3.

1980

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Pierce didn't swear often. He saved it for situations like this one.

He took a deep breath. He might never have been in a war—not a declared one, at least—but he had served, and his time as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. had taught him well. Panic was defeat. He walked down the street at a leisurely pace, eyes peeled. When he reached the corner, he hesitated. A truck sped past. North or South?

His fingers brushed the comm link in his pocket. He had been told the signal it emitted had a limited range, but it should be enough. One press of the button and he could have agents going over a three mile radius with a fine-toothed comb.

He did not want that. He looked at his watch. Half an hour. He would give himself half an hour to retrieve the asset on his own.

He always did do his best work under pressure, to tight deadlines.

He decided on South, towards the looming shape of the Southwest freeway. The asset might not be functioning at his full capacity yet, but his well-honed instincts likely remained. He might want to take cover under the overpasses, be drawn to the river as an easy navigation aid.

When he reached Virginia Avenue he saw he had been right as always, just not about the hiding part. The asset stood by a chain-link fence, staring at the haze of headlights in the freeway above. He was half-hidden by a scraggly city shrub, but Pierce recognised him, would have recognised him in a crowd, anywhere.

'What do you think you're doing?' Pierce said once he got close enough to touch the asset. His heart had caught up with what'd just happened and hammered away at his ribcage. Pierce let it.

The asset turned to face him. He had felt Pierce coming, of course—he could probably smell him—but he had not even tried to run away. He held Pierce's gaze for a moment, then lowered his eyes, the dark circles underneath them visible even in the dim light.

Pierce's hand left the pocket containing the comm link. No, it wouldn't be necessary.

'Why did you run away from me?'

The asset said nothing and just stood with his eyes still downcast, his body tense. Pierce thought of a hedgehog curled up into a spiky ball.

'You don't like how I treat you?' The asset was roughly the same height as Pierce and built more powerfully, but at the moment he was trying to shrink into nothingness. Pierce edged a little closer, until he could practically feel the heat radiating from the asset's body, or the air leaving his lungs. 'Did I hurt you? Lie to you? Come on. Answer me.'

The asset stood still for a few seconds, then shook his head.

Pierce sighed, took a step back, and glanced around. There was a shape under the overpass, huddled by one of the graffitied pillars. Pierce couldn't tell if it was a person or a pile of trash. One day soon it would be neither. When it was all fixed. 'You know, you're not a prisoner. This is how you want to behave, that's fine by me. Does it make me happy? No. But go ahead. Turn your back on what you are, on what you can do. Go live in the streets or under the overpass. Whatever it is you want.' He paused, crossed his arms. The asset said nothing, did nothing. 'Well? What are you waiting for?'

The only sound was the rumble of traffic. Pierce shook his head again, this time with a mix of disappointment and contempt. 'Guess you can't even manage that.' He turned around and began walking back towards the bank.

After a few moments he heard the asset's footfalls catching up behind him.

Pierce said nothing during the walk back, never turned around, never acknowledged the asset in any way. Only when they were inside the building, under the skylight, did he speak again.

'I'm not going to lie and say I'm not angry,' he said. 'And yes, I should punish you. For being disobedient, lazy, and a coward. I think you know that's exactly what you deserve, don't you?'

The asset whispered something.

'What was that?' Pierce said, and stepped closer to the asset, until their clothes were brushing.

The asset shrank and turned his face away. 'I'm sorry,' he muttered.

'Well, it's a little too late for that, isn't it?' Pierce drew back. When he spoke again his tone was even more patient than usual, even though his anger had yet to subside completely and his heart was still beating a little faster than normal. 'Do you know there are people keeping an eye on what we're doing? I can't protect you from them forever. I'm trying, but… I can't help if you won't let me. I can't hold up my end of the deal if you won't hold up yours. Do you understand?'

The asset nodded.

'I see. You want to put all this behind us, don't you?'

Nod.

'All right. We can start fresh. We won't even think of it again.'

He led the asset back into the vault, into the room where he was usually prepped for cryo. Dr Aldridge's team was on duty tonight. The asset stripped down to his underwear and waited, motionless as always but anxiety flickering in his eyes.

'Wipe him,' Pierce said. The scientists and technicians went into their practiced motions, readying the chair, securing the asset in place.

Cogs in a well-oiled machine. If only things could always be so.

A tech wheeled in a tray laden with syringes and drip bags.

'No. No anaesthesia,' Pierce said.

Another tech stopped halfway through attaching the leads to the asset's head.

Dr Aldridge cleared his throat. 'Mr Pierce, the treatment is not as effective if the subject is conscious. The brain waves—'

'I think I was pretty clear.' He looked at the asset, whose eyes widened a fraction but who remained still. Look at you, Pierce wanted to tell him. Meek as a little lamb now, aren't you?

The procedure continued. Awake or asleep, there wasn't much difference, other than the asset having to take the rubber mouthguard himself. Pierce looked on. The asset's eyes were wide, but he hesitated only for a moment before he opened his mouth without much fuss.

Dr Aldridge's hand hovered above the machine's control panel. Pierce wondered if he was going to have to flip the goddamn switches himself.

He looked back at the asset. 'Go ahead, doctor. He knows what he did.'

The machine hummed to life.

Pierce made himself stay and watch, no matter how unpleasant he found it.

:=:=:=:

Once it was all over, Pierce stayed by the asset's side and gently patted away the sweat off his body with a damp towel. The team removed leads, checked vitals, prepared both him and the equipment for cryo. The asset kept shuddering, his eyes utterly unfocused. Pierce wondered if he was still in pain. It should have faded by now. Well, the cryo would take care of that, but Pierce made a note to bring it up with the team afterwards. He didn't want the asset to suffer unnecessarily, after all.

'There,' he said to the asset as he wiped the sweat off his flesh arm. 'It's all over. All over and done with. You feel better now.' The asset didn't answer. He just kept trembling.

Pierce stopped, nudged the asset's chin towards him with the towel. 'Do you remember me?'

The asset's gaze drifted past him, but still he nodded, even if it did look like a twitch.

'Good. Do you remember what you did wrong tonight?'

The asset stilled. His eyes drifted towards Pierce, away again.

'Me neither,' Pierce said, which prompted the asset to shake his head. 'Never happened, gone, dead and buried. We're square again, all right?'

He reached up with the towel to wipe the asset's tears away.

:=:=:=:

At the end of August, for their fifteenth meeting, Pierce arranged a surprise for the asset. After being defrosted, assessed, and dressed, the asset followed him, a little warily, into the room at the bank where Pierce had ordered the table to be set and readied. The staff had done an excellent job: starched white tablecloth, china and silverware gleaming, even a bottle of wine on ice and another in a cooler. Pierce examined them both. A decent Italian Pinot Grigio and a Bordeaux Merlot of surprisingly excellent vintage.

The asset stared from the doorway and Pierce had to suppress a bout of laughter at the thought of taking him, in body armour and fully armed, to the Tabard Inn or the Senate dining room. Now there would be a sight to behold, a bunch of assholes in business suits fleeing like gazelles.

Maybe one day.

'I know you don't eat as often as—well, I guess not often,' Pierce said as he began to unpack the meal he'd brought from the Occidental Grill. 'I thought you'd appreciate a change up from field rations.'

Did the asset even remember the last time he'd been in the field? Pierce very much doubted it. Still, the correct way to feed himself had probably been conditioned into him with Zola's sci-fi tapes. Pierce placed a few slices of fillet mignon on the asset's plate. The meat was rare enough for the juices to be pink.

'Come on, sit down,' Pierce said. 'You want an appetiser? Their crab cakes are amazing.'

The asset didn't answer. He just sat on the assigned chair, seemingly at ease—Pierce had paid close attention to the asset's physical evolution as much as to his mental one—but in reality ready to spring into action at the smallest sign of danger, at the sight of a threat.

Or upon an order.

'We actually have a mission to discuss,' Pierce said as he uncorked the white wine and poured himself a glass. The asset looked at the bottle. 'No, none for you, it's not good for your head. You'll have some water.'

Pierce had made his way through a crab cake and half a glass of wine before he spoke again. Meanwhile the asset had done nothing, said nothing. Once in a while he stared at the food on his plate. It had been six months since they'd first met and Pierce had turned forty-four, but the asset was still in his twenties. The asset was always in his twenties.

He had begun to wonder if some of Zola's cruelties had been done out of boredom.

'It's a retrieval mission. Some people are being held in a location only you can reach and we want them back alive. I'll give you the full picture.' He stood up to help himself to the main course. 'The targets to be acquired are scattered throughout a number of secure locations. Each location is heavily guarded. You cannot be seen under any circumstances. Any witnesses are going to be hostile, and they're to be eliminated on sight. There will be a small team of operatives to actually take the targets to their transports. You will not interact with this team unless it is strictly necessary. And you must not under any circumstances let yourself be captured alive. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' the asset said, blank as ever.

'Good,' Pierce said, and explained the mission a little further. A much simplified version of things, of course, but the asset reacted well to these childish notions of good guys and bad guys, much like he did to discipline and punishment. 'Come on, eat your food. You don't want it to go cold.'

The asset picked up his fork and tentatively ate a new potato, then grabbed the knife and sliced a sliver of fillet mignon with an awkward motion—Pierce wondered if he was far more used to doing it to human flesh, with a combat knife—before placing it in his mouth.

He began to choke almost instantly. Pierce got up, but by the time he made it across the table, it was all over. The asset was on all fours on the floor, gasping but breathing, his chair overturned.

'Come on. Come on.' Pierce made him sit up. The asset flinched. 'What, I'm going to punish you for choking? Here, drink some water. Slowly.'

The asset still managed to dribble some of it down his chin. Pierce stood up. 'I should have realised. I should have realised you'd find a way to mess this up.'

There was no answer. He hadn't expected one. The asset's head hung down, his hands on the rug. Pierce dragged a chair in front of the asset and sat down, then placed his hands on the asset's shoulders.

'Look at me. Look at me.' The asset obeyed. 'I'm worried, you know. Maybe I was a bit… abrupt. I have confidence in you and your work, but you have to understand that the people I report to don't. They don't think you can carry out this mission. They want to get rid of you. And if this mission fails, if you're not ready, that's what will happen. You'll be gone. And then I'll be gone too, probably. Is that what you want to happen?'

'No. I—retrieval mission. All targets to be acquired.'

'We'll see, won't we?' Pierce said, and stood up. He picked a linen napkin off the table. 'You know, I got to say I'd rather have a hot dog at Yankee Stadium, if I'm being honest.'

Something flickered in the asset's expression but it was gone in an instant. Good. Pierce tossed the napkin at the asset. 'Clean yourself up and come downstairs.'

:=:=:=:

'So how are things going with our frosty friend? Three more months and we'll have ourselves a spare freezer.'

Pierce had just come from a National Security Council meeting and he was still a little light-headed. Harrison was in shirt-sleeves. He always worked up a sweat after a session tormenting baby House members.

'The clock only started ticking in March.' Harrison snorted derisively at that. Pierce went on. 'Wheels are going up for his first mission at the end of the month.'

'Abroad?' Harrison poured himself a gin-and-tonic. His office's liquor cabinet was always well stocked. 'Maybe you should have him knock over a few 7-11s first, work his way back to the big leagues. So what's the plan?'

Pierce told him.

Harrison nearly choked on his drink. 'Jesus, Al, are you fucking insane?'

'I've just come from the NSC meeting setting up the official operation. The asset will be working under their cover, of course.'

Harrison drained the rest of the gin-and-tonic. 'So I guess being a nut is catching. This isn't personal for you, is it, Al?' Drink or not, his gaze was as sharp as ever.

Pierce was not a man who got angry often. Right now he felt molten lava splash his insides. 'Leave her out of this, Harry.'

'I meant staying on at the DoS. Who knows, maybe make it to Secretary of State. How are your kids, by the way?'

'They're all fine.' He sounded smooth as always but he was only a fraction mollified. If that. 'Alice is doing well at the SFS. Wants to go to law school after that. Abby is just starting fifth grade. Horse-mad.'

'Good. Send my regards to your family. You want to be President, Al?'

'Never crossed my mind.' That wasn't entirely truthful—he had wondered, of course—but it wasn't entirely a lie, either. He was an ambitious man, but he'd never understood power for power's sake. Power was a tool, like any other. All that mattered was what you did with it.

'You could be, you know. Young, well-liked, solid background, movie-star good looks… Heck, if by some fucking miracle this little Middle Eastern adventure doesn't blow up in your face, you're halfway there.'

'I don't want to be President.' He held Harrison's gaze until the other man looked away. Did Hydra want a President, or perhaps have one already? It sounded like too much effort for too little reward. Who wanted to be the puppet when you could pull the strings? 'And the asset is ready. He will do it. And he will pull it off. No miracles required.'

'Except the miracle of better living through chemistry, I guess.' Harrison leaned back in his chair, opened his mouth, closed it again. A little of the tension in the room ebbed away. Pierce felt his shoulders relax. He hadn't realised he'd been tensing them. 'You know I'll have to speak to the Baron.'

'I know.'

'And what will happen if this goes belly up. Not just to the asset, I mean.'

Pierce looked up at the wall above Harrison's head, then back to the senator. 'If this goes belly up the asset will be the least of our worries because he will have put a bullet in his head, swallowed some cyanide, or flipped his kill switch. We're all grown-ups here, Harry.'

'Yeah? Never mind the kill switch. With the stuff you want him to do, you should just open him up and shove in some C4.'

:=:=:=:

No C4 was necessary.

The press conferences lasted all day, the meetings and the television coverage lasted well into the night. The phone calls kept coming, the news tickers spat out yards of paper. Pierce couldn't remember the last time he'd felt like this. His first mission with S.H.I.E.L.D., he thought, taking out the would-be bomber at Idlewild Airport. The air bubbled. He felt too big for his skin, and like he'd be able to fly through sheer force of will. He lost count of how many times he was patted on the back. Someone spilled champagne on the Oval Office floor.

'Yeah, I just bet the tensions will be escalating, asshole,' Harrison yelled at a TV screen. Everybody in the room—senators, interns, congresspeople, typists, Secret Service—was watching, jumbled together regardless of rank or affiliation. 'Enjoy your own land war in Asia. Hear that's going around.' That got a big laugh.

'Deputy Secretary Pierce, man of the hour!' Harrison said. The room burst into applause.

'No, don't applaud me,' he said, once he could make himself heard. 'Don't applaud the President, either, that'll just embarrass him.' More laughter. 'The credit goes to all of you. And most of all to our men on the ground.'

Harrison stepped in for some back-slapping.

'Hail Hydra,' Harrison whispered into his ear.

'Hail Hydra.'

It sounded less silly now.

It was only in the small hours that he managed to fit in a quick trip to the vault. By then he had fielded two calls from Director Carter and three from Nick, the first one while he was still at Dulles, and had instructed Linda to phone his wife and let her know he wasn't sure when he'd be home. There were no phones in the vault, and the bank was shadowy and quiet. No reporters, no camera flashes. The glory was still with him, but he felt his mind settle and cool down. Even the air smelled somber.

Above him the city spun on, like it always had, ignorant of the secrets inside it.

The asset was in his chair, being examined after his mission. His hair was matted, his face still streaked with grime and dried blood. He stared straight ahead, neither helping nor hindering, his gaze dreadfully sharp. He was still wearing some of his body armour, and Pierce thought that this was what the dead had seen during their final moments on earth. This thing, masked, eyes hidden, darting swift and terrible towards them like a great white shark. One of the engineers proceeded to open the metal arm's casing, exposing wires and mechanical parts that made crackling noises when he touched them. The star was a splash of scarlet on the asset's shoulder, and Pierce hoped fervently someone had caught a glimpse of it and lived long enough to birth rumours about it.

'How is the asset?' Pierce asked. 'Any damage?'

'Nothing substantial,' the team leader said. Lee, Pierce recalled. On Tuesdays, it was Dr Lee. 'There was a stab injury, but it was mostly healed by retrieval time. Some minor injuries beyond that. The arm is fully functional.'

'Good. Once you're done, knock him out, wipe him, and stick him back on ice.' Pierce turned to the asset, who had said nothing all the while. 'Mission report.'

It had been a while since the asset had done this, and when he got the words out, they sounded rusty. 'Mission successful. All targets acquired and recovered. Threats eliminated. Witnesses eliminated. I—' He faltered. His eyes drifted away from Pierce, clouded with confusion.

'It's all right. Hey. Look at me. It's all right.' Pierce leaned down so their eyes would be level. 'That's all I needed to hear. You did well. You saved lives.'

The asset blinked. 'Saved. I saved them.'

'Yes. Yes you did. And one day the world will know what you did for it, and will be thankful. When it's all over.' He would have patted the asset's shoulder, but even though there would be a thorough washing before he was put back into cryo, right now he still stank of sweat and grime. 'I am very proud of you.'

Pierce straightened up. The asset's flesh hand reached out, then fell back on the chair.

'Don't worry,' Pierce said. 'I'll stay with you until you're asleep again.'

He did stay for a while.

:=:=:=:

When he made it back to his office, he found a piece of paper on his desk, undated, unsigned. He picked up the paper, examined it. The paper stock was heavy and expensive, the words written in a flowing hand with a fountain pen. Other than that, there were no further clues.

Congratulations on your success, Deputy Secretary Pierce. You have picked on an interesting thread. Unfortunately so far it has only led to the personal files of our late friend and other dead ends. Did you know that Professor Weiss used his old serial number as his access code? What a remarkable thing to do, wouldn't you say?

All of a sudden he felt the weight of a gaze on his back. He spun around, but there was nothing at the window, only the night and the city's lights, the winking eye of a plane drifting across the sky.

TBC…

Author's note: Bucky's first mission for Pierce is the fictional AU version of a real event (there are actually other instances of this in the fic). Since the outcome and obviously Bucky's involvement are made up and this is a recent event, I've disguised it a fair bit, but there should still be enough clues for anyone who wants to work it out (i.e., anyone who is as sad as I am ;)). Also, another bit of tl;dr meta, feel free to skip: I confess to being always surprised when I come across the idea that MCU!Bucky's conditioning was all science fiction/applied phlebotinum, because, um, it's really not? (I'm talking purely about canon here, because if fanfic isn't for stories about Pierce controlling Bucky with psionic implants so he can go take down the Enterprise in Planet Unicorn, I don't know what it's for! :D) I mean, yeah, obviously the bionic arm is pure sf as is a lot of other stuff, and as you can tell from this fic, I think Zola's approach involved all kinds of weird drugs and Clockwork Orange-style machines etc. But Pierce in CA:TWS? Yeah, there are all kinds of contraptions in the bank vault scene, but if it were about that, then Pierce wouldn't need to show up, the scientists would just flip the right switches and be done with it. Instead, the scientists take it as a given that Pierce has to come in to regulate the Winter Soldier's emotional state. The machines are just window dressing, what matters is what Pierce says and does to Bucky, and every second of their interactions, including the ones at Pierce's house, frankly comes across as though Pierce read Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? with a highlighter because he mistook it for a life-coaching book. And of course in my personal interpretation, for all that he's about ~science~, Zola is actually no slouch himself at abuse, manipulation, and gaslighting, see, among many other examples, all the bits in Part I in which Zola tells Bucky how much he is ~predisposed~ to become the Winter Soldier, which is just a (slightly) more sophisticated way of telling him he was totally asking for it, and then Zola's actual selection process in the previous chapter. I hope Pierce and Zola have kept their amateur status, because they'll be killing it in the Messing With People's Heads Olympics.