A/N: This is a hard one. What all that darkness and angst we've been suffering has been leading up to, this is the worst it has and will be so warning for physical and mental violence.

I also ventured away from my usual style and went for a more non-linear storytelling this chapter, so tell me if you hate it. (Actually don't. I don't want to hear it)


HYDRA had created something beautiful in the asset. A man of strength, ruthlessness, unflagging obedience with none of the bull headed, inconvenient, free will most of their other agents were plagued with. The fist of HYDRA, their own personal boogeyman was perhaps the greatest thing they had ever created.

But he was still flawed.

None of the current heads had had any hand shaping him into the weapon he was, most hadn't even existed then. And while Zola was an innovator, nothing short of a genius, that had been seventy odd years ago, they had evolved since then. The asset had suffered through innumerable rounds of upgrades and reconditioning, but the groundwork, the years of conditioning Zola had put into creating him, was not so easily changed and so parts of him remained imperfect.

They wanted a blank slate. An asset as formidable as the soldier but with none of the preexisting conditioning. They'd hoped they'd might find that in their wolfpack, the seven created from Stark's serum, but they were as unstable as they were fearsome and keeping them on ice until they could figure out the right balance was their only course of action. But now they had Potter.

Pierce had been delighted to receive the call. HYDRA heads didn't make it a point to convene outside of their biannual meeting very often, but Pierce would never pass up an opportunity to make his mark on a new asset, and Strucker would never pass up the chance to let him. He wasn't so prideful as to deny that Pierce was the best of them when it came to stripping a man down to a perfect, obedient weapon.

They would clash heads, it was inevitable when putting two men of their status in the same room, but Strucker would endure that and worse to make sure Potter's conditioning was done right.

The man arrived with two others in tow, "associates" he called them, "experts in their fields" (though what those fields were he wasn't entirely sure) and immediately requested to speak with Potter. They'd reviewed the footage sent over, looked over his files, but they couldn't get a good gauge of his character until they spoke to him personally.

He allowed it, of course, and watched as they questioned the boy on tops Strucker himself had already gone over with him once. He was cooperative; he answered every question promptly and (as far as they could tell) truthfully, and insisted that all he wanted was to kill those who had wronged him.

And yet when Pierce and his cohorts stepped out, they didn't look convinced.

"There's more to what he's saying."

Strucker smiled, it was funny the man thought they didn't already know that. "Why do you think we called?" he said. "You're here to rid him of that last bit of defiance. Can it be done?"

"Of course." Pierce acted surprised he even had to ask. "He's already done the hardest work for us. He wants to see those who wronged him suffer, those words I believe, and in this desire of his he's given us a common cause, a common enemy. We can build the rest around that."

"He has a stubborn will, that boy," one of two of Pierce's companions said, a woman with perhaps the sharpest cheekbones and palest eyes Strucker had ever seen. "But he's not our most challenging. Not nearly."

"You've had experience in this sort of work?" There was a bit of a bite to his tone, but Strucker didn't no this woman, didn't trust her despite being vouched for by Pierce (that was probably all the more reason why he didn't trust her).

"Extensive experience," Pierce assured. "Dr.'s Iravani," he gestured to the woman with her sharp features and she gave an acknowledging dip of her head, "and Gordon," then to the man at her side who barely cleared Strucker's chin but stood twice as wide, he inclined his own head in a bored, arrogant sort of motion, "have been with me nearly a decade. Thanks to their methods, our soldier remains operational and fully compliant rather than on ice with his counterparts."

"We consider ourselves experts in mindwork," Iravani said with a smile sharper than her cheekbones. "We haven't yet met a man immune to our methods."

Intrigue crept forward to stifle Strucker's irritation. "Explain them. Your methods."

"There is no cookie cutter regiment," Gordon explained in a voice deeper than his stature belied, "For each man different steps need to be taken."

"And for him? For Potter?"

"We begin small," Iravani said, "we begin simple. I said he has a stubborn will, but not an unbreakable one; to break it, break him, requires some patience."


There had always been a carefully kept routine to Harry's days with Strucker; two meals a day, at least one lab visit in between, and lights down at what he guessed was probably around nine. It was rare these constants changed, and when they did, it was never for anything good.

When a man in a nicely pressed suit, perfectly parted hair, and a smile like a shark's came to visit him in his cell, Harry knew his routine was about to see the worst kind of interruption.

The man looked at Harry like he was a fascinating puzzle or a meal or both and Harry hated him on sight. But the two that accompanied him, a man who looked like Fudge but carried himself like a Malfoy, and a woman with eyes as dead as an inferius', they scared him. Because while the man in his shiny shoes spoke to him, questioned him on matters that were none of his concern but that Harry answered anyway in his new spirit of "cooperation", they sat and they watched and they barely even breathed. They were planning something, those two, and he knew whatever it was he wouldn't like it, not one bit.

The day after, he wasn't taken to the lab at the usual time and that unnerved him more than he could say. He'd just come back from the dead on their table, and they were just leaving him to his own company? He'd expected tests and trials and interrogations, not quiet.

He spent the day wound tight with anxiety; after the ordeal of being outright murdered and coming back under HYDRA's watch, then undergoing some creepy interview with the man who'd never bothered to introduce himself and his two eerie bookends, he needed something, anything to happen.

So when, only a few hours after his second meal, they chained him up and hauled him from his room, he was almost relieved. Because at least now he knew what was coming.

They didn't go to the lab like he'd half expected, and not down to Sub-2 as his second guess would have been. No, they went up and Harry's gut clenched. The last time he'd been here, so close to the surface was during his horribly fated escape attempt, and now they were taking him willingly? Fresh air and freedom were still a good six levels up but this was the closest he'd ever been brought.

He hadn't know where he was going the last time he'd been on this level, all he remembered was a mad dash through unmarked, doorless halls. But his guards most certainly did. They marched him confidently down the twisting maze until they came to an ominous corridor with just one door at its very end.

They swung open the steel monstrosity and unceremoniously pushed Harry into the room beyond. He managed only one good look around the room, it was barely twice his height and built in a perfect, uninterrupted circle. The single wall and the floor beneath were lined with a thick, padded material, softer than the concrete he was used to but still firm enough not to be considered too comfortable. At the very center of the room was a hole, barely larger than his fist and directly above it, installed in the roof too high for him to even attempt to reach, was a spigot of some kind.

Then the door swung shut and he was left groping in total darkness.

He dropped carefully onto all fours, then back into a precarious sitting position where he forced himself to calm down, to drain the tension from his shoulders and do his best to just breathe.

This was it. This was the start of his promise to Death, he just knew it. There was no reason for interrupting his carefully kept schedule, dragging him from his room with no reason or explanation, and dumping him in this dark, quiet hell. He was about to be broken, stripped down, and torn apart. But it would be worth it, it would be for something because he'd been promised his life back, he'd been promised a life even better and it would be worth it.

I will overcome, he'd told Death, and he would. He would. Because he wanted to be done with all of this, to be done with the pain and the misery and the constant aching fear, but the only way from it, the only way out, was through it.

The resolve didn't stop him from shaking, from gulping down the sour taste of panic. But maybe it helped a little.


They gathered, just the four of them, in small room Pierce had requested be set up just for them. It was only a few doors down from where Potter was being kept and had been set up with audio and visual feed streaming live feed from the dark room. They couldn't see much, even with the night sensors they'd put on the camera but they could hear Potter and his frantic attempts to keep himself calm.

"Isolation has a fascinating effect on the human mind and body," Iravani said, eyes fixed on the shadowy image of Potter sitting with his back against the curved wall. "In small doses, like almost anything else, it's beneficial. But too much of anything and the toll it takes both physically and mentally can be profound. The isolated will find themselves dealing with a weakened immune system, rising blood pressure, degradation of verbal and mental skills, hallucinations."

Though he would never admit it, Strucker hung raptly from every word of Iravani's confident explanation. Her controlled tenor allowed for nothing less.

"The added element of interminable darkness will disrupt his circadian rhythm, impair his ability to discern time and only destabilize him further."

"It's taken some only a few hours to begin showing increased paranoia, anxiety, and auditory and visual hallucinations," Pierce said, his experience on matters such as this showed itself through the easy confidence of his tone.

"And we'll be keeping him in for longer, I presume?" Strucker asked.

Iravani and Gordon shared a quick look. "Significantly longer."

"Thirty hours is the standard breaking point. We'll be keeping him in there for thirty days."


It took less than half an hour before Harry was completely disoriented. The room had been built in a circle on purpose, to mess with him, because no matter how far and how long he walked he could never find where he'd begun and where he ended. And it didn't help that the inside of the door was padded with the same material as the floor and walls, and it had been done so well he couldn't even find the seam where hinge met wall to give him some kind of marker.

In the darkness, he couldn't see anything, not even his own hands held centimeters from his face. It made navigating the room, no matter how small it was, a precarious endeavor. So he stopped moving, found the closest wall he could slump against and posted up there until someone came for him.

No one did.

Hours, days, weeks, he had no way of counting, passed and he saw no one. Food, the same mush he'd always eaten served in a soft-shelled canteen, came only when he slept. He tried to stay away awake, to see who controlled his food, to see another human being, but as long as he was conscious they didn't come. They waited until he passed out from hunger or complete exhaustion before stepping in.

Water came from the spout he'd first noticed attached to the roof, and waste went into the hole below. And that was all. No visits from Strucker, no sessions with the lab techs, or meetings with men with mouths like sharks. Just him and the dark and the silence.

He slept and woke and those became his new days. He couldn't see the sunset or the moonrise, couldn't even see the overhead fluorescents dim as they'd had in the cell he was beginning to miss so much. So he counted his sleep cycles; every time he closed his eyes to dark and opened them to the same dark, he counted another day gone.

Three cycles passed before he began to see things. It started with luminescent arcs of light so much like spell fire that did nothing to light his surroundings but still left scorching trails behind his eyelids.

Eleven passed and he swore he could hear the eerie patter of feet skittering in the dark around him.

After twenty one he could feel a heavy, malignant presence hanging over him, watching him, he wasn't alone in the dark anymore.

And on the fifty-sixth someone began to laugh. It wasn't happy, not the mirthful sound of a joke well told, but the mad cackle of cracking sanity. It rose and it swelled and it crescendoed until it was an awful, shredding scream that was all he could hear. It drowned out the sounds of his own ragged breathing and quiet sobs.

"My name is Harry James Potter," he gasped from neglected vocal chords. The wavering quality of his words weren't even audible over the cacophony, but he spoke anyway because he needed something to ground himself, something to focus on outside of the horrible, unceasing noise.

"I was born July 31st, 1990."

Someone was watching him, a face in the shadows visible only when those lights, the lights that burned his eyes, cracked and burst overhead just like Fred and George's Catherine wheels.

"My parents were Lily and James."

He didn't recognize the face. It wasn't one belonging to any of his friends or any of his enemies (although he'd made so many the past few years he couldn't say for sure that was true). But it was there to do him harm, he knew it was.

"They died…protecting me, October 31st, 1991."

The longer he looked, the more faces he saw. The first true thing visible in this horrible, dark hell.

"I lived with Petunia, Vernon, and Dudley Dursley until my eleventh birthday…"

They were silent, none of them were the source of the screaming. The lurked just barely visible in the shadow. Watching. Judging.

"…when Hagrid, my friend Hagrid, found me, told me I was a wizard, and took me away."

He felt close to gouging at his ears. Banging his head against the wall. Anything for even a moment's peace. He hadn't thought he'd miss that awful, deafening silence until he discovered there was something much worse.

All it took was that half second and he'd lost his train of thought, he couldn't even remember what he'd been saying or where he was going with it. So he took a deep, choking breath and he started again, "My name is Harry Potter. I was born July 31st, 1990…"


"Thirty days? It won't be too much?"

"It will be just enough." Gordon said with conviction.

"Thirty days of total isolation and he'll have no will to fight. Not an ounce of defiance left in him," Iravani explained. "All that will be left is need. Need for light, for company, for touch."

"And then what?"

"Then," Pierce stepped in, something anticipatory in his eyes, "we give it to him."


An eternity passed. Infinite sleep cycles. Too many to count, too many to track. The screaming stopped, eventually, and he was glad for the silence for only a while before the weight of it became so immense he was sure he would sink right through the floor underneath it.

On those days he filled the silence with the sound of his own voice; listing every spell he knew, recounting the passages of Quidditch Throughout the Ages he'd read through enough times to have committed to memory, shouted out every potions ingredient Snape had ever made him memorize. And sometimes he screamed. Sometimes he filled his lungs until they were fit to burst and he screamed and he screamed and he screamed, until he was sure his lips were blue from lack of oxygen.

Sometimes someone shouted back. Someone else here with him, lost in the darkness he couldn't see past. He'd never met them, never even seen them, but he could hear them sometimes, shuffling along, muttering words he couldn't always make out. He'd tried reaching out, speaking to the stranger in the dark, but he never got an answer. He didn't stop trying though, it had been years since he'd seen another person, had someone to talk to, he would never give up on his companion in the dark.

HYDRA didn't like that though, if he talked too long to his companion, they'd punish him. Stretch the hole in the center of the floor until it was so wide he had to stand pressed against the wall tiptoed and straining on the barely half foot of space left around the edge of his room. He didn't know what would happen if he fell in, but the air was bitterly cold inside and at the bottom he could hear a sound like bells but indescribably sinister.

He'd stay balanced there for days, perched desperately on the tips of his toes until his legs ached and shook. They always drew it back in just before he fell over, as if they could sense his limits, were testing them, but one day they might push too far and move too slow and in he'd go.

"Goosegrass, hemlock, bat wing, bezoar."

Maybe one day he'd fall in on purpose. How evil could bells really be?

"Boomslang, eel eye, pond slime, rue."

It would serve them right. He wouldn't die of course, no matter how deep the hole was or what was actually down there. But he was sure it would be quite the job fishing him out, and anything that inconvenienced HYDRA was a win in his books.

"Rose thorn, shrake spine, gillyweed, nettle."

He spent a serious moment considering the idea. Maybe a moment too long because then there was an awful shriek worse than anything his ears had ever been subjected to and then his eyes were burning. He curled in on himself, head tucked between his legs and arms folded over his face to block the white fire. But something wouldn't let him stay tucked protectively for long, he realized with a surge of elated confusion that someone else was in the room with him, several someones

They were pulling him out and into the noise and the light and it hurt but he didn't make them stop because the dark was gone and he could see, he could hear, and he wasn't alone anymore.

They were speaking, an order of some sort, but the sudden shift from total silence to the cacophony of voices, footsteps, harsh breaths and the hundred other ambient sounds around them had him too disoriented to focus. Someone grabbed the back of his shirt and began dragging him Godric knew where. He tried to get his feet under him but they were moving too quick for his atrophied muscles to keep up with and before he could even muster the strength to force himself, they were in another room and he was dumped in a chair too straight backed and unyielding to ever be considered comfortable.

Someone was speaking, near as loud as the screams had been, numbers repeated over and over and over. He tried to make sense of them, focus long enough to understand what was supposed to be going on, but it was as if someone had stuck one of Vernon's drills in his ear and scrambled his brains right up. Nothing was working as it should be, and the disorientation did nothing to help his steadily rising panic.

But then it didn't matter, because then someone was touching him, a hand to his face, running through his hair and he pressed into it eagerly, desperately. Because the touch, the first he'd had since being subjected to that dark hell, was so comforting, more grounding than it had any right to be.

The touch alone brought words to his lips, the first to form since being dragged into this awful, painful light. "What's happening?" his lips quivered around the hoarse plea. "Why am I here?"

Something warm met his cheek, not a touch but an exhale, someone was close enough that their breaths mingled, their cheeks touched, and the voice that spoke into his ear was clear enough to cut through the racket of the room and the fuzz around his own brain.

"You're here to feel again."

The blow came from nowhere; right in the center of his nose where delicate bone protruded. He was choking on blood in an instant, too busy reeling from the shock of the sudden violence to even feel the pain right away.

"You're here for penance."

The voice chanting over the loudspeaker cranked its volume impossibly louder, the numbers chanted a disconcerting but persistent rhythm. And now the men, with their dark clothes and masked faces barely visible through Harry's streaming eyes, were chanting along with it.

"Three thousand six hundred." A fist planted in his gut. "Dead men. Dead women. Dead wizards. Because of you."

Harry gasped uselessly which only had him choking even worse on the blood inflating his lungs.

"Three hundred to hunger. Six hundred to this conflict between our worlds. And the rest, the seventeen hundred others, to the disease you caused."

One of the masked men wielded a baton, thin and wicked fast that struck any and everywhere with strikes that stung like bee stings and left bruises lingering deep beneath his skin.

"Less fell to your dark lord in his first year of terror."

Another controlled the leathers holding him to the chair, pulling them tighter and tighter until his fingers began to go numb.

"Seventeen years spent defying a mad wizard only to become the one to destroy your world."

In the dark he'd craved interaction, human interaction, and contact more than he'd ever wanted anything in his entire existence. And now here it was and he wanted nothing more than the dark he'd been lost in.


Strucker was neither convinced nor impressed. "Senseless violence has never been my preferred method."

Iravani almost looked offended. "Nothing we do is without sense. Every move, ever blow, every drop bled is work towards the result."

"How?"

"We're breaking his will, doing away with that defiant spirit. We've seen and practiced more than our share of methods, but one has proved to be most effective. This one."

Gordon nodded, as always perfectly in tune with the woman at his side. "He fears the dark and the solitude, he dreads the light and the company, he'll never find rest and that wears on the mind."


They carried on for hours, by the end of it he was one quivering mass of contusions.

He'd checked out sometime after the third hour. Even with all the horrors he'd endured in the war, constant pain edging on torture, hadn't been something he'd experienced at length. So after a while he just shut down and drifted off somewhere a lot less unpleasant.

He came back to himself only when his chair was tipped backward and his entire world upended. The men laughed as he stared immobile up at the ceiling while his blood seeped into the concrete.

Somewhere near his head there was the familiar sound of heeled shoes pacing the floor, he had just a moment to think painfully of Peggy, before the perfectly arched shoes came to a stop just to his left and he was looking up and up and up into the face of the woman with the dead eyes.

She didn't say anything so neither did he, and they remained there for a long moment eyes locked and neither willing to back down. He could barely see from one swollen eye or through the blood trickling into the other, but he blinked through the fogginess brought on by too many blows to the head and held that stare.

She looked away first, to the masked man who'd led the beating and she said. "Take him back to the dark."


"It won't be easy or quick. This isn't something to be done in a handful of weeks, we've seen the kind of man he is and he won't break easy. But we have nothing but time"

"Through the numbers, the mantra, we remind him of every mistake he's made, every life he's cost and the destruction he's caused, all because he chose wrong. And while we do we assault him with the pain and the fear until he associates free will and thinking on his own with the violence he's been subjected to. We can strip away his defiance, but only he can willingly hand over his free will."


It wasn't silent in the dark room anymore. The voice with the numbers spoke to him the moment the door locked shut, and Harry knew it was real, knew it wasn't in his head like the screaming and the faces and the stranger in the dark had always been. They were doing this to torture him, to never let him forget all the things he'd done wrong.

Three thousand six hundred.

The wizarding world was small, maybe a few hundred thousand across the world and he'd caused the death of nearly three percent of them. Sure, statistically that didn't seem like too much, but for someone who wanted to have caused the death of no percent of them, it was staggering.

Three hundred to hunger.

How horrible did they, actual magic users, have to be living to die of hunger? Off the top of his head he could come up with at least a dozen ways to conjure, summon, or transfigure his way into getting some kind of meal. What state did they and their world have to be in for his people to literally starve to death?

Six hundred to the conflict.

When he'd left there had been rumblings among the muggle world regarding their existence. But they were past that now, if there was enough conflict for near a thousand of them to have been killed in the fight they were far past that.

Seventeen hundred to the disease. The disease he had caused.

Ginny had died from the disease. Mrs. Weasley had died. Because of him.

For days he laid right where he was, gasping around the constant throb of his injuries and choking on his own guilt. He laid there until the door opened and he was dragged back out into the light. And it started all over again.


"So, yes, there will be violence, there will be torture, it's gruesome and perhaps a little distasteful, but it is never without sense. Our results have more than proven that."

Gordon grinned, so proud, so pleased with himself. "We haven't yet found a man we couldn't break."

But Strucker's doubts were only fueled. "He'll be of no use to me then. I want a soldier not a broken boy."

Iravani laughed in a way that was not at all kind. "And you will. The breaking is very much a part of the plan. It's just like that one saying, surely you've heard of it? About the omelette and the eggs?"


Days didn't exist anymore. He lived and breathed and existed off the cycle of the room and the chair. The chair was constant pain, grinding on bones long since bruised and broken, but it was the daysweeksmonths in the room that he dreaded the most. In the chair he knew what to expect, could prepare himself for the pain he knew was coming, but the room was erratic in the nightmares and oddities and outright horrors it threw at him.

A part of Harry knew it wasn't real, it was the darkness and solitude messing with his mind and what it perceived. But the rest of him couldn't care less. It felt real, and in the end, honestly that was all that mattered.


"And after the breaking comes the real work. The hard work."

"To break his bones and crush his spirit takes no work at all, your men seem to find fun in it even. But then he needs to be healed, reshaped, rebuilt in just the right way. And that requires delicacy."

"Kindness." Iravani elaborated. "From you. We'll do our worst, leave him at his lowest, no end, no respite in sight, and just when he's at the cusp of being pushed beyond what we can fix, you're there. With a cool drink, a soft touch, the first he's felt in months."


There wasn't always pain, in the room with the light and the chair. Not the traditional sort at least. There was variety, to keep him from getting too comfortable, too used to the routine of the torture. Sometime there was a rope around his neck and body pulling counter against it. Sometimes there was a cloth over his face and a bucket of water. Other times there was a precise cut along his ribs, his calves, his palms and salt rubbed cruelly into the open wound.

But the worst was then they just left him, tied to the chair and alone.

At first it had been relief, any break from the pain was, but then his eyes flickered shut for just a second and there was a sound like a foghorn and a jolt of electricity along the bottoms of his feet jerking him back to painful awareness.

And that's how it went for seven days, any sign of him drifting from consciousness or trying to sneak in some kind of rest and there was the noise and the electricity until the creatures he knew existed only in his head, created from the dark of his cell crept into the overlit room, until voices without bodies whispered horrible, sinister things to him, until he'd rather the pain, the torture, over this long sleepless, existence.

He'd never begged before, not when they ran open flames across his palms, held his head under water until his lungs held more water than air, or even threatened to take a few fingers. But a week without sleep and he was begging the open air, the closed door, the black camera with its blinking red light to please just let him sleep.

And when he was ignored, as he knew he would be, he figured the pain couldn't be any worse than this so he shut his eyes, willed sleep to come and when the electricity tore through the soles of his feet he shut them tighter. They would either stop to avoid killing him or keep going until the pain knocked him out, so either way he won.

"That'll be enough of that."

The electricity cut off and he spluttered around a mouthful of blood, he'd bitten his tongue sometime in the indeterminable time of electrocution, and the entire world was tilted on a fuzzy axis. He blinked heavy, tried to force the room to stop spinning, a herculean feat that took so long he almost forgot the voice who'd ordered the electricity to stop in the first place. But then Strucker stepped the rest of the way into the room, just a few feet from where he sat, and stopped to observe.

Harry couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a reflection of himself, sometime long before HYDRA he was sure, however long ago that was, but he knew he had to look an awful mess. He felt about as solid as a ghost, and the bits of him not caked in blood was about as a pale, he was shivering as if coming down from a bad high and the bruises and lacerations on every available surface of his body probably weren't doing him any favors.

"Please." It hurt to speak after all the screaming he'd done, but this was the longest he'd gone in anyone's presence without there being some kind of pain, he needed to speak to someone who might listen, even if this was the man who'd put him here in the first place. "Baron Strucker, please, let me sleep. I-I'll go back to the room, to the dark for however long you want me to and they can rip out my toenails and cut me some more right after, but pleasepleaseplease just let me sleep."

"You've blood on your chin."

He had blood everywhere, why the bit on his chin- spilled over from his split lip and bitten tongue- was of any interest he couldn't even try to guess. Hadn't the man heard him?

"Strucker-"

"Quiet now, we'll be all right."

The cloth they'd used to cover his face while they waterboarded him was still in a damp heap in the corner. Strucker collected it, folded it into a neat little triangle, and swiped it across his chin. It came away bright red.

He looked at the stained cloth, then up at the strange man cleaning him in a way that was almost gentle, and he burst into tears.

"Please, please, please, please, please. Take all the magic you want, make as many mages you can count. Just stop hurting me. Stop hitting me. And let me sleep. I'm begging. I'll do anything. I swear it, I swear." He shouldn't cry, it hurt his broken ribs and aching lungs, but more than that, it gave them power. Because before this, he hadn't cried, hadn't begged once, sure he'd screamed, he'd passed out, and thrown up, but he'd endured the torture while spitting every ounce of his hatred at his tormentors.

Crying, begging, made him look weak, made him look broken.

But maybe he was.


"Then we'll return him to his regularly scheduled torture, break him a little more, push him a little further, and then you come back, with more kindness, more comfort, and more sweet words to whisper in his ears.

"You'll be a source of comfort, the only light in a very dark existence, and when you begin reiterating what's been said all this time…"


"The Hallows were united because of you.

"The wizarding world is falling because of you.

"So many have lost their lives because of you."


"…he'll listen."


"I only wanted to save them."

There were two chairs in the dark room, a basin of cloudy red water, and there was no pain.

Strucker sat in one seat, pristine shirt sleeves rolled up to avoid a mess, while he mopped the mess of crusted blood, caked in dirt, and dried up tears from his face. His other hand held a thermos, filled with cool water and topped off with a straw that he periodically held up to Harry's lips to drink from.

"From Voldemort. The Hallows. I only wanted to save them."

Strucker hummed a quiet noise while he dabbed at a wound just behind his ear that stunk of infection. "But you did, didn't you?"

"From one. Not the other, they wouldn't let me. Instead they brought me here."

"Because you need guidance."

He didn't know what that meant, so he sat silent and waited for Strucker to elaborate. He did.

"You're a boy, one with only the best of intentions, but still just a boy. You did your very best saving your world from the dark lord, and you did succeed, but you brought the Hallows together when you did and you brought an even worse terror with them. And now they're dying."

"But I only wanted to save them."

He had to understand that, it was important Strucker understood. He didn't know why, but it was.

"I know. And I want to save them too, and so do the people I work with. We all want the same thing."

His head felt weighted when he shook it. "No. You want to hurt. You did hurt. Me. Why?"

"Penance. So many people are dead because of what you did. The pain is your penance."

"I'm not a bad person. I'm a good man."

Someone had told him that once. Someone a lifetime ago, in a time when he was maybe a little lonely, but rarely in pain and surrounded always by people he hadn't even realized he'd grown to love until it was too late.

"A good man, who's caused terrible pain."


"You'll tell him that he himself is not bad, only the things he believes in and it will be a relief, because all he needs do is shed those beliefs and he can become someone good.

"Now the power is in his hands, only he can cast aside his wrongness, accept the truth we speak, the good we want to see done in this world, and the moment he does the pain ends."


He smeared a thick healing paste over the cut behind his ear, pressed a plaster to it and moved on to the next. All the while speaking in that quiet, steady tone. "But you're learning. Because you're smart and good. You can change."

He wanted to. Harry wanted that. "How?"

"By trusting me."


"It won't last. He'll recover his mind, heal from the pain and he'll go back to distrusting me as he's done from the start."

Pierce shook his head, infuriatingly confident. "His body will heal. But his mind, we'll leave that right where it is. He's just broken enough to be malleable, the right combination of words and he'll believe in anything."

"How is that done? Keeping him just broken enough?"

"You'll continue working with him for a while longer, build the relationship, that misguided trust in you. Meanwhile double his daily dosage of benzodiazepines, add half a milligram of scopolamine, and consider the addition of an opioid of some form."

"Fentanyl is always a winner," Gordon pitched in helpfully.

"What purpose does the opioid serve?"

"Something highly addictive to add just another crutch in which to make him dependent on you."

"We'll carry on for another few months, to make sure it really sticks, and then we put him in the chair."

The protests were immediate, he was willing to trust the mad scientists this far, but he'd seen the effects of the chair firsthand, putting the boy through it would result only in all of the time they'd put into him going to waste.

"No one but your soldier is built to survive the chair."

Before he'd perfected the curriculum for his more recalcitrant mages he'd tried the chair and been left with vegetables and corpses.

"You have too heavy a hand for such delicate work," Iravani said, seeing straight to the root of his doubts. "But we've spent decades perfecting this method."

"A few sessions of controlled voltage, spaced out over the course of a few weeks, and he'll survive with the functions we want intact. We're not looking to create the clean slate the asset was, your boy will retain his own mind and that bit of humanity we could never regain from the asset, but he will be wholly and unshakably loyal to you.

"The chair will muddle up his short term memories, events of the past year or two at most; he'll remember the pain the dark the terror but he won't remember who subjected it to him. He'll remember your kindness, your guidance, his adoration for you and all you stand for, but not that it was you who ordered his remaking."


Strucker said to trust him and he wanted to, he really did.

The baron was the only kindness he knew, he was gentle with him, cleaned his wounds, and when he was with him there was no pain. But he hadn't forgotten who the man was, what he stood for, what he did and was doing. He was HYDRA and HYDRA was a bad mix of Grindelwald's terrifying military cunning and Voldemort's remorseless culling of those considered lesser. They were the absolute worst of the two dark lords with motives that weren't near as clear.

Even if they hadn't been holding him hostage, torturing him for the past however long and experimenting and stealing from even longer before that, he'd seen the atrocities they took part in during his time with Steve, all in the name of the betterment of human kind. The greater good. And the last time he'd trusted a man who lived by such a creed he'd ended up uniting the artifacts that put him on the road to this miserable existence.

He'd trusted Dumbledore wholly, took on the man's ideals as his own and held him up as the symbol of what was good and just and right, and because of it thousands were dead. Maybe not directly by his hand, but undeniably because of him. Being asked to do so again, to trust a man whose words were so pretty and persuasive but who's actions were more horrible than even those of the dark lord who resembled more monster than human by the end, was terrifying.

But there was a difference in the two. Dumbledore had been a good man, he'd truly wanted the best for all, but he lied and he omitted and he manipulated.

There were no pretenses with Strucker; he and his organization had ordered the deaths of thousands and they didn't once try to deny it. They fought alongside men on the wrong side of the greatest wars in their history and they gave no excuse. They hurt him; beat him, cut him, drove him insane with the dark and the voices, and they looked him in the eye every time they did. And it was because they had no shame, no doubts. They were committing the worst kinds of crimes but it was for the betterment of all, what they were working towards was good and right, and they wouldn't hide.

And it appealed to Harry, that open honesty, he'd been dealing in half truths and deceptions his whole life, knowing the exact sort he was working with made it easier to swallow the bitter truth of their disgusting actions and see to the root of their intentions.

He wasn't a hero. A mother's sacrifice, a decade of misadventures, and a duel thrown by a wand's shaky loyalty didn't make him worthy of such a title. But he wanted to do right, to fix the awful things he'd unintentionally done to his world, and Strucker wanted the same and more.

"Trust me," Strucker had said.

And he wasn't sure he should but he still just might.

And then he was taken to the chair, where freezing lighting tore through his brain and what was and wasn't became a muddy, tangled mess he couldn't even start to unwind, and suddenly he couldn't remember the meager arguments he'd been clinging to to begin with. He couldn't remember anything but the paternal way Strucker held him as he shook through the agonizing aftershocks and how he whispered to him that soon he would be better, soon he would be whole.

And he trusted him.


"He'll sit in the chair only three times. A week between each and once he's sat his third session, no more pain, no more darkness or isolation, he'll be moved to somewhere warm, cozy with soft sheets and three square meals and you'll let him heal."

"And then it's done?"

Iravani gave a little dip of her head. "The hard part is done, then comes the fun."

"The fun?"

"You'll introduce your beautiful, loyal weapon to your army and you'll bring us another step closer to seeing HYDRA's work finally done."


Potter was the focus, the shiny new toy Strucker and all his cohorts were so excited to play with, but the other projects didn't fall to the wayside, his six weren't forgotten. They were doing this all- shaping Potter into the perfect soldier- for them after all.

So while Strucker worked with the secretary and his two mad scientists, the training of the six fell to List. When Potter was through cooking they needed to be ready. And they were.

Nine months of working at their individual strengths, their cohesivity as a team, and further entrenching them in their loyalty to HYDRA and they were a terrifying, efficient unit.

Three forty-eight, the first mage born of Potter's magic, had stepped up as de facto leader despite their attempts at keeping them all as equals. List had tried to quash that in its early days, but Strucker had encouraged him to let it be; three forty-eight was powerful, driven, and entirely devoted to their cause, he would make an excellent placeholder. He wouldn't give up his spot as number one so easy when the time came, but they expected it, they wanted a fight.

Potter's first test as a reformed man was to be introduced to the mages he would lead. The team's reactions to his introduction to their tightly formed dynamic, and his response to what was sure to be open hostility and defiance would be the first of many trials to prove once and for all how firmly the months and months of condition would stick. And if anything went wrong, if the conditioning hadn't quite taken yet, the mages were the best chance of subduing him.

They were put through their normal schedule for the first part of their day, and after second meal they were directed to the space they held joint training and made to wait until Strucker's arrival.

He came with Potter in tow; he'd been given weeks to heal and fatten up just a bit, but he still looked like a bare wisp of the man he once was and nothing at all like the confident, intimidating figures of the mages. Convincing any of them that this ghost like boy with his haunted green eyes and slight figure was to be the one to command them would be a challenge, and Strucker was so looking forward to seeing it.

"Mages," he stopped just inside the door and Potter came to rest a half step behind him, hidden but not hiding in his shadow, "you're attention please."

The response was immediate, all six fell into a perfect line before him, arms crossed neatly at their backs and feet planted at shoulder width in perfect parade rest. He smiled, pleased.

"I haven't been witness to your training in several months now, but I've heard only the highest praise. I'm proud of your progress and your dedication to this cause."

None of them so much as twitched, but the air around them all became distinctly pleased.

"In the time you've been making such fine progress I've been working on something, someone, as a gift for you." Strucker reached back, he placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and gently propelled him forward. "You are all familiar with Mr. Potter, both the cause behind the loss of your magic and the source of your new power. He donated his magic to make you what you are, six powerful individuals devoted to righting the hierarchy, and now he's donated his life and his body to our cause as well. We've spent these last months helping him understand what he always knew to be right and now he is ready to join you, to lead you."

There was still work to be done in teaching them to hold their stoicism, but the mages reactions were still much less extreme than he'd been expecting. Jaws dropped, their eyes lit with confusion and fury, but none of them spoke out against him.

He smiled again, approving this time, then he took a step back so he now stood closer to the door and Potter at the front. "Take time, get to know each other, acclimate yourselves to the new hierarchy. I'll be back."

Then he left small, fragile Potter in the room with the hulking mages who were quickly shaking off their disbelief and descending into something much more aggressive. And as he walked up the flight of steps to the small viewing room above, he slipped a remote from his pocket, pressed a button at its center, and for the first time in over a year, released the entirety of the boy's magic.


The eyes of the room's occupants bored into him like sharply headed drill bits, but Harry gave them absolutely zero of his attention. He moved across the room, away from the line they were still arranged in and wandered along until he found the mats no doubt used for sparring and settled with crossed legs onto the nearest one. Standing for too long still wore at his slowly rebuilding stamina, and they'd walked a long way here from his rooms a level up. Only once he was comfortable and his fluttering pulse had settled did he finally turn his attention on the six his magic had created.

None on them looked alike, they'd been plucked from across the world is what he was told. They were mostly taller than him, much more solid, though that came as no surprise, and older, with the youngest looking being the last female in the line. He'd guess mid-twenties, still several years older than him.

"What are your names?" His voice had healed from all the screaming he'd been doing, but it was soft on instinct, harmless if it could be made into a sound.

They stirred, shared uncertain, disgruntled glances with one another, before settling their attention on the first in their line. He was a handsome man, well built and oozing confidence, and when Harry looked at him he saw a hound of shadow and a woman with her flesh rotting from the bone. But then he shook his head and the images left. Strucker had said the hallucinations would subside with time and the best way to deal with them was to ignore them entirely.

"Why?"

That was a curious question. He squinted his eyes at the man and plucked at the bandage that wrapped around his wrist and up the length of his arm, covering his more stubborn to heal wounds. He must be the one who'd taken over the role of leader in his absence, Strucker had warned him of the possibility before they'd even entered the room, and told him in no uncertain terms that defiance of any kind among his troops was to be nipped in the bud immediately.

"I can't always give you orders as a group, can I? So I'll need your names when it comes to addressing you individually, or we can use your subject number. Whichever, it doesn't matter to me."

"Or an alternate solution;" the man countered, "you won't be getting any of our names, because you won't be giving any of us orders."

Harry quirked an amused little smile. "That's not a solution. And not an option. Unless you intend to defy the baron's orders." And he wouldn't like that at all.

"We're loyal to the cause and to Strucker. But to earn our trust as a leader you'll need to prove you won't be a liability on the field," the man's eyes flicked over is unassuming form, mocking. "You'll fight me to earn our trust. I don't think anyone's survived me yet, but the baron must see something useful in you."

"No." Harry reached into the pocket of thin cotton pants and from it drew a wand. It wasn't his, the smoothed wood of the handle hadn't been worn by his own hand, but it was compatible enough. "There's no need for any of that. Accio."

The man's feet shrieked across the floor as he tried to brace himself against the pull of the spell, but Harry had thrown enough power behind it that fighting was useless. He stumbled and collapsed under the momentum, and Harry used his half second of disorientation to reach out and grab onto his chin. "We won't fight, Strucker won't be happy if I kill you. But an example needs to be made."

The mage grabbed his wrist, tight enough he was sure there'd be bruises left behind, and from the point of contact there was a surge of power; dark and deadly and very familiar. Harry laughed, ignoring the way his skin should be curdling and decaying under the dark magic.

"That's mine," he said. "That magic came me from me, it'll have no effect. It won't hurt me, it can't." He dropped his hand from the mage's chin to the front of his shirt, bunching the fabric into his curled fist. "The same can't be said for you."

There'd been a man once, with crooked teeth and pale eyes and screams that were loud; Harry had reached into him, drew on something not easily- or ever- seen by the human mind and he'd nearly killed the man for it. Left him in a state that was debatably worse.

The second time he'd tried was better; he'd been in control, knew exactly what he was doing but he was hesitant, afraid. He hadn't wanted to do it, but knew it was necessary.

Now, his third time reaching into a man and touching his soul, he wasn't uncertain, he wasn't afraid, because he understood now that some had to hurt and suffer and die so that they could remake the world for those left. There were things more important than the comfort of one when the lives of millions were hanging in the balance.

And that made it easy, it made all the difference, because all he did was touch the mage, barely brush the exposed skin at his collarbone, and then he was burrowing past cloth and skin, sinew and bone to his soul.

He could have sunk his claws in then, torn the soul to shreds or pulled and pulled and pulled until something snapped, but Strucker had stressed to him the importance of these mage's loyalties and though securing it through fear would be easier, working for their respect would hold tighter. So instead of mutilating the man beyond what could ever be fixed, he let him feel the weight of his magic, let him feel the shadow of the agony he could put him through if he were feeling just a little less benevolent, then he gentled the touch of his invading magic, allowed it to soothe instead of hurt.

"Strucker chose me to lead you for a reason."

The mage's entire body was locked tighter than his own had been after dying and settling into rigor, but he shook like a flutterby bush. He wasn't aiming to harm, but the feel of a foreign magic pressing into his soul must have been overwhelming no matter how gentle Harry was trying to be.

"It wasn't to be ironic. Or to test you."

None of the others moved to their leader's defense; they were all of the same kind, born from his magic, they could feel it at work in the air and had no interest getting closer.

"It's because I'm the best parts of what you were before and what you are now. I'm a wizard, with full control of all of my magic. And I'm something else, the something that made you."

He was crying, the mage, fat tears that he didn't even seem aware he was producing. Harry loosened his hold just a little, Strucker wouldn't be pleased if he broke the man.

"It was good of you to take up my place while I was learning. You kept the others in line and in order and it is appreciated, but I'm here now and if we're to fulfill our noble goal you will have to trust me."

Harry finally drew back, released his hold on his soul and watched as he slumped forward, nearly prostate before where Harry still sat, cross legged and entirely too calm.

"So will you?"

He mumbled something, unintelligible around the heaving breaths he was gulping in.

Harry leaned forward until his chest was pressing into his knees and he was nearly nose to nose with the mage. "Will you?" he repeated, voice unflinching and just daring him to say no.

"Yes."

"Good." He ran a soothing hand through the man's sweaty blond hair. "Good. Now, we can start again. Your names. Please."


Tao Fen was from China. Angel Escribano from Mexico. Eva Cadigan had lived just a town over from where the dragon had struck in Wales. Iola Braun had graduated Hogwarts six years before Harry. And Mihaela Petkova would have gone to Durmstrang if she hadn't been schooled from home. While their fearless, former leader, Walden Murphy, had attended Ilvermorny clear across the world.

The six mages were from all over, most hadn't even walked the same grounds as the others, but they were here now and something scarily like a team. And there was another similarity, Harry had noticed, one that had passed Strucker unnoticed.

There were no purebloods among them. Or even halfbloods with pure ancestry "tainted" by fresh blood like he himself was. The halfbloods among them were from smaller, blended families, while the muggleborns among them were many. It couldn't be a coincidence, he was convinced it wasn't even if he couldn't see the reason behind it yet.

Maybe the disease had struck the ones with the oldest blood, the blood closer tied to the atrocities the wizards were being punished for, harder. Killing them outright while allowing those with fresher blood some chance of survival, even devoid of magic. Or maybe the purebloods were simply too proud to work alongside Strucker, Harry knew how they thought, knew they considered muggles automatically lesser no matter how brilliant they really were. Or maybe the purebloods were just really shit at hiding from the muggles hunting their kind down and had all been offed before Strucker could offer his alliance.

Whichever reason he wasn't sure, but they were his team now, he'd have time to find out.

"You did well." Harry met Strucker in the viewing room above the training floor after becoming properly introduced to his team, and the man was quick to offer a congratulatory hand on his shoulder and a praising word. "I'm proud."

He beamed, inexplicably pleased by his mentor's praise. "They're a good lot. Strong. Loyal."

"You doubted?" Strucker smiled, but there was a challenge behind his words, a test. But one Harry already knew all the answers to.

"I did, once, but not anymore."

"Good boy." The squirming, happy feeling in his gut only amplified when Strucker's hand moved from his shoulder to the nape of his neck and used its hold to bring their foreheads together. Their lips were barely inches apart when the older man whispered, "Hail Hydra."

And Harry held his intense, pale stare and he whispered back. "Hail Hydra."


"You'll be his savior, his mentor, his one guiding light. What you speak will always be truth, your beliefs nothing but just and right, he'll never question you, never doubt you. He'll be everything you asked for and more."

But with their confidence came a warning. "What we'll do is not easily undone, but those with wills like his have proven…unpredictable at time. He is, first and foremost, a weapon, mistreat it, neglect your duties in maintaining it, and he will misfire on you."

"That won't be a problem." Strucker remembered the pure adoration in the eyes of the boy who had hated him with all of his being not even six months ago. He remembered the way he had so easily stepped into his place at the head of the mages and still turned to him for approval immediately after. He remembered the unshakeable surety in his voice when he'd whispered their organization's words and Strucker felt sure.

The boy was his.


When Bucky fell, there were no more thought of after. No dreams of what would come and what they would do after the war. There was no after without him. He fell and so did any hope of building something beyond the war.

No one was surprised when the mission on the Valkyrie ended the way it did. They had seen the resolve in his eyes long before he'd stepped onto the plane, a world without Bucky Barnes was one Steve Rogers had no interest living in. The plane went down and Steve welcomed the dark, craved it even, and so he got it, for seventy years.

But all good things end. The SSR cum SHIELD fished him from what should have been his final resting place, shook him from his sleep, and shoved him into a world he no longer had a place in.

Seventy years in the future. He'd gone down knowing only Bucky was gone and came back up with every single person he'd ever known dead or close to it. He'd missed everything; the end of the war, their victorious homecoming, the reunions with their loved ones, the start of their families, the birth of their children and grand children and great grandchildren, and their peaceful passing onto the next life.

He should be with them. He wanted to be with them. But suicide was a sin and lord knows he'd already done enough to make the man above consider blocking his entrance through the gates, he didn't want to make it worse.

So he did what he did best and fought on. He took the books and the articles and the reels catching him up on history from SHIELD, went religiously to their recommended head doctors, and tried his best to ignore how in this loud and bright and awful future, he felt more alone than the entire seventy years he'd been entombed in the ice.