A/N: NOT TODAY, WRITER'S BLOCK. NOT TODAY.
"Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them."
~Alice Sebold
Two sets of white gloves deftly pried the headphones from her ears and slid the silk blindfold off her eyes. The owners of the gloves glided like hushed phantoms from the room, shutting the creaking steel door behind them and leaving her alone in the shadowy chamber.
With the restrictive measures removed, her senses sharpened, detecting a cool atmosphere, the faint scent of wet mildew, and the hollow drip of water on concrete.
"You're a weird girl, you know that?" an abrupt voice shattered the eerie quiescence.
She jumped. Her eyes scoured the room, searching for the source of the sound. A solitary light bulb, hanging from the cinderblock ceiling, acted as the origin of the room's dingy, brown-tinged light. Beneath it, two metal folding chairs, their gray paint chipped and rusting, sat facing each other in a small, illuminated circle.
Evidently, the arrangement suggested, someone wanted to talk to her.
A scant amount of light seeped feebly into the room from beneath the door. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she took a skeptical step forward, immersing herself in the darkness. She remained mute as her footfalls echoed off the walls, waiting for the speaker to continue. Another set of footsteps joined her as she moved.
"The first—and only—man in history to boast of a flawless mission record over the course of fifty years," the voice stated. "Peak human level agility, dexterity, and endurance. Inimitable strategic and combat intelligence. Unparalleled espionage, stealth, and concealment capability."
The voice grew louder as she approached the circle. She came to a stop at the shadow's edge, remaining shrouded by the gloom. Opposite her, the darkness shifted where the speaker stood, and he mirrored her actions as she prowled around the edge of the lit space.
"Able to throw a knife several meters with such accuracy as to pierce the target's heart through military-issue armor, and strong enough to throw structures weighing between eight and twenty metric tons without batting an eye."
They halted, facing each other from the shadows.
"In short, quite possibly the most perfectly engineered, unequivocally lethal assassin that the earth has ever produced—and you looked at him and said, 'Ah, yes. This one. I want this one to be my friend.'"
Her eyes, now somewhat accustomed to the dim room, could distinguish the slight shaking of shoulders as the man chuckled to himself in a throaty rumble.
"I like you," he concluded.
She stayed quiet, thrown off balance by the intimate nature of his words. To have such knowledge about the Soldier, about her—to be able to speak in such a casual, familiar way—he had to have been studying them and assessing them for a long time.
Two boots stepped into the light, one after another.
Her eyes traveled up the length of his body—he wore almost the same costume as the mass of enemies that had attacked Stark Tower, but his skull mask was a glinting, polished silver, and the hood resting on the crown of his head was of the same alabaster shade as his boots. He was tall—maybe even taller than Steve—and he exuded an aura of confident, controlled power as he grabbed a chair, spun it toward him, and sat, leaning his muscled forearms on the back of it.
"I bet I look pretty familiar."
Her eyes narrowed. It wasn't just the costume that was familiar—his voice was the same as that of the enemy soldier who enticed her to leave Stark Tower in the first place. The subtle variations in his garb, however, suggested that it wasn't the same person.
"Lucky for me," he elaborated, "the ever-reliable Tin Man just happened to have his Romulus device hanging around in the basement."
She jerked at the name of the device—one of the last things Bucky had been able to verbalize as he fought through wave after wave of excruciating seizures to tell her to run.
The man rested his chin on one fist, adding, "That's a cloning machine, by the way. Uses synthetic tissue to make nearly indestructible reproductions of the original life form."
Understanding washed over her, and everything clicked. The enemies hadn't just looked and fought the same. They were the same. They were all him—indestructible, synthetic versions of him—whoever he was. But why? Why had he broken in to the Tower, gotten the machine working, and cloned himself, only to leave when he had the perfect chance to kill the Avengers? Wasn't that what he'd wanted?
After a moment, he huffed.
"Babe, I didn't go to all that trouble just so you could hide in the dark there and listen to me monologue."
Incensed by the hint that she was afraid, she prickled, stepping forward fractiously. Whether or not she was freaked out, she'd rather keel over than let him think he could play cat and mouse with her.
"What do you mean?" she demanded. "Are you saying all of that was to get to me?"
Her voice made the lines around his yellow eyes crinkle in a satisfied grin. She prickled even more.
"Oh yeah," she added, "Also, how the hell do you know my name? Or anything about me, for that matter?"
He considered her for a moment. In answer, he made a grand gesture to the chair across from him, inviting her to sit. She looked between him and the chair, pursed her lips, and sat down stiffly, crossing her arms and her legs.
He drank in the sight of her. She eyed him with a great deal of apprehension, trying to mask fear with contempt.
"Avery," he began, his eyes raptly fixed on her face, "Why do you think those HYDRA agents tried to kidnap you at the museum?"
Her eyebrow twitched at the sudden topic change. She fidgeted in the chair. The memories leading up to the awful day resurfaced in razor sharp detail, but she hesitated before responding.
"An undercover agent saw me interacting with St—Captain America—in a McDonald's several days before," she replied, recalling how the hero had swooped in and saved the day, sending her coworker into raptures in the process. "The agent must have figured that I was a friend of the Captain's, so he thought I would have information on his whereabouts."
The mention of Steve brought on a vague twinge of guilt—not for the first time, she visualized how panicked the Avengers would be when they woke up to find the tower empty and her gone.
"Hm," the masked man said. "Creative, but sadly incorrect."
Cautiously, she asked, "Why, then? What could HYDRA possibly have wanted with me?"
"It wasn't what HYDRA wanted with you, doll. It's what I wanted with you."
She must have looked as startled and unsettled as she felt, because he jumped in again before she could force her vocal cords to work.
"Taskmaster," he introduced himself, reaching out one hand between them to shake. "Though I like to think we're already friends, it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person."
The moment he'd moved, Avery tensed. Nothing seemed to escape his impeccably perceptive gaze.
"Don't worry. I have a habit of not killing people who are useful to me," he assured her, amusement evident in his voice. He held out his hand expectantly.
She bit down on the urge to tell him exactly how much comfort that gave her. Instead, she returned the gesture, his enormous hand swallowing hers in one slow, sturdy shake.
Her eyes flicked to their interlocked hands for the briefest of moments. If living with the Soldier had taught her anything, it was how to gauge just how much power a person carried in their grip.
The man before her was not someone to be taken lightly.
He released her, and they leaned back, observing each other.
"We have a common goal, Avery," he said, "and I think we can help each other."
She took another look at his attire. Frankly, she retorted, "I have a hard time imagining that you and I want the same things."
From beneath the mask, she heard a subdued scoff.
"That's where you're wrong," he corrected. "Because, you see, I find myself—rather unfortunately—in a state quite similar to your aforementioned assassin friend."
Her rigid posture slackened.
He clarified, "My situation has a different cause, of course, but the outcome is a correspondingly untreatable memory condition."
He took a breath, stood, and began to stroll around the circle at a measured pace. His arms were clasped behind him, and his eyes were trained pensively on the ground.
"When I was three years old," he began, "my parents took me to see a concert pianist at the local theater. Some German guy who was supposed to be the crème of the crop. Bunch of fanfare. He played, people went crazy, and we left. When we got home, my parents put me in the living room for two seconds—you know, to grab something in the other room. When they came back, I was sitting at the piano, playing a perfect rendition of Beethoven's 29th Sonata."
She waited for him to laugh at his bizarre joke, but he remained serious, and it dawned on her that he was telling the truth.
"While many of your heroic amigos received their gifts through accidents, experimentation, or the like, I was born with mine. The doctors called them 'photographic reflexes'—the ability to observe another person's physical movements and duplicate them without any practice, no matter how complex. A few games on TV, and bam, I was the star athlete of every sport team in high school. Football, soccer, baseball, you name it. I was getting scholarship offers made by every college from here to Alaska."
He inclined his head toward her. "Because you're smart, I'd venture a guess that you picked up on how easy it was for my clones to anticipate the Avengers' fight moves."
Her eyes were already wide with recognition.
"That's…incredible," she murmured. Realizing she had spoken out loud, she quickly pressed her lips together.
He nodded in acknowledgement. "Rare, too. So rare, people are willing to pay through the nose for a skillset like mine." Shrugging, he said, "It didn't take long for me to figure out that mercenary work is much more lucrative than anything else I can do with my abilities."
Her eyes hardened. There was the connection with HYDRA.
Taskmaster's absent-minded wanderings brought him around behind her chair.
"All that ability, however, comes with a caveat—one that seems to be getting worse as I get older. Thousands of martial arts techniques and fighting styles, not to mention the mannerisms and preferences of all my past opponents, is a lot of data." He came back around in front of her, and knocked a fist against the side of his head. "Too much, in fact, for one brain to retain. Things that aren't about combat, about survival…I forget them. Places, people…without prompting, I can't remember what I did last week. Come Monday, I probably won't remember this conversation."
The man was making a concerted effort to sound light-hearted, but Avery was positive that she recognized a note of unease in his voice. Distractedly, he clasped one wrist with the opposite hand.
"I've poured vast sums of money into resolving this issue of mine, and the best my people have been able to come up with is a temporary serum that preserves memory elasticity for one week at a time. The serum's all fine and good as a preventative measure—until you miss a dosage. If you forget to take it, or you don't have access to it for any reason, cognitive ability relapses by 64%."
Through her nose, Avery drew in a shallow breath, fully grasping the implications of such a drastic regression.
He lifted a foot and set it on his chair, resting an elbow against his knee. "So, naturally, when HYDRA—one of the most technologically advanced organizations in the world, whether you like them or not—hired me to exterminate the Avengers, I did a little unsolicited research through their databases for a more long-lasting cure."
Her attention sharpened. She leaned forward slightly in her chair. "And what did you find?"
"As it so happens, one of their scientists created a device a while back that would be ideally suited for coping with my condition."
He reached inside his cloak, pulled out a file folder, and chucked it. It slid across the floor, bumping into her feet.
She reached for it.
"An external memory hard drive," he explained as she opened the folder to reveal several pages of complicated technological diagrams. "Connected to the brain's limbic system through intraoperative surgery."
The diagrams showed a device that resembled a Bluetooth, fastened vertically to the skull, just behind the ear.
"The software is so advanced, it's able to perform 33 quadrillion floating-point calculations per second. Basically, it mimics organic cognitive function. When properly integrated into the system of the biological host, it can translate sensory information into code in real time, store that code in a vast electronic library, and aid in instantaneous and perfect retrieval. All of this, without exacerbating preexisting psychical strain."
She flipped rapidly through the sheets. After a pause, her eyes snapped back to his.
This was it. This was the key to healing the Soldier.
He recognized the voracity in her face.
"No more missed anniversaries," he quipped pointedly. "Rumor has it that there are a considerable number of these devices locked up on one of HYDRA's bases. Regrettably," he said through a sigh, "The file merely cited the location as 'Gamma Grid Six.' While I'm pretty sure that's not the frat house where HYDRA agents cut loose on the weekends, I have no other indication of where it might be."
She was starting to understand where this was heading. He straightened, placing his foot back on the ground and fixing her with a penetrating stare.
"A former HYDRA operative, however, would not only know the location of Gamma Grid Six, but would also have a pretty good idea of how to infiltrate it."
She held his gaze. "So the minute you heard the Winter Soldier had gone rogue, you started watching him."
His eyes wrinkled again, like he was pleased. "For a while there, I had no idea how to get him to cooperate. After all, he wouldn't exactly jump at the chance to work with someone so close to HYDRA. But it wasn't long before none other than the perfect candidate to pass along the message traipsed into his life—arguably, the only one he trusts, the only one brave enough to get close to him, and one of the only people willing to do anything to heal him."
"Me," Avery said.
"You," Taskmaster said.
She struggled with this new information, trying to fit all the puzzle pieces together.
A blaze of fury suddenly brightened her eyes.
"When your kidnapping attempt at the museum failed, you just took him instead," she accused, hearing echoes of voices yelling, It's the asset! Open fire! "And you had HYDRA wipe him again to make his condition worse—so we'd have no other choice but to help you find the cure."
He shifted, leaning against his chair. "Well, doll, I do have to keep up the pretense that I'm trying to destroy the Avengers. Otherwise, I lose my connections to HYDRA's databases. Barnes had to be thoroughly incapacitated for me to plant the security scrambler on him and infiltrate Stark Tower. To HYDRA, it just looks like my plan to kill the Avengers was thwarted by Thor. But you and I know that the real goal of the infiltration—the one that distracted the Avengers and got you here—was successful."
She tasted bile. "You didn't have to do that. You could have just tried convincing the Soldier to help you when you had him detained."
He held out his hands helplessly. "It would have looked suspicious if I was caught talking to him. And, alright, fine, I did realize he would be more inclined to help if his situation was just a tad more desperate."
Her nails scratched the metal of the chair seat. "You're a sick bastard."
He laughed—a raucous, delighted guffaw.
"A sick bastard? No," he said, pulling a vial of pale pink liquid from his breast pocket. "A manipulative bastard with the temporary cure for your friend? Yes."
She scowled at him, resisting the urge to punch him in his stupid mask. He was right. He had been manipulating events behind the scenes this whole time. From sending the undercover agents to tail her, to the massacre at the Smithsonian, to the siege on Stark Tower—everything had been carefully calculated to move him closer to her, while maintaining the guise of doing HYDRA's bidding. She suspected that he had even allowed Tony to hack into HYDRA's system during their rescue mission; if the Avengers' head mechanic was emotionally distraught about his parents, he would've been less likely to notice something wrong with his security system.
And now, if she ever wanted to get her hand on the external memory drive, she had no choice but to cooperate with him.
She jerked her chin toward the extended vial.
"So, what—you give me the serum to keep him functioning, but only enough to last until he can find the device and bring it back to you?"
He wiggled it between his thumb and index finger. "You got it. Two weeks' dosage, right here."
She grimaced and stood, going to meet him. He plopped the vial in her outstretched hand. The moment her fingers closed around it, he latched onto her wrist, his yellow eyes burning into hers. Instinctively, she jerked back, but he held her still.
"One more thing," he said. "The Avengers can't know. If they caught wind of the drive's existence and tried to help recover it, my dear employers would realize I wasn't doing my job. That wouldn't end well for me, so I'd make sure it wouldn't end well for anyone. Capiche?"
Her heart was in her mouth, but somehow, she found the strength to glare daggers back at him. "Capiche."
As if on cue, the doors opened, and the two clone escorts from before stepped synchronously into the room. She slid the vial into her pocket.
"I'm counting on you," Taskmaster said. She fixed him with one last glower before she turned, making her way toward the clones.
She reached the door, and the two figures took hold of her arms.
"Avery," Taskmaster said, and the clones halted. She turned. "I have one last question before you go." He carelessly brushed some dust off his left glove. Aside, he said, "Being able to learn everything has cursed me with an unhealthy amount of curiosity, I guess."
"What?" she spat impatiently.
His eyes flitted from his glove to her. "Why did you decide to help him?"
She bristled, but took another breath, and regarded him. He asked, so she was going to answer him candidly.
"Because," she said, "as much as you psychopaths have tried to make him evil, and tried to destroy him, and tried to turn him into you—he'd still rather be hurt than hurt someone else. He's still kind. He's still good."
Taskmaster's eyes were unreadable.
Without another word, she turned on her heel and allowed her escorts to lead her from the room.