"They will try again tomorrow," I murmured softly.
By now they were trying the Memory Suppression Machine every morning and every day the result was the same. I wondered if this was intentional and they were running James through this ordeal for fun.
"Yes, I can see that".
I allowed myself to gently stroke his hair, they were much longer than the day we had first met. I had suggested him to cut them, which he had laughingly refused. He said that he would never let anyone touch his hair, but I sensed the real reason. James refused as best he could any kind of sharp objects near him when I was around. In a quiet moment he had told me about his nightmares and that they were full of horror scenarios of him hurting innocent people. Even though I was quite sure he wouldn't harm me, he'd been obsessing on the fact that he was dangerous.
Every day was the same routine. They would wake me up, take me to the lab, perform this horrible experiment on him, and then make him fight agents. Like he was just meant to fight.
He reached into the pocket of my lab coat and pulled out the old metal cigarette case I had received from Zola. I guess the scientist had considered it funny that it had the HYDRA symbol engraved on it. James puffed at the sight before he also took out the lighter and lit a cigarette.
"I don't know anything about you," he finally said, blowing out the smoke.
"You do know my name," I reminded him with a grin, wiping blood from his forehead before it could run into his eye.
The three of them had fought him, and he had taken quite a beating. He tried hard but sometimes the perfect facade of the serum's intactness slipped. I wondered how long it would take before the order was given to kill someone.
"But nothing else. You know me inside out".
It had become a kind of ritual of ours that I would bring him something on our daily visits. Mostly cigarettes, but sometimes a little snack. HYDRA made sure that he ate enough calories not to lose weight. But his metabolism demanded more, his stomach often growled when I was with him.
We then talked a lot about his past. I could have recited everything in the file in my sleep. But he talked about his family, his three younger sisters. His blue eyes lit up with a mixture of joy and grief while he told anecdotes from early childhood. I learned that he had not only always been very athletic but also a good student, pulling Steve out of fights. I couldn't help but grin at the idea.
He had been a part of the Army at a young age and he had always taken pride in being able to protect and defend not just his family and friends, but his country as well.
"Ask me," I said.
"How old are you?".
"You don't ask women questions like that," I replied, chuckling softly.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, let me put it another way," he grinned, "When were you born?".
I snorted a little at his cheeky statement, but knew he only meant well.
"14.02.1920".
His eyes grew big after he looked at me for a moment.
"That was a few days ago," he stated, "I don't have a present for you".
I myself had only noticed my birthday much too late. I had only briefly enjoyed some memories.
"It doesn't matter at all. It's okay, you don't have to give me anything," I reassured him.
He smiled and I felt my cheeks getting hot. Lately, it was almost a natural reaction to him and I found myself casually taking his hand or stroking his arm more and more often. As if my body was being remote controlled, I couldn't do anything about it. As I was doing now, while my thumb stroked his cheekbone almost tenderly.
"I'll figure something out," he promised, "What did you do before... HYDRA ...".
I promptly interrupted him, I knew what he was going to ask.
"I was a doctor. I took care of veterans".
"If all this had not happened, you would have taken care of me too?".
"I'm taking care of you now," I threw the bloody cloths into the trash.
Again this charming smile, which infected me directly. I had thought about James being handsome before, but had tried to banish such thoughts from my mind. This was neither the place nor the time for that. He extinguished the cigarette with his metal fingers and threw it on the concrete floor.
"Did you have any hobbies?".
I was glad that he changed the subject. I could not have suppressed the desire to lose myself in a tight embrace any longer.
"I liked to go dancing", I admitted, "if I found a partner".
With a slight uneasy feeling I thought of how I had been out with some female friends and they had received much more attention. Maybe that was the reason why I had become interested in studying and my father's research much too early.
"I bet some men would love to dance with you".
A small shudder ran through me, he reached for my hand, which was still cleaning his face from blood. His tongue dampened his lips briefly before he pressed them onto the back of my hand. The place immediately began to tingle. Somehow this topic and his actions were not really beneficial to forget my inappropriate thoughts.
"When this is all over, I'll take you out dancing".
The next morning had come, so it was time again. I watched helplessly as James was strapped into this infernal machine, growling as he tried to push the agents off him. But he was far too weakened from the torture they put him through every day. The nightmares were also sapping his strength. As the week went on, the dark circles under his eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger. As soon as our eyes met, he was calm again.
"You know, Dr. Erskine, I think I'll have this problem solved soon," Zola turned to me and grinned.
He always grinned as soon as we were behind the barrier. The scientist seemed to find a disgusting pleasure in this whole procedure.
"What do you mean?".
"All in good time", the expression in his eyes became a little darker.
Suddenly I had the feeling that he was not talking about the machine. Was he talking about me? Was I the problem? Or the fact that the conversations between me and James were growing more and more intimate with each passing day? Were they watching us?
I remembered looking for cameras in my room before and not finding any. But in James' cell? I felt a little sick to my stomach. Either all these thoughts or the electrical hum of the machine and James' screams of pain were responsible.
They seemed to increase the strength of the electricity a little each day, because it also took longer each day for him to calm down enough for Karpov to start reading the words aloud.
These words were supposed to put him in a state of complete obedience and for that he had to be able to hear them. But as loud as he was shouting, that was impossible at the moment.
"You're going to destroy his central nervous system," I said at some point, "and the burns are getting worse".
Zola waved it off and instead fixated on the spectacle before us, "The serum will take care of all that".
He must have been pretty confident in his research. I knew that James had not received the same serum as Steve but a new type of serum developed by Zola. But how he had gotten a comparable formula, he would not tell me. As if on cue, the desperate cries died down and Karpov began the list.
It was terrible, even the words alone seemed to cause pain in him. They also used them again and again during his fights. Like a dog trained to certain commands. Even the desired response he was supposed to give if he succeeded was beaten into him.
Again he braced himself against the chair with all the strength he had. But the electricity in his body paralyzed him enough to fight back.
Finally Karpov finished and the device came off James' face.
"Soldat?".
"Ya gotov otvechet." [Ready to comply]