AN: So I had a multitude of reviews ask me about what VALOMILKS are like, and I'd never actually had one, but I live in a town with a Cracker Barrel so I picked up a couple yesterday and decided to review them on my blog. If you follow the link in my profile to my Tumblr (not the roleplay Tumblr, but the first one linked), then the first post there should be about VALOMILKS. Or, if you're reading this at a later date, just add tagged/valomilk to the end of the web address. Warning: the last image in the post is not safe for work. It's just me with marshmallow ooze all over my mouth, but out of context it looks pornographic.
Once there had been a mission in Siberia and the asset had missed the rendezvous.
The Soldier remembers as Steve leads him to Sam, hardly hearing the man's constant reassurances that he isn't upset with Bucky, that everything will be okay.
He thinks that the mission had been to case a location, search for plans regarding …something, and retrieve whatever was found. There were other interested parties after the same information and it was his job to dispose of them. The details of the objective are faint, but he can vividly picture the fight that had kept him from the rendezvous as well as the blood of his opponents drenching his clothing, soaking him as he'd set off for the safe house on foot.
He can remember the cold. It was not like the restful, quiet cold of the cryo-tank, but harsh and stinging. The blood on his clothing had begun to frost and his body, even so used to the ice, shivered. The asset increased his speed, ignoring the flush of fatigue that labored his movements, walked on.
The shivering had stopped the first time he tripped. His body was trembling violently and then it was on the ground, still. His left arm had begun broadcasting danger to his mind and his body was immediately so burning hot that he struggled out of the coat he'd been given with sluggish, uncoordinated movements before he stood and carried on. The journey to the safe house was not quick; the asset kept finding himself turned around, kept falling, breathing in shallow gasps that didn't reach his lungs.
Someone had been waiting outside to meet him when he did arrive.
"What the hell kept you?" the man demanded. The Soldier remembers the face as Steve's, because his mind has not ceased the malfunction of placing Steve in memories he was not present for, but judging from the weapons he remembers and how the arm attached to him matches the present model, he thinks the man was Rumlow.
"Спать," the asset mumbled, which was not an answer, hardly even related, but he wasn't struck for it.
Rumlow exhaled, a hiss of breath through clenched teeth. "English, for fuck's sake," he'd said, nudged the asset's shoulder toward the safe house. His hand brushed the asset's as he did, and Rumlow froze, turning back, scrutinizing the asset's appearance.
The asset was so used to people recoiling at the temperature of his left hand, it did not occur to him that the man was responding to the right.
"Jesus Christ," Rumlow had said. He grabbed the asset's arm, steering him forward, and there was a second in which the asset failed to recognize him as a senior officer, failed to recognize him at all, and he'd struggled. But there were orders—"Stand down, get inside, haul your ass"—and exhausted and confused as the asset had been, the commands were grounding.
"I need every blanket and towel in this shithole," the man demanded once they were inside. "Now."
It was an order again, so the asset had moved to obey it, trying to remember the meaning of the word blanket, before Rumlow had grabbed him again and guided him to a radiator. "Not you. Sit. Strip."
His fingers were numb, imprecise, struggling with his chest holster while Rumlow had torn the boots off his feet. He swore at the asset's lack of progress, batted his hands aside, and undid the strap himself before moving onto the tactical vest.
Rollins appeared in the door, arms full of fabric. "Where do you want these?"
"Just drop 'em for now—get over here and get his pants off."
There had been a pause. "What?"
"Either take his pants off or you'll be the one to explain to Pierce why HYDRA's most valuable weapon is dead." Rumlow grunted, struggling to slide the clothing off the asset's immobile shoulders. "Come on."
There were hands at his belt, fabric sliding off his body from either end. The asset had been told not to struggle, so he didn't. He remained motionless. Weapons had no modesty. Rumlow dropped one of the towels onto his head, rubbing at his wet hair, pulling, and the asset knew how to use a towel but he made no move to aid the man because he hadn't been told to. His body, wet from the snow, was dried, and Rumlow took the hat that had been on his own head and placed it on the asset's before wrapping the blankets around his body and pushing him, laying him back on the floor.
"Lie down on him," Rumlow said, jerking his head toward the asset.
"Fuck that."
"Hypothermia, jackass. You have to share body heat. Lie down on him."
"Fuck that."
"Of the two of us," said Rumlow, "who's in charge and too good-looking to risk being mauled by malfunctioning weapons?"
"I fucking hate you," Rollins said, and then his body, shaking, was pressing weight and heat against the asset's. "Christ."
"You," Rumlow tapped the asset's shoulder. "Start shivering. And you, remind me to laugh at this when he's not on the edge of death." Then he was out of the room while the asset tried to will his body into what ought to be an involuntary process.
"Cough, Soldier," Rumlow said when he returned, a mug of something steaming in his hands, and the asset did.
Rollins made a choked sound. "If the next words out of your mouth are 'turn your head,' I am not—"
"Get your mind out of the gutter. And shove over. If he can cough, he can swallow." Rumlow put one hand behind the asset's head, shoving it up, and placed the mug to his lips. It burned. "This is soup. It's not harmful, it's gonna heat you up. Don't choke, and don't puke."
He could not taste the liquid being poured into his mouth because it scalded his tongue. It was hot, it was burning in comparison to his own temperature, as if he were swallowing fire, and his body tensed, sickened, wanting to reject it. But he had been ordered not to vomit, so the asset did not.
"Good," Rumlow said when the mug was empty. "Get back on him."
"Oh, come on."
"Stay there until his lips aren't blue," Rumlow ordered. "Do it without bitching and I might not take pictures."
They stayed near him even when death was no longer likely, engaging in some sort of strategy exercise with cards. Poker, they called it. The asset picked up the rules from watching, shivering and silent. When the radio flickered to life, voices coming in through the static to verify their status, Rumlow's fingers trailed over the asset's face, checking temperature, as he reported the Soldier was all right.
"You're all right, aren't you, big guy?" he asked after.
The asset had nodded.
"Good. And don't ever take off a coat again without permission, got it?"
The Soldier thinks of relating that memory now, thinks that they've given him blankets and soup in the tower, and how bad could HYDRA be if it also provided those things? He thinks they were nice but he can't recall how to say it, and all the thoughts of HYDRA have reminded him that HYDRA had taught him weapons should be silent. For the majority of his waking time, the most they required of him were shakes and nods of the head, or "yes" and "no" if the person speaking to him could not see him. They called him the fist of HYDRA. A fist does not speak, it strikes where the mind directs it.
But in this tower, the Soldier tells himself, he is no longer utilized as a weapon. And humans speak.
He thinks, not for the first time, feeling Steve and Sam's eyes on him, that humanity is something best left behind in the snow.
"I don't want to go back," the Soldier says instead of relating the memory. He would like the ice again, the quiet, but he does not miss the chair and he doesn't want to sleep for years now that Steve is here. He likes being able to laugh and eat and remember faces from one day to the next. If he wished to go back to HYDRA, he might understand their concern.
But he doesn't and HYDRA hasn't come to find him, so why is Steve unhappy?
"But you miss them?" Sam asks.
The Soldier shakes his head, jaw tensing. Words are like memories: there are fragments. Some are indistinct and some are clear, but they are still only fragments and do not display the full image. "Нет. But he is angry." He raises his head, meets Steve's eyes. The hurt in them stings and he turns back to Sam. "I do not comprehend."
"I'm not angry at you, Bucky," Steve says. He said that in the kitchen as well. And on the walk to Sam's room. He has said it so many times today that the Soldier is beginning to think Steve is angry at him.
"I do not comprehend." Steve's goals must conflict with HYDRA's or the Soldier wouldn't have been sent to kill him. Is that the reason for the hatred? Or does he think all of the Soldier's seventy years were full of experiences like the loss of his arm? That can't be the case; his file mentioned the cryo-tank.
"You don't understand why he's angry with HYDRA?" Sam asks. He has an ability to take the thoughts the Soldier can only half-verbalize and turn them into real words.
A nod. It's not quite right, as he can understand the anger at Zola, Pierce, and the scientists whose names he can't remember. But the teams that accompanied him on missions, the technicians who provided him with armor and weapons, the handlers that hadn't asked him to kill Steve—what reason is there to be angry with them? They were not unkind.
"If I can hazard a guess," Sam says, "I'd wager it has to do with the way they brainwashed you into being their tool and kept you as a prisoner of war for seventy years."
"Those people are dead." HYDRA now—they used him as a weapon because he was one. He prefers not being a weapon, but he had not been misused. They had let him sleep, kept him maintained, provided missions to occupy the blank space in his mind. They gave him everything a weapon could need, and until he met Steve and became more than an asset, it had been enough.
"The people who began the process are dead. But Bucky, brainwashing is continuous. Anyone from HYDRA you interacted with aided in it."
The Soldier thinks of the doctors who would wake him from the ice. You're safe, they would say. Everything is all right, no harm will come to you. They attached him to the tubes that allowed his body to function, and only ever hit him if he took too long to come back to himself. "They helped."
"Right," Sam says. "They all had a hand in the process."
"Нет. They helped…helped me."
"Bucky." He can feel Steve's eyes on him and he does not turn his head. "Do you remember that they electrocuted you? Even if you'd done what they wanted, so they could keep you in line? That's torture."
"It's therapy."
There is a moment of deafening quiet.
"I looked it up," the Soldier says, raising his head. "On the Internet. They do it in hospitals. American ones too."
He doesn't understand the look that Sam gives him. Isn't Sam a therapist? Why should the electricity disturb him?
"In hospitals, it's used on the unconscious," Sam says finally. "And not to erase memories. It's nothing like what was done to you."
It is used, the Soldier has read, on those who will do something erratic before medications can take effect. He becomes erratic the longer he is awake and his body burns through drugs quickly. He doesn't see the disconnect. Pressing a hand to his head, the Soldier breathes, trying to force the correct words to come to mind. "I didn't like it," he says. "I don't want it back. But…they were trying to help me."
"Okay," Sam says.
"Okay?" Steve makes it sound like a gunshot.
"Okay, that's how he feels," Sam says, giving Steve a look the Soldier doesn't understand. "Bucky, you believe the things they did were to help you, even when they were unpleasant, right?"
The Soldier nods.
"What about the missions? The people they wanted you to assassinate? Did that help you?"
Yes, he thinks, because when there was a mission his mind wasn't buzzing and struggling, trying to think and feel and do the things a weapon shouldn't. No, because he did not like the missions ever now that he knows what it is to dislike. He shakes his head, bites his lips. "Not me. Didn't help me. They were helping… those were to save the world."
AN: If anyone cares, I imagine the mission Winter's remembering takes place either post or mid-Iron Man 2, and they were sent into Siberia and other parts of Russia to try and see if there were any copies of Anton Vanko's arc reactor blueprints and plans to be found.
In the early stages of hypothermia, blood flow to the extremities is restricted, with the blood flow focusing on the vital organs while the body shivers to generate heat. However, when the muscles tire, there is a sudden rush of warm blood into the limbs which causes a person to feel very warm, very fast, hence why people suffering hypothermia will remove their clothes.
Translations for the Russian are as follows:
Спать = Sleepy (want to sleep)
Нет = No