It is very quiet inside the vault.

The streets, even when the asset fled from the area where he'd engaged the missions, were full of sirens, screaming, people running and cars screeching away. Combined with the shouting happening inside of him, it was almost deafening.

Here, no one speaks. There were doctors muttering over the Soldier while he was led to the chair. They'd been noting abrasions, torn cartilage, cracked ribs, all the little things that hadn't threatened his ability to fulfill the mission and thus had been ignored, but now the only sound comes from the instruments repairing his arm.

The voice has stopped screaming, but somehow that makes it more difficult to ignore.

I knew him.

No, he had seen him before. The man from the bridge had been there when he eliminated Nicholas J. Fury. He pursued the Soldier without success. That is all. Anything else is irrelevant and incorrect.

He knew me.

The Soldier clenches his teeth. The voice is quieter now, but when it is quiet, it sounds as though it could belong to him. It slips in so readily he almost believes it is his own. The man did not know him. It was an obvious ploy to lower his guard that somehow succeeded. The man

[нет, миссия]

cannot be the first one to have tried this. The asset has been taught how to extract information from the unwilling. He has been told that people, when they do this, can create camaraderie as a tool to use in retrieving what they need. The Soldier isn't capable of doing so, but he understands the principle. A trick to lower his guard or reverse his allegiance.

But the man didn't try to fight afterward. He didn't raise the shield in defense once the asset aimed his gun a second time.

A trick.

A friend.

The asset doesn't know that word. The voice does not provide a meaning. Perhaps it is wanting for a definition as well. Perhaps now it will be quiet, and the sounds of his repair will be the only noise in the room.

The tools in his arm whine and whir, and his body is tense and his mind is elsewhere, a place with snow and isolation and Zola. He can feel the cold of this place down to his bones—not all the bones are cold, some are missing—taste it at the back of his throat. It tastes like death and something called hopelessness?

"Sergeant Barnes."

He is staring up at the man from the bridge, wind and ice howling around them. The man's face is full of something he cannot name, a look different from the one on the street but no less vivid, deep as the red on his uniform. "Bucky, no!" He is reaching, but the Soldier is falling, screaming.

The fall becomes the ground, and the ground is hard and cold and the red that leaks out is darker than the uniform of the man on the bridge before the fall, dark and frozen in trails on the asset's skin. His arm is neither metal nor flesh, but gone, bleeding, and they are dragging him, they are over him with bright lights and gloves.

"The procedure has already started."

A saw is buzzing, slicing at flesh and his eyes are wide, hair in his face, breathing distressed, but no, his arm is there, it's metal, and there's nothing to cut and they are fixing it. But he can still see the flesh stripped from bone and how can his hair be in his face, it's not long enough, he hasn't let it get that far from regulation, hasn't—

"You are to be the new fist of HYDRA."

He is on his back and the metal hand is new, gleaming, and he won't be HYDRA's, never HYDRA's. The hand closes around a throat, he could crush it as easily as he could snap his fingers, but the man is gone and Zola, Zola is smirking down at him. That bastard, Zola's turning him into their monster, taking away—

"Put him on ice."

He is in the tank but how can he be in the tank when they were just fixing his arm, when the mission is not complete? There is a face in the glass he doesn't know, and he reaches toward it, but the hand that touches is metal, cold, monstrous, and he doesn't want to be a machine, he's alive. There's a person here but the name is missing and he has to be stronger than this because the man on the bridge but not on the bridge said he was stronger, but everything is cold and he's lost and—

The asset throws out his arm and the men go flying. He hears panic in the room, notes the guns that spin toward him, but it is far away. He is still seeing his arm cut loose and the face in the glass freezing, mind full of "Bucky" and "I'm alive," and all the Soldier wants is for it to stop. But he can't want. People want.

Я не

[I am]

человек

He thinks of the man on the bridge. He thinks the man on the bridge would tell him it is all right, the way his handlers do when he comes out of the ice. He thinks he wants the quiet of the ice again. He thinks there are no dreams in the ice, and then he wonders what a dream is. Does the man from the bridge know? Would he tell him?

He does not realize Pierce is in the room until he feels the backhand across his face.

For a second it is the worst hurt in the world, because he has failed. He is HYDRA's

[I am no one's]

and they saved his life, gave him purpose, and he has failed them. He should be begging forgiveness, he should be beaten, but when his mouth opens there is no apology. "The man on the bridge…who was he?"

He can be good again, if he knows. If he can quiet the struggle in his mind, he will be theirs again. He will do all they want. But now he is like a machine missing a component. They will help him to run again. They always have.

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment," Pierce says.

It is true. He knows it is true. But it is not sufficient. And HYDRA has always been sufficient. Why aren't they now? What is happening to him? Is he broken beyond their ability to repair?

"I knew him," he says, averting his eyes. He is being bad. He is being broken. But he knows, for the first time in forever, he knows that the man on the bridge was familiar to him before this week. To think of all the implications of that knowledge is to be sick and malfunctioning—the man named him, and names are for people, and how can he be one?—but he knows and that knowledge is vital, precious. He can't relinquish it. He has never had something to hold onto, and now that it is his he will not let go.

Pierce sits. The asset's eyes are on him, desperate. He is the handler. He knows everything. Handlers know what to do to make things better, or to guide the mission back on track. He will make everything all right.

"Your work has been a gift to mankind," Pierce says. "You shaped the century. And I need you to do it one more time. Society's at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning, we're going to give it a push. But if you don't do your part, I can't do mine. And HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves."

They need him. They need him and he is being a disappointment. Those should be the words to repair him, make him useful again. He can help the world and HYDRA will be happy and he will be content.

But he is not content. He is not content because he

[is human]

is thinking of the man on the bridge and he thinks if that man were here, he would take the human hand in his and vow to stay by his side until the chaos in his head is over. Was the man on the bridge his handler? Why does he feel this connection? Why does the man make him feel as if he is alive? And why doesn't HYDRA have the answer?

"But I knew him," he says. He does not say Please tell me this is real, please help me understand, please hold me and fix this and make it stop, but he hears it in his voice. He raises his eyes, meets his handler's gaze

[like a person]

and the eyes feel wet when Pierce stands and looks away.

"Prep him."

"He's been out of cryo-freeze too long," a doctor says.

The Soldier knows what Pierce will say before he says it. Please, please no. Please don't take this—

"Then wipe him and start over."

Something inside the asset shatters. He hadn't thought there was anything left to break.

They take his shoulders, pushing him back to recline in the chair. His eyes meet Pierce's again, and he feels a surge of something, something like what he felt after Romanov shot his goggles, but amplified a thousand-fold. He feels

[hate]

defiance, and even as he opens his mouth for the bite guard instinctively, he can feel the heat from his eyes.

[You think you can break me I'm back now you've already failed you'll fail again I'm not yours I'll remember I'll remember everything]

But then the chair clamps around his arms and the sensation is replaced with that which always accompanies the wipe: chest heaving, eyes wide, stomach churning with adrenaline. Don't, he wants to beg around the guard in his mouth. Don't take this from me please it's mine I'll never want anything else I just want to remember him don't hurt me it's going to hurt I don't want it to hurt please don't hurt me—

There is pain, and the darkness follows, but not swiftly enough.

A/N: Translations for the Russian are as follows:

нет, миссия = no, the mission

Я не = I'm not

человек = a person