Steve pounded on the table separating him from his wife and she finally opened her eyes. The worry he caught in her expression vanished as quickly as it appeared and she settled into a vacant, relaxed position.

She'd slept for three days, kept unconscious with a steady IV drip of sedatives and calorie-rich sugar water. Simmons performed every test she could with the resources in their safehouse – actually a police station abandoned and hidden behind new storefronts – and talked on in-depth on her findings, concluding:

"Heavily tortured and malnourished, with evidence of experimentation and recent miscarriages. There is also scarring on her temples and forehead akin to electrical burns but I found no signs of recent trauma to the area."

"Okay," Steve replied after a long moment. "Keep stalling with Fury."

"You're – you aren't an interrogator. SHIELD procedure –"

"I don't give a fuck about procedure."

Simmons had pursed her lips, gave a stiff nod and walked off to notify Fury that, no, Captain Rogers hadn't found the Winter Soldier yet. He was still tracking down leads but it would take a while to locate someone who'd evaded the best intelligence agencies for sixty years.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked.

Jamie breathed slowly, evenly, without a sound. She looked like the opposite of a threat.

Steve couldn't think of her as a threat. Even with that metal arm – probably custom-built, optimized to be as lethal as possible – and the empty face and the way she pretended she hadn't analyzed every speck of the room, he couldn't.

"Do you know why you're here?"

She wasn't cuffed; undoubtedly she could overpower him and leave. If she'd escaped, why hadn't she fought him in the alley? If she was in the middle of a mission, why would she think it okay for someone to drag her in?

"Just tell me why you escaped." How you got out, who had you, who did this to you. Who left so many scars on your skin.

Jamie parted her lips and said, "The breeding took so long, and – it just..."

In his ear, Simmons whispered, "I found no evidence of recent childbirth when I examined her, vaginally or in her x-rays. Only miscarriages, all in the first trimester. Unsurprising considering how malnourished she is."

Steve remembered, just soon enough, not to reply that he and Jamie had buried five babies born too early to live: three before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, another two days before she got the draft letter and one while they were on leave in 1944.

Jamie bowed her head. "I wasn't let out at all. Usually, before storage, there's a mission, but not this time and – I know it was wrong but I had to go outside. I just wanted to see the sun." She caught herself, swallowed and added, "Ready for storage."

"Not before you answer some questions."

She nodded.

"How long was... how long did breeding take?"

Oh, but saying that word made Steve wither inside.

"Four months."

"Walk me through standard procedure."

Jamie rattled off the horrible, clinical steps to her forced reproduction: tied down to the floor or a bed, serum injected into her ovaries and left to stew for two hours before some painful process to induce ovulation. Simmons stuffed knuckles into her mouth before Jamie finished explaining how she'd be raped for five days straight before they did a blood test. Steve stuck to clutching his fingers almost to the breaking point.

She continued at his prompting: wiping procedure, basic mission procedure, experiments –

"You don't work for Pierce."

"No. Pierce's position isn't high enough for me," he replied.

Simmons: "Who's Pierce?"

Pierce could be a number of people.

"Has she sold me?" she asked Steve.

Simmons gasped.

Honestly, he couldn't say he was surprised. Steve had worked with Clint Barton a few times, a man who'd daylighted as a circus performer while breaking kneecaps and necks for the highest bidder on the side. Clint never saw any of the money, though – his handlers were the only ones keeping his brother from dying from the poison they'd injected him with one afternoon. Barney collapsed in the bathroom and the handlers had owned Clint Barton ever since.

Then Barney Barton shot himself in the head, Clint went freelance on the run and SHIELD brought him in on the night the ball dropped and Y2K was averted. As Clint liked to say, what a time to be alive.

"What do you think?"

Jamie's eyes flared, another split-second show of personality that she clamped down on in a matter of seconds. "You work for Malick."

Now there was a name Steve could work with.

"Why do you think that?"

"Only one with more foreign influence than an ambassador is a member of the World Security Council."

Still as sharp as ever, Jamie was.

"How much did you pay?"

Steve leaned forward and countered, "Why do you want to know?"

She winced. Steve forced himself to stay calm, keep his expression clear like he'd learned to do in the days that Congress grilled him over why, exactly, he was swimming against every politician and telling people not to support the invasion of Iraq.

Nothing like being thrown into 21st-century paranoid politics to make Captain America cynical about the world.

"An asset has no wants," Jamie said. The words sounded like rote memorization.

"How much did Pierce pay?"

"Forty-five million US."

He whistled. "That's low."

"The iron curtain fell," she explained. "The KGB liquidated."

"When?"

"Nineteen ninety-two."

"Then that wasn't the only thing that pushed the price down."

Jamie went stiff.

She knew, obviously. Everyone knew the mistake she'd made when she killed the Starks – it was how the Winter Soldier moved from intelligence legend to well-known covert assassin.

"What did you do wrong?"

"I don't know."

"What was it?"

"I don't –!" she said harshly, and checked herself quickly. "I don't know."

"Do you want to know?"

"An asset has no wants."

"Their son was sleeping in the back seat. He fell on the floor when the car crashed. Saw the whole thing. It stayed in the papers for five months."

Whatever light her eyes held died.

Steve walked her through five "sample" missions: examples of her skill sets. She was capable of espionage as well as close- and long-range assassination and the infiltration mission she recounted involved a Black Widow.

Clint Barton, interestingly enough, had his own Black Widow. He chased his, though – she didn't make his face up before walking through a German disco.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked after the last tale – long-range sniper, and Simmons whispered that the setup sounded suspiciously like the Kennedy assassination.

"What do you think I'm going to do?"

Her minute emotion was frustration, irritation. "Disciple for unauthorized departure from base, harm done to maintenance staff..." She lowered her head. "Consumption."

"Of?"

The irritation spread to her voice: "Food."

Simmons: "That would explain the malnutrition."

"And after that's done?"

"Storage."

"Nothing before that?"

There was no way that the KGB, or whoever the hell controlled her now, could've kept her compliant without some kind of memory suppression. The person sitting in front of Steve now didn't act anything like how Jamie usually acted but he didn't think this was someone other than the pulverized remains of his wife's personality. He'd watched her slide towards dead-eyed calm every time she picked up a sniper rifle on the war front, after all.

Steve knew his wife. If she had the slightest clue that what she was doing was wrong, that she could stop it from happening, she would fight.

Jamie nodded. "Wiping prior to storage, if ordered by the master handler."

"Can anyone else order that?"

"Mental wipes are only to be used when necessary. Physical punishment recommended for obedience reinforcing instead."

"Why is that?"

"Overuse of mental wipes can compromise field efficacy."

"And what happens then?"

She winced and her lip quivered. Her body relaxed – overrelaxed, he knew that habit of hers well – and Steve understood he was pushing.

"What happens?"

Her lips formed a straight, shaking line.

Steve sighed, leaned forwards and the word just slipped out: "Jamie..."

She froze.

And, fuck.

"Jamie."

"Hail Hydra," she whispered.

"Jamie!"

Her mouth shook but she kept on: "Hail Hydra, immortal Hydra. We shall never be destroyed. Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place. I serve none but the Master, just as the world shall soon serve us. Hail Hydra!"

Oh.

Twelve hours later, Steve poured his fifth shot of 190-proof vodka for Nicola Fury and asked her how well she knew Alexandra Pierce. She downed it and told him they went back to the 80s, some embassy brouhaha, why was he asking?

"How much do you know about Arnim Zola?"

She slurred out, "Paperclip – operation, forty s– eight, didn't like – Carter – why?"

Steve led her tottering to the interrogation room. It took her nearly five minutes to place the woman on the other side of the one-way mirror, another couple to connect the prosthetic arm to Zola, to Hydra.

"Are you fucking – fucking – fucking 'course."

"How much of SHIELD is Hydra?"

"Hell if – if I – why're ya askin', what's –"

Fury stumbled where she stood and missed the wall trying to steady herself. Steve steadied her, looked her straight into her unfocused eyes and asked, "Did you know?"

"About wha'?"

"Hydra?"

"Everyone knows – collapsed with – war two, you killed..."

"Zola kept Hydra going. In SHIELD. Did you know that?"

"Nah. 'Splains – bad mission, 'curity fail – fired almost for it – Peg said no, don't. Fucking 'splains it."

From around the corner Simmons whispered, "I think we should let her sleep. She doesn't know anything," and Steve relented.

Fury called Tony Stark in the next morning. Steve disagreed but his boss threatened to go up to the World Security Council, Malick included, and he was forced to relent.

"I was right, it's a chick."

"Stark..."

"Height's right. Profile too, 'cept for the boobs. She didn't have those."

"Stark."

"A binder, maybe?" He cocked his head. "But that wouldn't work with the arm – where's it welded? Has to be welded, it moves with her skin –"

"The metal is approximately two millimeters thick," Simmons contributed. "I believe Zola anchored the plates deeply into the dermis of her shoulder."

"Right, so he stripped the skin, cauterized the glands – freezing? I'd freeze them. Freeze and everything goes kaput. Then – take the humerus out, wire the nervous system and fry baby fry till the wires melt into muscle –"

"Stark," Steve said a third time, and this time he put a threat into it.

"I've had twelve years to work out how Manchurian Candidate in there got a near-perfect prosthetic. My time has come. Doc Thompkins said something about scans?"

Simmons stuttered something about how she wasn't a doctor to superheroes but left to find the files; Stark followed on Fury's insistence.

"Obviously she associates something with her name," said Fury, reversed the recording on the screen and froze on Jamie in the split seconds after Steve said her name. "That's fear. She's afraid of whatever she thinks you're going to do to her."

He knew that expression: dart-eyed, lowered brows, tense face and deliberately slow breathing. Jamie got that way when she saw a threat to herself. Anyone else under fire and she'd attack, but if someone tried to take something away from her she'd let them land a few punches if it meant they didn't know how to get at what she really valued.

"They tied her down and left her – well, not alone but enough, for four months, she might've started remembering..."

"Chances are Zola tried to erase her identity. Every account we have of her, she has the mask on. If no one knows how she is –"

"She thought I was Hydra. If I knew maybe I'd try to use that against her somehow. Force her to –"

"Rogers."

Right, interrupting: Fury's pet peeve. "Sorry."

"She remembers who she is. Her memories of you should be just as strong."

"So... what do you want me to do?"

"Remind her who you are."

"How?"

Fury gave him one of her patented figure-it-out looks.

"Okay."

He passed Simmons and Stark – they were debating the prosthetic's power source – in the hallway and shushed them before opening the door to the interrogation room. Inside Jamie sat rock-still, staring at nothing, refusing to betray that she hadn't gotten any kind of food or energy in almost a day.

Based on Simmons' findings, a single day of deprivation would be hardly anything for Jamie anymore.

"Do you know who I am?"

She shook her head.

"Do you know who you are?"

"The asset."

"Do you know who you were?"

If her mouth could form an even straighter line than it already had, it did.

"He died," she said steadily. "So who are you?"

"I'm exactly who you think I am."

"I'm compliant. Obedient. You don't –"

She cut off.

"I don't what?"

There was that lip quiver again. "I will not resist breeding. Pretending – pretending to be someone... from – there's no point. No need."

Steve stood – no response, verbal or otherwise – and pulled one of the chains off his neck. He placed it down on the table in front of her and waited.

It felt like forever, but finally she looked down at the tags. She moved her hand oh-so-slowly to finger the little glittering ring that hung off the tag chain, run her thumb across the letters stamped onto her tags – words Steve already knew by heart: "JAMES B BARNES / 32557038 T42 43 AB / STEVEN ROGERS / 45 MIDDAGH ST / BKLN NYC NY C"

He reached into his shirt and pulled out his own tags. He put them, and his own ring, in a pile next to Jamie's and she shook her head.

"No," she said. "He died."

"So did you."

"That's not his ring."

"No?" Steve pinched it between in his thumb and first finger, careful not to crush the delicate gold, and showed off the words inside – words that should have worn down over the years his father wore it, except his father came home in a box when Steve was ten months old and the ring sat in his mother's jewelry box until it was the last unsold piece there.

The words: "Patrick and Sarah, oceans apart but together in spirit, 1917". They'd gotten married when he was on furlough, about to ship off to the trenches of Europe, and Steve never had the heart or money to have it re-engraved with his and Jamie's names and wedding year.

He handed the ring to Jamie and she took it, face stony still but eyes narrowed. Next he picked up her ring with the chain to display the stamped letters: "MB & TS, 1916".

Mihail Bărnuțiu and Tereza Stefoniou, married four months before Jamie was born. Tereza almost died but held on through another seven pregnancies until the last one killed her with an infection.

Jamie replaced Steve's ring for her own in her hands and bent her head down to inspect it.

"They made me – I had to keep it off. For the cameras."

"After a while you stopped wearing it altogether. You didn't want to lose the stones."

She looked up and met his gaze. "What did I do with it?"

In his ear, Fury whispered, "She's testing you. She already knows the answer."

Yeah, Steve could tell that for his own damn self. "You kept it on a chain with your dog tags, but you never wore them either – you hated the feel of 'em. It was against regulation but I always carried them for you."

Jamie blinked once, twice, and told him, "You died."

"So did you."

"You drowned."

"It was the arctic, I froze. Apparently we can survive that."

She looked down. "I know."

"So that's how they stored – how you haven't..."

Jamie nodded, a jerky movement.

"Oh. Okay."

Steve bit his lip, tried to swallow his words but gave up. "I swear, Jamie. I'm not Hydra. Whatever you think I'm gonna do, I won't."

"You told me –"

"I know what I made you think. I just needed to know who... who was calling the shots."

She blinked, again. "How long have you – they stay in the shadows. When did you find out about them?"

"When you said their motto," confessed Steve. "I never thought I'd hear it again."

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

Steve slumped back in his chair. The mental exhaustion hit him and his vision blurred, just for a split second before he refocused.

"What do you want to know?" asked Jamie.

Steve opened his mouth but the words wouldn't come. He didn't know where to start – get the history of her handlers, sketch out every face she remembered, detail missions – how she'd survived the fall off the train – but he didn't want to let Fury take over. She would just scare Jamie back into silence.

When was the last time she'd eaten? – come to think of it, when was the last time he'd eaten?

"The tail we had on you said you went to a bunch of food trucks. Which one is best?"

After some coaxing Jamie recommended the tacos. Simmons got sent out with a shopping bag and a $50 bill, returning with twenty foil-wrapped tacos that Steve inhaled almost as fast as Jamie did.

Because this is set about 10 years before CAWS (2003 instead of 2014), some of the characterizations are going to be...different. Fury is still climbing the SHIELD hierarchy, for example, not at the top, and she hasn't pinned down the tact that Fury in the movies has. Barton is more talkative, doesn't have kids and is only a few years removed from the circus.