I had my first big report for my thesis project due Thursday, which is my poor excuse for not getting this chapter out on time.

Warnings for: depictions of rape, self-performed abortion; mentions of violence.

She woke up when Steve left the bed. The clock said 0344; muffled sounds from the kitchen said that Steve was listening to something.

Wouldn't he know by now a better way to hide things from her?

Jamie recognized the sounds by the time she passed the bathroom, and her blood ran cold.

They'd always strapped her down for breeding, and the scene she found playing on Steve's laptop showed just that. She remembered it perfectly but she didn't remember it at all. They all blended together thanks to the memory wipes and her own dissociation; she didn't survive that many men taking their turn with her over and over again without detaching herself from the world.

It was easy but she still hated it: the only order was to stay still, and she had no way to prove herself to her handlers or comply extra-well to lessen the constant conditioning. The worst, by far, was when they would find her clit and rub as if they cared what she felt. The first few times it happened she didn't know better and made noise; it only goaded them, though, and if she reacted they would twist and pull and pinch until she wanted to cry.

Pain that disguised itself as pleasure was always worse than simple punishment, so she learned better to avoid it.

Steve, nowadays, learned to avoid her clit directly and instead move around it.

It was a concrete floor, this time, and the grain of the footage hinted to its age. Jamie recognized the man on top of past-her: a lackey of Zola's, no name that she could recall but his self-doubting character had always stood out to her.

The lackey groaned, panted and stilled his rocking; he withdrew and Jamie watched a line of white dribble across the floor. And there the asset was: arms shackled to the floor, a thick band around its neck and another spreading its feet wide. It was clothed – nakedness made the men think they were having sex, not performing their duty to Hydra, and outside of dedicated breeding time the asset was off-limits for anything sexual – and the point of entry was a slit in the v of the pants.

Off went the lackey, and in his place another man. And another, and another, until –

Zola.

He'd always smiled at her, proud and smug. Back then Jamie thought she was doing a good job, following well his orders, but now she knew it was only because he'd brought Captain America's wife so low.

Steve closed the window when Zola unzipped his fly and opened the next file from the long list shown on the screen. Fuzz played for a few moments, replaced then by the exam room in the San Antonio base: the asset lay strapped to an exam table, belly slightly round and exposed to the air. A technician performed an ultrasound, confirmed with Zola that everything was going well, and they left the room to print out the scan.

The whole time the asset stared off to the side of the room. Ten seconds after the men left it broke the bonds, collected a thin metal wire lying on the floor and shoved it up its vagina and cervix without hesitation.

Jamie closed the laptop screen; she didn't need to see what happened next and neither did Steve. It was the same every time: Zola – Lukin – Karpov – Pierce would beat her, shock her, fix her in place so she'd kneel while the remains of a child born too early to live fell into a receptacle.

That was the Catch-22 of breeding: any of the drugs they used to keep her obedient, keep her forgetting, would attack a fetus. Electric shocks at any effective level induced contractions; the chemicals used to prevent her head from exploding during a wipe stayed in her system for weeks and prevented conception. Beatings ruptured the placenta. There was nothing they could do but chain her to the wall, or in Pierce's case a bed, and hope her memories were too far suppressed to push her into another self-abortion.

Most of the time the malnutrition got to the baby before Jamie herself did.

Steve jumped. "Oh. Hi."

"Don't do that to yourself," she told him.

He leaned into her chest and she wrapped her arms around his head. Her mind screamed against contact but he needed it, so she gave it to him.

"I should've looked for you, I'm so sorry..."

She ran her fingers through his hair, rubbed his head. "It's over. It's done. It won't happen anymore."

It was true – Fury had no interest in more supersoldiers, and besides she'd need to replicate the serum to do so, which meant labs and blood samples and paper trails... all too risky.

No, the assistant director didn't care about any of that. She would use the two of them as leverage, a way to get rid of the primary threat to her climb up the SHIELD ladder – Hydra – and secure her position at the top of the agency.

"Come back to bed."

"Jamie, I can't..."

"I know." She ran her thumb over his cheek. "Just come back to bed."

Thank God he did what she asked.

The baby woke up crying not a minute after and Steve left to calm it down. The next Jamie knew the clock said 0558 and she lay frozen next to a blond man with a half-hard cock and –

" 'S too early," he mumbled when she shook him awake. "Go back asleep."

"Steve," she said, and he cracked an eye open.

"Oh. Okay."

Steve pulled her out of bed and shoved her up against the wall. She braced herself against the bricks but he knocked her hands away and she fell onto her breasts, wincing at the sharp pain. Steve pulled down her pajama pants, felt her wet – if she let him get her ready it would ruin this for her – the next thing she knew he pulled her hips back and shoved himself into her cunt.

He fucked her slow, one hand holding her two own above her head while the other splayed across her belly. The first time they did this she'd had to walk him through it, which almost ruined the whole thing, but he caught on quickly and salvaged it.

Her forehead would be rubbed raw when he was done, her nose red from being pressed into mortar. She grunted against the discomfort, and how his dick felt too big for her and maybe she hadn't done the best job getting ready because he kept hitting her cervix. Still, it was only a pinch to be honest.

Steve sped up after a quarter-hour and only lasted another couple minutes. She felt the hot stream of come fill her – she never told her husband every time it made her blood run cold – but it trickled down her leg instead of resting in her cunt.

"I don't understand why you like this," Steve murmured in her ear.

Jamie wrenched her hands away from his and pushed herself away from the wall; Steve backed up with her, his dick soft but still inside her cunt, exposing her back to the air.

"It's supposed to hurt," she explained. He tensed so she clarified: "I expect it to hurt. But it doesn't."

"Is that why we do this after you have nightmares?"

"Or when you watch old videos of Zola raping me."

Steve eased himself out and away from her. "I'm sorry."

"You knew it happened. You don't have to watch it too."

"Jason was swamped with files. I took some to help."

"And the best time to watch them was at three in the morning."

He touched her waist, light as a feather, but she brushed him off.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just don't do it again."

"Okay." Steve leaned his head against the nape of her neck. "Okay."

He touched her waist, light as a feather, and she let him.

It was hard, knowing Zola had taped it all. Lukin didn't bother – he classified them as experiments, keeping only written records – Karpov only conducted it twice, and earned her willing loyalty when he decided to never do it again, and Pierce...

Pierce only tried breeding once. Jamie didn't need tapes to relive that.

"Turn around," Steve said, and she complied. He backed her up against the wall again but this time kissed her mouth, neck, breasts through the thin nightshirt, belly, legs, and by the time he pressed his tongue into her cunt she was shaking from the pressure buildup. He drove her to two orgasms before carrying her back to bed to continue.

He needed this. She needed to know he wouldn't hurt her, and he needed to know he could still make her feel good – that Zola and Lukin and Karpov and Pierce hadn't ruined him for her – that she wanted him to fuck her just as badly as he did, and he wasn't forcing her into anything.

They made it another few rounds before the baby cried itself awake and Steve brought it back to their room for breakfast.

Jamie had decided pretty quickly that she'd rather have interrupted sleep and nurse through the day than wake up every few hours in the night. Steve took the night shifts up until week six; after that Cait was left alone to figure it out at night, and in a different room.

Week three of the new approach was going better than the first couple had, she had to admit. Jamie wouldn't bond at all with the baby until it weaned – she hated breastfeeding for every reason – but even this little layer of separation eased her mind.

She hadn't thought Cait would stay. She thought it'd miscarry like all the other times but it never happened, and sometime during those months her brain fell back into a breeding mindset, detached from everything happening in her own body. She pushed the baby out and Simmons handed it right back, though, and everyone acted like this was her responsibility. Steve asked for a name and Jamie thought, that's not how this is supposed to happen.

Without the serum injections to ensure offspring enhancement, SHIELD should have had no interest in the baby – it would be dropped off at an orphanage, or whatever they did these days. Jamie was an investment and anything she did had to produce results, benefit the agency. She forgot two things: she wasn't used in the field enough for a crying bundle of fragility and poop to hinder productivity, and Steve was a normal person who would obviously want to raise his daughter.

Never mind that Jamie spent so much more time taking care of Cait than he did. Never mind if he ever got overwhelmed he could leave – take a walk, go to the store, do work at the office. Never mind the only glances of the outside Jamie got were of the yard surrounding her cage and the deserted forests around Fury-selected Hydra bases.

The baby broke off, finally, and Jamie handed it back to Steve. He never questioned why she had him do all the washing, diaper changes and midnight singing-back-to-sleep.

Jamie made breakfast, kissed her husband goodbye and brought the baby up the Heungs for the day. Once alone she read an e-book, did her physical exercises, finished Friends, masturbated, made cookies, did handwriting exercises, threw knives at a pumpkin, picked up Cait and made dinner just in time for Steve to come home and kiss her hello.

Rinse and repeat.

The lights of Timanezh used to shine bright at night, powered by its own power plant – nuclear, of course – and without care to the whispers of the town below it.

Jamie never learned what the name of the town was. It was gone, abandoned, the residents scattered by the collapse of the iron curtain. Anyone who knew anything she'd put a bullet into the day the KGB sold her to the Americans.

Timanezh: a fortress. No gaps, no weaknesses.

She scaled a crumbling wall under the east lookout outcrop. The guards assumed any threats would come from the northwest, forested approach – and besides who wanted to stand watch with wind blasting into your face?

The east lookout post was where Jamie was assigned most often. She knew it like the back of her hand.

Inside the base held a stillness, the ghosts of dead experiments and soldiers chilling the air. Jamie wound her way through halls for hours, sketching the layout in her mind for debrief until she had it memorized. She slipped out as easily as she came in, ahead of schedule as usual, and spent her extra time wandering towards Lithuania.

The forests of Eastern Europe were some of Jamie's favorites. She always felt distant in them, protected, buffered from anyone else. At home she was raw but the woods weren't interested in her feelings or how far she could make a shot or how quiet she walked. Trees didn't punish her if she stepped on twigs, clomped on leaves, scared birds.

Her phone beeped: she was late for her check-in.

Things like check-ins and phones and handlers made her raw.

She met her backup across the border in Lithuania, where SHIELD had an authorized presence.

"The disks?"

Jamie exchanged the floppy disks with Fury for a sketchpad. She drew steadily even through turbulence, ignoring the awkward stares of three new tac team members also on the plane. They dropped her off in the middle of a fallow field and she walked the five miles to the hollowed-out tree that held the entrance to her home's bootleg tunnel.

She had thought, when she switched sides, that she was free of Hydra. She never had to see them again or revisit their bases. The Winter Soldier was an asset used against its owner's enemies, leaving statements with every explosion and body – actions meant to be noticed.

There were better ways that Fury could use her than for sneaking around hidden bases, planting surveillance that didn't lead her to a target for elimination – taking notes of guard rotations for future SHIELD teams to use when they stormed in – copying encrypted data and working through old storage rooms to map out their financial systems –

And all of it, once Jamie finished each mission, was off-limits to her. She couldn't even work off the intel she gathered. No, all she did was sneak back into the apartment, kiss Steve good morning or afternoon or night and settle back into good ol' domestic imprisonment.

She had dinner with Jason, Tyler and their son Philip, who was a year and a half old and took to Cait well. For all he knew the baby was his sister: they were in the same home-run daycare, his dads took care of both of them and it was there when he woke up and when he fell asleep. It meant nothing that his aunt and uncle who lived in the basement were around a lot to babysit them both.

Steve was off with Jamie's sister's family for Easter. He'd promised to be back no later than Monday evening but she knew him; he'd find excuses to stay longer, free himself of his wife and their oppressive apartment.

The Heungs didn't judge her if she handed the baby over and let Tyler feed it a bottle. Steve? He sighed and made to look like he was fine with it, and Jason sighed and cast annoyed looks at Steve.

"So how was Timanezh?" asked Tyler.

"Empty." Jamie shoved a giant forkful of pot pie into her mouth; she'd made three: one for dinner today, two more for dinner whenever Steve got back. "Cold."

"Got a lot of intel, though. Hey, didja know that the country's nuclear launch codes are kept on eight-inch floppy disks?"

"They're harder to steal."

"Really?"

Jamie shrugged. "If you take 'em, they'll just change the codes before you can crack the encryptions. Can't fake 'em, they check. The only way is to copy 'em, and that means carrying around a computer that can read and duplicate eight-inch floppy disks."

"How big would a machine like that have to be?" asked Jason, refilling his son's bowl of peas.

"We needed a team of – what, four people?"

Tyler choked on his water. "You stole American nuclear codes?"

"Well, no. One of 'em dropped her corner of the computer on her foot, yelled out in pain and that's why the US still uses eight-inch floppy disks for their nuclear launch codes."

"What happened to them?"

"Well they couldn't have the chance to talk, so..."

The adults cleared their throats, the babies whined at the sudden lack of attention and the topic dropped.

Steve, naturally, didn't ask her about the mission. Why would he, when he was always busy with his own?