AN- hello all, Nasomta here! Don't worry, I'm not abandoning Waking Ghosts or anything, I just need a little break to get my thoughts in order for that fic. It's really emotionally draining to write, so I wanted to take a break and write something a little different. This is an AU I've had stewing for a long time, and finally put pen to paper on it. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
The cold's touch hardly registered against his skin, the darkness little more than a hollow comfort, hidden among the fallen snow like the ghost others rumored him to be. Figures haloed in green stood out among the dancing flakes of snow, milling about the decayed corpse of the plane they had tried and failed to rouse from its prison in the ice. The rifle fit in his arms as if nature had carved a place for it there, the night-scope pressed close to his face as he monitored the targets in their SHIELD-emblazoned arctic gear. As expected, they didn't even know that crosshairs were painted over their hearts. Not yet.
"Wait until you see the target brought out of the plane", his handler spoke through the com-unit in his ear, "Let them do the work of extracting it and then take them out and signal the recovery crew." The Asset gave no verbal response, merely going back to his silent vigil of the targets through his rifle scope. Artificial blood and muscles whirled unhappily in his prosthetic, the frigid air coiling through the internal structures like a serpent of ice, stiffening joints and gnawing at tendons with every slight movement. The discomfort it caused was only dimly acknowledged; pain was a distraction, only used to tally and identify damage to himself to report to his handlers. He wouldn't let it interfere with his mission.
Time had little weight in the assassin's mind, hours flitting by as he remained motionless in the snow, waiting for the right signals to strike. Constant stints in cryo had made his body efficient at rationing his heat, his heartbeat lazing slowly in his chest and breath little more than an afterthought. The predator in his mind slumbered placidly for the moment, waiting for the first sight of injury, the scent of blood in the wind, and only then would it wake and bare its teeth. But it needed a signal, a sign, a prompt to lunge with claws out and snarling, and so far there had been no sign—
"Soldier, the target is being extracted from the wreckage on the South face of the plane. Engage."
Not even a single moment's hesitation passed before the Soviet opened fire, picking off three of the SHIELD agents before the even heard the crack of the rifle. The other HYDRA agents that had been dispatched with him quickly swarmed the impromptu base camp a half-click out of his sight to the south, overwhelming any force there before backup could be called. Everything was going to plan.
When the surviving agents crowding the plane wised up to there being a sniper, the Asset had no choice but to abandon his vantage point and move in close. The muzzle-mask and goggles obscured almost all of his face, the wispy vapor of his breath hissing through the slats into the thin air; he looked alien, blank, and just as inhuman as he had been molded. His movements were silent, calculated and confident, boasting all the prowess of a predator as he reached the exposed wing of the aircraft, ducking beneath it and waiting.
Screams and barked orders echoed within the metallic husk that had once been a great warbird, and the assassin quickly slung his rifle over his back, opting for a pistol. He judged there were only a few SHIELD agents and Russian oil emissaries left alive; barely a challenge for one such as him. This whole mission was almost a disappointment, or it would have been if such emotions were still present in his consciousness. His mind was a whirl of tactics and scenarios, goals and objectives and targets; there was no place for something as petty and fragile as emotions.
With a click of the safety sliding off the Asset plunged down through a crack in the aircraft's fuselage, rolling into a crouch as soon as he hit bottom. An explosion of panicked yelling and shouting was all he needed to pinpoint the agents in the dark, firing off three precise shots. The yelling was silenced, a dull, wet thud echoing down the belly of the plane as one of his messier hits slumped to the ice. Silence greeted his ears, not a heartbeat nor breath piercing that veil, and he knew that he was alone. Find the target. The pistol was holstered, back straightened with a jerky movement of metal and mesh-merged spine, before he set out down the bomb bay towards the cockpit.
The ice crunched underfoot, loud and jagged and jarring, making him feel exposed for the first time in a very long span. Stealth was his partner in his constant dance with death, his one and only companion, and it had abandoned him in the darkness of this tomb of metal. Even with the thick goggles he could see clearly in the dark, his eyes sharp and focused in the low light. The footsteps in the fragile ice underfoot quickly lead him towards the ruined cockpit, which was almost entirely excavated and cleared.
Abandoned flares filled the vacant space with jumping light, reflecting off a million surfaces of metal, ice and glass. "The target is a body, retrieve it and return to the rendezvous point, Soldier." A body was an odd object to send him to collect, but the Soldier didn't question his orders. He obeyed, completed his task, and was rewarded with the all-encompassing cold of painless sleep. It was the only reprieve from his own mind, which was always too loud, too jumbled, too fractured for him to have any measure of peace.
A survey of the cockpit quickly located his quarry, hidden away on a stretcher against the far wall, flush with the floor. He dimly noted that the SHIELD agents must have been preparing to move him when he began the attack. Chatter filled his ear from the other agents converging outside the plane, securing it and picking off any surviving SHIELD members. It would only take them a few minutes for him to collect his target and meet with them at the extraction point, and the mission would be complete. Simple, quick, clean. Just like Pierce preferred.
The air in the cockpit felt heavy, weighing down on the Soldier in a way he wasn't familiar or comfortable with. It made his insides twist up; it was as if he was encroaching on something sacred, breaking some unspoken vow, some law written in blood. It was childish and foolish, he knew that, but he still approached the body cautiously, knowing that there very well could be a trap of some sort set up by the last agents as they fled.
All thoughts of traps and danger seemed to drain out of him, however, as soon as he laid eyes on the man's face. The asset had expected decay, to tote back bones and tattered clothing, not someone who merely appeared to be sleeping. It was unnerving in a way he had never felt before. Ice still clung to his brightly-colored uniform in places, dusting his pale skin and blond hair like glassed eggshell. Color, although faint, still painted his features like an artwork from some long forgotten age. The blueness of his lips, the stillness of his chest, it tore at something in the Asset's mind in a way even the predator of his instincts couldn't do; it was fear.
Pulling his glove off with his teeth and prying off his goggles to see better, the Soldier was crouched on the floor and hovering over the body in an instant, living fingers pressed to the target's neck as he searched for a heartbeat that had long since faded. The man's skin was as cold as the crystalline tomb that had cradled him for decades, but hidden beneath it was the hesitant, sleepy pulse of a man rousing from a deep slumber. The death he'd mistaken earlier was instead a body moving in slow motion, pulling itself out of a torpor the likes of which the assassin hadn't known was possible for a human being to enter and survive. And yet here, breathing and heart beating beneath his fingers, this man was somehow pulling himself from the very embrace of death.
"Complications with target," his voice was rough, cutting through the aimless noise of the other agents on the com, "It appears the body is… alive. Requesting updated objectives." He had no idea what to do. The body was not a body, and therefore mission parameters had changed. Acting on his own had been… enthusiastically discouraged by his handlers, therefore he refused to act further unless he was given a new objective to work towards.
"Mission update, Soldier; keep target alive until medical team arrives at your location." With a new mission firmly implanted into his programming, the Asset easily shook off his earlier unease and hesitation. The movement of his target's chest was growing more noticeable, the faintest wheeze rising above the sound of the com in his ear. A slight twitch of the corner of the man's mouth, fingers curling slightly as if reaching for an unseen goal, were all signs his nervous system was starting to function again as he pried death's jaws from his own throat.
Even though he had never treated anyone other than himself and a scattered few HYDRA agents on missions, let alone anyone in a condition such as this, it felt as though his body knew what to do where his brain was lagging and unsure. The Winter Soldier moved with steady hands that had ended more lives than he could count, carefully lifting the man so that he was in a sitting positon. He held him steady with one hand while metal fingers tugged at the zipper of his own jacket, sliding it open and rolling his shoulders so that the thick, insulated gear came free easily.
The man was a little more fully built than he was, so he wrapped his jacket around him like a blanket, hoping his meager body heat would work to bolster his circulation somewhat. He couldn't find any observable wounds, first aid pushed back on his list of priority, while keeping the man from going back into his suspended animation took precedence. Some part of his mind that had been dormant for decades seemed to be slowly awakening along with the man, tired and weak and desperate. The predator of his programmed instincts was abated by his orders, although he could still hear it whispering encouragements of bloodshed from its nest in his subconscious. It was fighting against that long-sleeping part of his mind, tearing into it, trying to prevent some outcome from coming to pass. It was giving him a headache.
"C… c… c-c…" the man's stuttering, choked voice caught the Asset's attention, all thoughts of self swiftly abandoned in favor of completing the mission. His expression was pained, eyes screwed shut and mouth downturned with brows furrowed; he was no doubt feeling the effects of his unkind torpor as he became aware of himself. He shouldn't be talking, was all the Winter Soldier thought, this isn't right he should be dead. The mask that covered most of his face obscured his frown, how he bit his lip in thought, but without his goggles the confusion in his eyes was evident. This wasn't right, this wasn't right.
"Shh," his voice was muffled behind the muzzle-mask, but it seemed to have the effect he wanted, as the man stopped his attempts at talking and some of the tenseness left his face. "Shh," The Soldier repeated, tone softer than he'd heard his own voice in lifetimes, "Don't speak." The man remained silent, but after a clearly great effort his eyes fluttered open, half-lidded but meeting his own confused gaze. Cloudy, hazy with sleep and exhaustion they looked almost grey, which caused the assassin's stomach to lurch. Not right, should be blue. Why they should be blue he couldn't say, but those eyes were wrong.
There was a long, silent minute as the two men stared at each other, neither moving nor breaking eye contact with the other. It was somewhat unsettling to the Soviet, but some part of broken him found it assuring. The man tried to move, and normally he would have reacted instantly, violently, but he refused to look away from those wrong-colored eyes. The jacket he had wrapped around him shifted, his target struggling against it weakly, before he managed to free one arm.
Unarmed, not a threat. The man seemed to not pose a threat, and since he was needed alive, the Winter Soldier let him reach towards him with a shaky hand unimpeded. If it kept the target from hurting himself or alerting SHIELD, then the Asset could care less what he did to him. He had no worth past his usefulness on the field. It didn't stop him from tensing when trembling fingers numbly brushed against the muzzle-mask, eye contact maintained between them. Something flickered across the man's eyes, which were slowly clearing into a brighter hue, but the assassin didn't understand what it was.
"…. M... m'I… d-d… ead…?" the target's voice was barely audible, but spoke a coherent word this time. Despite the relative clarity, the HYDRA agent didn't know what he meant. He could hazard a guess but his mission was not to engage in conversation, it was to keep his target alive for whatever reason his handlers had. That sleepy part of his mind, however, spoke up for the first time in what may as well have been a century, foreign yet as familiar as the metal that made up his left arm as it chimed in his mind.
No, you're not dead, pal. HYDRA can't touch you if you're dead.