine line into the Asset's human hand.
He is surprised, even as he pushes away the pain. He immediately rearranges his face into a more neutral expression, but not before the child catches sight of something in his eyes. A haze of confusion, or a flicker of pain… she couldn't say for sure.
He drops her into an unceremonious heap on the ground, his metal hand coming up to inspect the damage. It's nothing more than a papercut of a wound, but he's still… impressed?... that she managed to catch him in a moment of weakness. He looks questioningly at his handler, sees the hardness in his eyes, and knows his punishment will come later. A machine does not show weakness.
Another loud pop draws his eyes back to the lump of a girl before him, who is holding her dislocated arm with an expression halfway between confusion and awe.
She looks at his handler for answers, and the Asset turns his gaze back to him as well, wondering if he has any.
"It doesn't hurt," she says, sounding lost.
Strucker smiles. His experiment has gone better than he had dared to hope it would. "You're a very special little girl, Mausi."
He is proud of her retaliation, however weak or ill-founded it was. From years of service to the cause, Strucker knows that skill, agility, and precision can be taught, but grit is something that is born, not made. He sees a temper burning behind her eyes, heat she is desperate to push behind her eagerness to please. He thinks he can use both to his advantage.
He turns to his Asset, who regards him with the same steel eyes. "You will begin training tomorrow. The Asset will be your teacher."
By the thirtieth day, she is no longer a little girl crouched in the corner of her cell. She is a viper.