In a violent world where deception's free
Things I can't control taking over me
Did they try to take my identity?
What the hell have they done to me?
I will take your thoughts away
And I'll ignite your fear today
Well I can take you far away
With my mind, with my mind

Cold, "With My Mind"

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

It gets worse before it gets better.

Chapter Warning: PTSD, mind control, rabbit holes & self-destructive behaviour

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

oOoOoOo

Stark Tower, New York
April 28, 2012

Toni hasn't slept in three days.

She's tried to sleep, laid down on the couch, curled up with Bucky, curled up with Clint and Natasha, taken melatonin, warm milk, half a Valium, everything but booze. (She can function while drunk, but she needs better than functional. She needs to be at the top of her game, sharp and crisp and clear.) No matter what she tries, sleep evades her. Sleep attacks her. Sleep sends her screaming back to consciousness, gasping for air and looking for enemies to fight.

She attends two of Coulson's meetings, but doesn't have the presence of mind to remember a word that's said. She has the impression those meetings were a whole lot of nothing to say, though, because if something important had been talked about, she's positive she would have remembered it.

She also does something she swore she would never do, back when she was silly enough to think that the world wasn't stupid enough to try and take too much of her stuff at once. She leaves the decision to JARVIS, but tells him he's free to engage his Panopticon protocols with the goal of finding Steve Rogers. JARVIS is the most advanced intelligence on the planet. He doesn't need to sleep, or take breaks, or eat to recharge. He never gets tired, he never gets frustrated. He doesn't make mistakes twice. He never loses focus. It takes him twenty-six minutes to infiltrate the Triskelion, and another ten minutes to infiltrate the Helicarrier.

She doesn't even feel guilty. She should, and it's just a little worrisome, but she can't find it in her heart to care too much.

She can't sleep, so she works. She's always done her best work with insomnia driving her. She's also done some of her most insane, dangerous, treading-the-line-of-morality work with insomnia driving her. But that's fine. That works for her right now. She'll take all the lethality and slipping morals she can, internalize it with a smile, and then hold out her plate to ask for more.

She hasn't forged anything by hand since Afghanistan, when she built the Mark I armor from discarded scrap and scavenged missile housing. She hadn't even allotted space for a smithy in the building's plans. But money talks, and Stark money talks the loudest and when she felt the itch to put hammer to steel, to work out her aggravations in the clang and ring of metal on metal, she had a forge in a couple of hours.

She pulls the blade out of the forge and sets it on the anvil. Her shoulders have passed beyond sore, have settled into a dull throbbing set of knots that will require a tub of Icy Hot and a professional masseuse to wrestle out when all's said and done, but she picks up the hammer and starts swinging.

She should be falling over on her feet. She should be too exhausted to think straight. She should be passing out because her body can't handle anymore. But every blow of the hammer on the red-hot metal sharpens her resolve, invigorates her, hones her rage into a surgical, precision thing.

She loses track of time in the swing of the hammer and the shaping of the blade, but her thoughts are clear. She knows where she is, who she is, what she's doing.

The blade hisses and steams as she quenches it. Reheats it. Hammers again. Quenches again. When that blade is done, she moves onto the next unshaped metal. And the next. And the next. Sometimes she looks up, and Bucky is sitting silently on a stool, watching her with dark, angry eyes. Sometimes it's Clint, perched above her in a vent. It's never Natasha, but Toni wouldn't see Natasha anyway, unless Natasha wanted her to. She ignores them all, because she can't stop. Most of the time, she's alone.

Her arms are trembling by the time she sets the hammer down, and her knees are threatening to give out. Sweat pours off her body, drenching her tank top and jeans, and her chest burns with the ache of pulled muscles.

"JARVIS," she says, grimaces, pushes a hand against her chest. It hurts to talk. "JARVIS, you there?"

A soft chime, the cue for JARVIS unmuting himself. "I am, ma'am," he says primly.

She reels back, hits the edge of a workbench hard, and leans there, trying to catch her breath. "I need a status update, J."

"I have broken through six layers of SHIELD secure encryption," JARVIS reports in a clipped tone. "I have located files regarding Captain Rogers, as per your directives; however, their contents contain nothing that is not already part of the public record. I am continuing my search, but SHIELD's network is vast. I estimate it will take me several days to perform a thorough sweep."

"Okay." She pushes off the bench, staggers as her head swims, pushes gamely towards the couch. "Wake me in three hours."

"Ma'am…"

She collapses onto the couch. "Three hours, J. Mute until then." She closes her eyes, hopes she can actually sleep for three hours. Isn't banking on it though. She's sure the nightmares will wake her up long before JARVIS's alarm does.

oOoOoOo

Location Classified
April 28th, 2012

"My name is Steve Rogers. My birthday is July 4, 1987. I am a captain in the US Army. I am Captain America. I am the successor to Chester Phillips, the first Captain America. My mother was Sarah Rogers. She died of breast cancer four years ago. My soulmate is Peggy Carter Rogers, and we have been married for three years. I did not serve in World War II. I did not crash into an iceberg. I did not punch Hitler in the face. I was injured in a fight with the villain Iron Man, and suffered amnesia."

The man in the mirror looks highly skeptical.

Steve sighs, rubs his face tiredly, and sits down on the edge of the hospital bed, staring at his reflection. Three days after waking from a coma, and he's still just as lost and confused as he was the moment he opened his eyes. He tries to connect to what Peggy describes is their life, their experiences, but he doesn't connect to any of it. Dr. Fennhoff tells him it's a lingering aftereffect of the coma, warns that he may never recover his memories but he should still try. Tells him to look at the documents Peggy's brought from their home, look at the service records Dr. Fennhoff retrieved from SHIELD, for whom he apparently works. Look at the footage of him fighting Iron Man in a secure base somewhere, even though it's grainy and blurry and in black-and-white, terrible quality that keeps jumping around and going staticky, and he'd be hard pressed to say the one not in armor is him.

He still remembers nothing, except the dream-world his mind apparently created while he was unconscious and healing. The world so real, it feels like it actually happened to him. The words he reads on paper, the photographs he sees of his life with Peggy, his service records of tours overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq, they never seem right, never seem real. Like he's looking at a comic book or watching a film. Something that happened to someone else.

He had his first appointment with the cognitive therapist this morning, a blonde woman with a severe bun and black-framed glasses who introduced herself as Barb. She suggested that he try to deal with his disbelief by breaking it down, one statement at a time. "Look at yourself in the mirror, say each line with as much conviction as you can. Keep note of what feels right and what feels wrong. If you can identify exactly what you have trouble accepting," she said to him, "you know what areas to work on."

Well, it's worth a shot.

"My name is Steve Rogers," he says slowly to the mirror, and watches his own face for whatever reactions he has. Waits for the disconnected feeling. Doesn't get it. He nods to himself. "My birthday is July 4, 1987." A twinge of unease at the year, not the date. He makes a mental note. "I am a captain in the US Army." Seems to be true. "I am Captain America." Also seems to be true. No dissonance there. "I am the successor to Chester Phillips…"

He can't even get the full sentence out before his instincts are screaming that it's false. He closes his eyes, and the headache constantly lurking behind his eyes throbs forward. "I am the successor to…." The headache surges, the nausea churns, and he swallows hard. "My mother was Sarah Rogers. She died of breast-"

He retches violently, barely makes it into the bathroom and coughs up bile into the sink. He leans his head against the mirror and turns on the tap to wash it away, splashes water onto his face when he feels like he can open his eyes without the light stabbing into them.

Not for the first time, he's afraid there's something wrong with the serum, because he doesn't get sick anymore. Wonders if this Iron Man's ray weapons have the ability to affect him on a cellular level. Feels a surge of irritation and anger at the thought of Iron Man, visceral and sharp. He needs answers. He needs his life back. He needs…

The door leading to the hall opens, and soft footsteps shuffle in. "Captain Rogers?"

He closes his eyes, splashes more water on his face, and reaches for the white towel hanging on the rack. The nurse, to check his vitals. "I'll be out in a moment, ma'am," he calls. Debates not going out at all, because he doesn't want more pressure cuffs or questions checking his memory. He doesn't want the injections Fennhoff prescribed to help with the nausea and the headaches. Doesn't want more blood drawn.

He just wants to be able to look at himself in the mirror and know who he is. Because right now, he may be Steve Rogers. He may be Captain America. But he no longer has any idea of what that means.

The nurse is waiting in his room with her little wire cart. The pressure cuff is already in her hand. He sullenly sits on the edge of the bed, lets her wrap the cuff around his arm, lets her take his temperature, draw blood, examine his eyes and ears and throat. When she brings out the needle, fills it from a vial of thin, yellowish liquid, he balks. "No, I'm fine, really," he says, lying through his teeth.

The nurse gives him a sympathetic smile that's sharp around the edges. "I'm sorry, Captain Rogers," she says. "But Doctor Fennhoff's left specific directions. You need a shot every four hours, to ease your nausea and the headache."

"It doesn't work," he mutters.

"It will. Just give it some time, Captain," the nurse says, and jabs the needle into his shoulder. A quick press of the plunger, and she withdraws it again, swabbing over the spot with an alcohol wipe. "If I could give you a pill or a liquid, Captain, I would," she adds, sticking a completely unnecessary bandage over the injection site. "But your metabolism burns so fast, it wouldn't have time to leave your stomach before the effects were gone. Now, try to get some rest before your wife comes by. Clear your mind. Things will look easier soon."

"I'm sure they will," he says, but doesn't believe a word of it.

oOoOoOo

Stark Tower, New York
April 30th, 2012

Day five, and Toni is on the verge of burning out. She's passed the point of exhausted and is rapidly approaching needing serious medical assistance. She hasn't seen anyone in more than 24 hours, (can't even be positive that conversation was real because while she thinks it happened, she's also pretty sure her mother is long dead), has snapped and snarled at everyone who's approached her. Locked everyone but Bucky out of the workshop, and if she could have locked him out too, she would have.

There have been moments in the last few days when she regretted giving him the same level of access that she has. No, that's not what she regrets. What she regrets is making it Skynet-protected access, because she now she can't revoke it when it's convenient for her to do so.

Because here he is again, glaring at her with folded arms and a stubborn set to his jaw, standing in the middle of her workshop and blocking all of her attempts to go around him to get back to her projects.

"Get out of my way, James," she growls, tries to go left and duck right at the last moment.

"Enough is enough, Toni," he says, reaching out an arm to snag her and push her back. "You're either leaving here under your own power, or I'm going to drag you out. Kicking and screaming if I have to. You need sleep. You need food. You need a fucking shower. You need to socialize like a real goddamn person, not lock yourself away down here until you run yourself into your fucking grave."

"I am a fucking grown-up, Barnes! You don't get to tell me what to do! Leave me alone, I'm fine!" She makes another attempt to get around him, is too sluggish for how quick she tries to move and trips over her own feet.

Bucky catches her, keeps her from face-planting in the floor. "You are down the fucking rabbit-hole, Stark!" he yells back, and his hands flex on her shoulders like he desperately wants to shake her. "You are so far out of touch with reality, you're having conversations with people who aren't fuckin' there! Don't tell me you're fine! I know you're not! Or are you so fucking lost in Toniland that you forgot I'm fucking bound to you and can feel when you're on the verge of killing yourself?"

God, it's all catching up to her now, and she sags drunkenly before forcing her knees to straighten. "So what?" she snarls, but most of her fire is out. It's a fraction of her previous conviction. "I'm not just going to sit on my ass and twiddle my thumbs while we wait!"

"You think you're the only one feeling this? You think you're the only one who hates sitting on your ass while this shit is going on? You're not! You're just the only one who's being fucking selfish enough to hide away and wallow alone, you unbelievable asshole!"

"Go fuck yourself, Barnes! This is where I need to be! This is what I need to do! I need to-"

"Not do a goddamn thing more until you've had a break," Bucky growls, and she glares up at him defiantly. He stops, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. Tiredly, "Fuck's sake, Toni. You gotta make it as fucking difficult as you can, don't you? Well, can't say I didn't warn you."

He's faster than she can follow. One minute, she's right-side up, the next, she's upside down. The world lurches as he slings her over his shoulder and strides towards the door. She doesn't have the presence of mind for a long few moments to do anything but hang there, stare at the swaying floor, and try not to hurl.

"J, do I have the authority to lock Toni out of any place remotely resembling work areas?"

"Normally, sir, I would say no, but given ma'am's physical condition has deteriorated, I believe extenuating circumstances allow me to classify any such order as pursuant to my secondary protocols, ensuring ma'am's wellbeing."

"Don't you fucking dare, JARVIS!" She struggles upward, tries to wiggle off Bucky's shoulder. Forgot that she's dealing with a super-soldier, and outside the suit, he's way stronger than she is. She's not going anywhere he doesn't want her to.

"Yeah, go ahead and do that for me then, would you, J? A 24-hour lock, unless she hasn't eaten or slept."

"Certainly, sir. All workshops are now locked out of ma'am's access for the next 24 hours."

"You little shit," she seethes, upside down. "You just wait. I will recompile you into a fucking toaster."

"Of course you will, ma'am. I'll file a reminder in the burgeoning Empty Threats folder."

Defeated, she closes her eyes. "I really fucking hate you both."

"Sure you do," Bucky says, and steps into the elevator. "See if you feel that way after you're clean, fed and fucking rested. Until then, I'm ignoring your incoherent rambling bullshit."

After a warm bowl of chicken noodle soup and a hot shower, both of which occur with a supremely unamused supersoldier standing over her and glaring to ensure she behaves herself, Toni is dead on her feet. She hits the bed face-first with her hair still wet and the towel still around her body, and is asleep before she can finish bouncing.

oOoOoOo

Location Unknown
May 2, 2012

Steve follows the nurse through the corridor, though he's not sure why. There's a pleasant haze over his thoughts, an urge to be compliant, that's vaguely unsettling deep down where a mutinous little voice is still yelling at him to wake up. He wants to know where they're going, but can't find the desire to ask. He'll find out soon enough.

At least the nausea is gone. And the headache. Once Fennhoff increased the frequency to every two hours, started him on meditation techniques with special music designed to soothe his heightened senses, all his discomfort and uncertainty just washed away like it never was.

The nurse hasn't said anything since she told him his compliance is appreciated, and he started following her through the hall. She leads him to a door, tells him to open it, Doctor Fennhoff is waiting inside for him.

He complies. Ignores the strident voice in his mind. Ignores the shred of self he has left, screaming and rattling the bars of his mental prison.

Fennhoff isn't alone. With him is a thin, white-haired man in a grey suit and black, round glasses. They both turn as the door opens, watch him come in. Familiarity stirs beneath the placid surface of his thoughts, a nagging feeling he's seen this man before.

"Amazing," the other man says, walking forward to peer more closely at him. "He hasn't aged at all."

"The serum slows the aging process," Fennhoff says. "It's a miracle of medicine. Erskine, for all his treachery, was a brilliant mind."

Erskine. The image of a face churns, surges, breaks the surface for just a moment. A gentle, elderly man with a kind smile. An echo, distant and tinny: Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are, not a perfect soldier, but a good man.

His head begins to ache.

The still-nameless man continues to examine him. "I thought it would take longer to condition him," he says. "It's only been a week. Are you sure he's compliant?"

Fennhoff nods. "We learned quite a lot while the Winter Soldier was still in our possession," he says. "What compounds would work, which techniques were most effective. The Winter Soldier was trial and error. Captain America, on the other hand…It was just a matter of adapting our techniques to account for Erskine's purer version of the formula. Once we adjusted the process, he fell swiftly into line."

Rage and panic thrash, claw, can't find purchase and sink back down again.

The man arches an eyebrow. "He gave you no resistance? I find that hard to believe."

Fennhoff shrugs. "A pliant mind is fertile ground for our methods, sir. One of our agents was able to access him while he was still in SHIELD facilities, and began the process with subliminals and injections. Once we had him, we manipulated his sense of reality from the moment he woke up, convinced him he'd been dreaming while comatose. Stark's nano-veils came in exceptionally handy, and Agent 33 is a superb actress. There were times I truly believed she was Peggy Carter."

The man breaks into a smile. "Excellent," he says. "I'm impressed with your work. You have managed to salvage the situation Agent Sitwell came perilously close to destroying. I will remember to make mention of that in my report to the Councillor." A pause. "Is he mission-ready?"

Fennhoff shrugs. "More time would be appreciated, of course, to allow the process to root deeper in his psyche, but I believe the asset is ready to take on short-term, supervised missions."

No, no. NO. The headache pounds, and he struggles to move his arms and legs, to fight, to run. Feels sweat bead on his forehead, feels his face twitch. Curls his fingers into a fist at his side.

"Well then. No time like the present. Send him to kill Stark and retrieve the Winter Soldier. That should prove to be an adequate test of his abilities." The man smiles at him, and his eyes are cold and malevolent. "Ah. I believe the good Captain is attempting to break free of your conditioning, Johann. Should I be concerned?"

"No," Fennhoff replies, and turns to the computer beside the chair, types on the keyboard. "Likely our conversation has triggered his awareness of self. A minor matter. He won't remember us speaking in a moment. Sit in the chair, Captain."

His body moves against his will, settles in the chair, placidly allows Fennhoff to fasten the cuffs around his wrists and chest. Steve stares at the doctor balefully as diodes are attached around his head, one at a time.

"Such anger," the other man murmurs, leans forward until he can look Steve in the eye. "Such hate. You may not remember me, but I remember you. Do you find it ironic that the very enemy you fought so hard against seventy years ago now owns your loyalty?" He shifts closer, just a fraction. "Welcome to Hydra, Captain America. We have such plans for you."

As he steps back and nods, as Fennhoff enters a final command into the keyboard, half a second before his world washes white and clean with pain and fire, Steve screams in wordless, futile rage deep in the dark of his mind.

oOoOoOo

Stark Tower, New York
May 2, 2012

After nearly eighteen hours of dreamless sleep, broken only twice to inhale a prodigious amount of breakfast food thoughtfully brought to her by Bucky - who she is now one hundred and ten percent positive she doesn't deserve in the slightest - Toni is more or less herself again.

And she's pretty sure that herself is an inconsiderate jackass.

She has the world's longest shower, with two rounds of shampooing, and finds clothing that hasn't been worn for days at a time which, to her at this point, is a goddamn novelty. It takes her three tries to walk out the door of the penthouse suite, because she really doesn't want to have to look anyone in the eye. Sometimes, she wishes she had a broader streak of cowardice than she did personal responsibility.

It's just her luck; all three of them are in the kitchen when she steps off the elevator. She falters for a moment as three sets of eyes turn to watch her, debates turning and fleeing, debates running down to get the care packages she put together for each one of them and bribe them into forgiveness. Only for a moment, though, because none of that is going to fix the damage she caused. So she squares her shoulders, hitches up her big girl pants, and walks forward into the zone of judgement.

It's a little frightening how all three of them are managing to wear the same expression, stone-faced poker player. Especially Clint, who rarely manages to conceal anything he's feeling from her, is wearing the blandest, most neutral expression she's ever seen.

"Bucky was right," she says into the silence. "I am an unbelievable asshole. I may have lost my marbles a little, but that's why I'm supposed to listen to people who love me, because they want me to do basic things like drink water and eat food and sleep once every two days. I did not, I can't clearly remember but I have the sneaking suspicion that I treated you all pretty fucking awfully, and I'm very sorry I was obnoxious and pissy."

Clint is the first to turn his gaze away from her. "Do you guys think that was sufficient?"

Bucky shrugs and sips his coffee without saying a word.

Natasha tilts her head, still watching Toni and stirring her tea slowly. "I've heard better," she finally says.

They all go right back to breakfast, completely ignoring her.

Toni slinks back into the elevator, punches the floor her workshop is on, fetches a hand trolley and loads up the three heavy trunks sitting by the wall just inside the door. She should have remembered who she was dealing with. Bribery is never just an option, it's a valid fucking negotiation tactic.

She pushes the trolley back into the elevator and hits the communal floor again, grumbling under her breath. As the elevator is rising again, a thought occurs to her and she closes her eyes with a wince. She's forgetting someone in her apologies. "Hey, J?"

The silence is very pointed.

"I'm very sorry, JARVIS," she says. "I was pretty unappreciative of you this week. I'll try to be more considerate in the future."

"Very good, ma'am," JARVIS replies promptly. "Agent Coulson has requested a meeting to begin in approximately one hour. And I believe I have reached the final layer of encryption on SHIELD's servers. I have isolated a series of servers in various Stark clusters, and will begin collating and compiling pertinent data for your convenience."

"Good kid, J. Thank you."

"Of course, ma'am."

The elevator doors open and she steps back onto the floor. This time, she's the one ignoring the three of them, though she can feel them staring at her the whole time. She hauls the trunks off the trolley one by one, dropping them onto the floor near the far wall. Without a word, she goes directly into the kitchen and pours herself a coffee in the biggest mug she owns, stirs in a medically inadvisable amount of sugar, and snags a packet of pop tarts out of the cupboard.

All three of them are digging through the trunks, pulling out armor and weapons and more weapons, when she makes her way back to sit and caffeinate. "Vultures," she mumbles into her mug, and takes a noisy slurp.

She watches Bucky's face light up with the sort of happiness that would make anyone with common sense flee as he pulls out the repulsor rig she built to clip onto his cybernetic arm. Clint actually nuzzling his new bow and counting all the different kinds of arrowheads he now has available. Natasha, testing the weight and balance of her combat knives, which Toni's chest muscles are still sore from forging, actually making a soft noise of pleased surprise when she pulls out the escrima sticks and finds the button that charges them with fifty thousand volts of electricity.

She sips her coffee again, enjoying the heat spread through her body, props her chin on her hand, watches the others act like Christmas came early.

Yeah, she's forgiven.

And, just as importantly, they're geared. They're armed. They're armored. She hadn't meant to fall down the hole and drift into unstable territory, hadn't meant to insult and offend any of them. The minute they have information, they can go without needing to worry about upgrades or repairs.

Now, she thinks, absently calling for JARVIS to give her a progress check on his hack, now she can sit and wait for actionable intelligence. She's done all she can to prepare.

Hydra can just fucking bring it now.

oOoOoOo

The Asset
In Transit, Quinjet
May 2, 2012

Director Garrett is clear in his directives, gives extremely clear mission objectives. Steve's always been a good agent, follows orders, thinks well on his feet, is able to adapt to shifting circumstances as mercurially as they change. He's never been fond of killing, rarely does it except as a last resort, disdains agents who reach for guns and knives and other deadly weapons immediately, instead of fighting to subdue.

This time, though, he doesn't think he'll be able to pull himself back. Iron Man is just too dangerous. Iron Man has done too much, taken too much, from him. His soulmated wife, murdered in cold blood just for being his wife. His best friend Bucky, captured and experimented on and mind-controlled to fight on Iron Man's side.

The villain cannot be allowed to live. He's broken out of five prisons in ten years, and each time, innocent people got in his way and ended up either injured or dead.

Steve doesn't like killing.

But this time he will.

There's a very tiny voice, deep down inside, still howling at him to stop what he's doing and run away. Wrong, wrong. Wrong! Steve ignores it and turns the shield over and over and over in his hands.