A/N: As always, the feedback is very much appreciated! Definitely brightens my day :)
9. Don't take it away from me; I need someone to hold onto.
Steve's in Europe; Captain America isn't quite as anonymous as he'd like to be. Avoiding him is not difficult. He always did tend to rush into things, he remembers vaguely. In any case, he decides to go to South America next. There is some evidence that HYDRA has a presence down there, and he wants to continue avoiding Steve. For now.
Within a few days, he is in an old hotel in Argentina. It's a little ways out of the town, and has a lot of vacancies. If they found his presence here odd, the staff has made no comment. He finds that he knows Spanish, which is helpful. His fluency in the language apparently keeps them from asking questions, though he did choose this location as one least likely to be interested in his story.
He sets his bag down on the bed, frowning slightly when a puff of dust comes out of the coverlet. Then he shrugs; he usually sleeps on the floor anyway. Carefully, he removes the information he's gathered from his pack, spreads it out across the bed and settles down to read it. He reads his own files first, perusing the frequently clinical discussion of the Winter Soldier as an experiment. If he doesn't remember that it refers to himself, it is an interesting read. But it makes him angry to read what was done to him, especially in such a detached and cold manner.
After about half an hour, he gets up to pace around the room, relieving some of his hatred for the people who claimed to prize him very highly. Well, he thinks bitterly, they did certainly value him. All the procedures they put him through were carefully tested and perfected before being applied to their favorite weapon. Many others were killed along the way. He can't help but feel that this blood is on his hands, too. If he had just died when he fell, or even before, when they got him the first time, none of this would have happened.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he flips more quickly through the remaining files on his project. They became less detailed, just briefly reporting his missions. His own reports, he thinks, startled. Some he remembers, most he does not, but he does recall giving his mission reports when he returned to base. These include some more detail than that with which he was provided, since context was irrelevant to the Winter Soldier, but some of the report was clearly from himself. It is strange to read things he has said, described, without having any mental connection to it. It's like that was another person. He supposes, grimly, that it essentially was another person, depending on how recently he'd been wiped.
There are two anomalies that catch his attention. The first is that he was not recommended for service in the United States. One mission to Brooklyn involved his escaping his handlers and disappearing for months. Once found, the report states he didn't remember where he was or what he had been doing during that time. He frowns deeply, and paces for a while, wondering if the report is trustworthy. Was he remembering living there before the war? He grinds his teeth at the thought. Had he almost escaped this once before? It does explain the length of his hair, since none of his missions seemed long enough for it to have grown from regulation down to his shoulders. Why HYDRA (or the KGB) didn't see a reason to cut it is a mystery. He supposes it might have made him a more intimidating figure, with the mask and the goggles as well. He runs his fingers through it thoughtfully, then tucks it back behind his ears and keeps reading.
The other is a strange set of missions that are heavily redacted, despite nothing else taken from that base being redacted. He frowns at it, and finds instructions to increase his wipes and limit his time out of cryo. At the beginning, he was out and being trained for months at a time. More recently, it was down to a couple of days. He wonders how he could possibly have been worth all the effort, if his programming might break down so quickly. But what happened to precipitate that? No matter how he reads the limited information that is available, he can't discern any reason other than the missions he was sent on apparently triggered something.
With a sigh, he turns to the last few pages, the last mission dated five years ago. He reads it placidly, not connecting the assassination of an engineer outside of Odessa with anything. Until he sees that there was someone else involved. The description is vague, describing a woman who was shot but not killed, which is odd. People did not survive his missions.
Deciding to puzzle that out later, he continues reading to find that there is a log of when the information has been accessed. His initial thought is a sense of dread that then someone might realize he was there, but he pushes that away and reads through the list. It was not accessed very often, but he sees it has been recently. Within the last month. He sucks in a breath. Who could have been in Kiev before him? He doesn't think it was Steve. It could have been SHIELD. Or HYDRA. But why would HYDRA go to an abandoned facility to access information on him? They presumably have more recent data at their disposal.
It's troubling. He looks through the other information he printed, forcing aside the thought of people chasing him. He knows they are, knew they would be when he decided not to just hide out until he wanted to find Steve. He's taken precautions and will continue to do so. The rest is out of his hands. Hand. If it comes to it, he's been carefully trained to avoid capture, by whatever means necessary. Still, he knows that the world has changed since he was last in it, and being a super-soldier like Steve isn't going to save him from everything. Everyone after him has the reputation of getting what they want, which is unsettling.
The Black Widow's history is surprisingly long, beginning with her being taken in as an orphan by a high-ranking Soviet official. He reads with interest of her being placed, along with other orphans, in a program to develop world-class assassins. Much of this program has been redacted also, and he wonders if there is anywhere that contains this information anymore. She defected from the Soviets and joined SHIELD after a few heavily redacted missions. Whatever their content, it apparently involved her breaking the rules, as strictures were being put into place to control her more thoroughly. It was not surprising she left.
He is somewhat surprised that her missions continue to be detailed in the files, before supposing that HYDRA would incorporate SHIELD's intel into their own. He skims over these before pausing in shock, seeing that she was tasked with and failed to escort an engineer out of Iran. She was stopped and her asset was killed outside of Odessa by a lone gunman. He smiles grimly; the Winter Soldier is not mentioned in her file, but it does explain how she reacted to him on the bridge. She knew some tricks to slow him down, perhaps because she'd faced him before. He shakes his head at what seems like a coincidence. And then she went on to work with and be a close confident of the man who was once his best friend. How odd.
Continuing reading, he is surprised to find more recent updates than on his own file. It's possible that the Odessa mission was his last, and the chaos that followed his failure kept anyone from updating his log. It's also possible that Pierce was dead and not enough other people knew of his existence for that to be a priority. But the Black Widow clearly is, as her last known locations are as recent as a few days ago, and orders have gone out to take her captive. He laughs out loud when he sees where they think she is.
Pulling his hood over his face, he shoves his hands in his pockets before turning right and walking down the street, gaze directed at the ground. He is not as unnoticeable here as he was in the larger cities of the United States, but he doubts anyone will spare him more than a passing glance. He's not the only foreigner here, after all. Especially not since a conspicuous number of them checked into the hotels in town in the last twenty-four hours. They did it stealthily, of course, but HYDRA's spread pretty thin these days.
He walks down a few blocks before ducking inside a bar and finding a seat against the wall where he can watch the door. When the girl comes over, he orders quietly, then takes stock of the other patrons. Most look innocent enough; well, for people at a bar in the early afternoon, but some are rather too on-edge to be here for no reason. He nurses his beer, wondering if alcohol will have no effect on him as is apparently the case for Steve. He knows that any drugs he might have been given during procedures were ineffectual, so it is likely that this will be, too.
The afternoon sun is hot, even though the shades are all shut. The normal patrons seem to sink into their seats sleepily. Some leave. The others remain taut and ready, clearly waiting for something they'd rather avoid. He mimics the behavior of the normal patrons, apparently well enough to avoid notice from the others. He's waiting for the same thing, though it's not something he wants to avoid.
After a few hours, it's finally cooling down, and the place is getting a little livelier. There are rooms above it, he knows, and suspects that is why these suspicious characters are hanging around. They think they know who is staying here. He thinks they're right, though it's somewhat disappointing. Her reputation would indicate that she's better prepared than this. Of course, she's just leaked all of her secrets (or quite a few of them anyway), and has had to develop new covers. So maybe she's slipping a little.
The sun is starting to set when a woman walks in the door. She's not the only woman to walk through the door, but she holds herself differently, not to mention her pale skin. She's as disguised as he is; more so, since her hair appears to be black. But it's definitely her. All afternoon he has been considering how to react to this moment, but perhaps he doesn't know what to do with potential allies. Enemies he understands. So he waits, watching her silently from under his hood as she crosses the room calmly, slowly, smirking, before settling at a table near the stairs that lead to the available rooms.
One of the men who has been there all day gets up after a few minutes, after the Black Widow has placed her order, and saunters over to her. He makes a show of greeting her in a friendly manner, as though they are well-acquainted, and she frowns for only a split-second before responding in kind. He sits down next to her and toasts her, having brought his drink from his own table. They laugh together, but he can feel the tension from across the room, and a cursory glance shows that far too many eyes are focused on their table. At least he was more subtle about it.
After a few long moments, the man pulls out a gun and lays it on the table. The locals immediately get up and rush out, while the other men get to their feet and draw their own weapons. She smiles calmly, not even glancing at the weapons pointed in her direction. The confident smile on the man across from her wavers, and then fades entirely, his face growing pale. There is the flash of a blade and flurry of movement, and she is standing, holding the man with a knife to his throat, shielding her from his men. She taunts them in Russian, mostly hidden behind the man. Having read the orders on her capture, he is not surprised when they open fire despite her hostage.
She's fast. She has good aim. But she is woefully outnumbered, and more men are pouring in through the door. He watches carefully, weighing his options one last time. But he cannot just stand by while she is killed or captured. So he dives into the melee.
