7.

1986

'I promise I'll get Andersson off your back, Nick.' It was only a matter of waiting long enough, Pierce thought. The asset didn't leave any clues behind, unless it was in Hydra's interests for him to do so. 'You want another coffee?'

'I'm good, Al, thanks.'

At work, Nick was usually a stickler for formality, and he peppered his words with Councilman or sir. But they were in Pierce's home, sitting in his study under the crisp light of a September Sunday, and therefore he was as close to relaxed as Director Fury ever allowed himself to be.

'So, those Triskelion plans,' Pierce said. Nick hadn't brought them with him, which Pierce found sensible. There could be prying eyes anywhere, especially in the places you least expected.

'How long for you to get the Council to take their heads out of—the sand?'

That was one of the things Pierce appreciated most about Nick: always down to brass tacks.

'Don't worry too much about the Council, we're all too busy proving we have our hands clean in this Contras mess. You could probably sneak a bomber past them. Not a stealth bomber, either.'

'Are they?'

Pierce drank the last sip of his coffee. 'Are they what?'

'Clean.'

Pierce chuckled. Nick joined him after a fraction of a second. Well, insofar as Nick was capable of chuckling. He cooled quickly and picked up his thread of conversation again. 'I just don't want a hatchet job on the front page of the Post about the secrets of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s HQ. Or whatever they'd call it. Probably something catchier.'

'If it gets out—'

The corner of Nick's mouth twitched in displeasure. 'When it gets out.'

Another of his great qualities: preparing for the worst mattered a lot more than hoping for the best.

'Fine, Nick. When it gets out… There are still all kinds of ways of looking at things.'

Nick looked at him, doing that thing he did when he dug a hole of silence and waited for other people to fall into it. Pierce went on. 'You heard about New Delhi?'

The other man cocked his remaining eyebrow. 'Yeah. I heard about New Delhi.'

Of course he had. Not for the first time, Pierce wondered if he should put some of the cards on the table. What a valuable addition to Hydra Nick would be. He always ended up deciding against it, almost against his will. Some people did their best work unknowingly.

'There was a reason they were at Camp David, Nick. Collective security—'

The phone rang. Pierce sat still for a second, waiting for Laura to pick up, then remembered he had let Abby go roller-skating. Her mother had taken her to the rink. 'Excuse me one second.' He rose from his armchair to take the call in the study's extension.

'Alexander Pierce.'

'Hello. Hi. Umm.' It was a woman's voice. He didn't recognise it. 'This is Potomac Pest Control. It's about—it's about the call-out.'

His blood turned to cold sludge.

'Sorry, I'm afraid you've got the wrong number. … No problem. Bye.'

That had been the code saying something had gone wrong with the asset. Something bad enough for them to call him at home.

Nick waited two seconds before resuming the conversation. 'An intelligence alliance with a non-aligned country. What's the Kremlin going to say, Al? More importantly, what are they going to do?'

Pierce stepped away from the desk, collected as ever, slight smile on his lips. Nick wasn't able to sense his heartbeats, he told himself; that was beyond even his powers. 'This is bigger than us and the Soviets. Or smaller. Seventy thousand nuclear warheads? You and I both know that the real threats aren't about governments anymore. They aren't about armies. All it takes is one man with a plan and the will to see it through. And—' He pretended that another thought crossed his mind. 'You know what, Nick? I'm going to make myself another coffee. You don't mind, do you?'

It was the eyepatch, Pierce knew. It made Nick's face even harder to read, and made you think you saw things that weren't there. 'Go right ahead.'

He didn't hurry as he moved downstairs to the kitchen, and he took the time to get the coffeemaker started before he picked up the kitchen extension and dialled a number he knew by heart.

One, two, three rings.

The coffeemaker rumbled away.

On the sixth ring, someone finally picked up. 'I told you not to call me here,' he said in a thorny whisper.

'Sorry, Mr—'

'No, don't use my name. What happened?'

'The, ah, he was hit—' It was the same woman from before. She drew away from the handset on her end and Pierce could hear her panicked breathing. There were noises on the line. He couldn't make them out.

'Are you still there? Come on, answer me.'

There was a rustle as she picked up the phone again. She spoke too loud and the handset was pressed too hard against his ear; she almost startled him. 'He was hit. It was a grenade. Or—something. I—they patched him up and cooled him at the rendezvous point and flew him back in, but—

Oh god.'

She wasn't speaking to him. Far off, on the other end of the line, he could hear yelling. There was a pop of sound, maybe a shot.

'Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone,' he hissed.

'I think I'll have another coffee after all.'

Pierce pressed the handset to his chest. Nick's voice, in the upstairs landing. God, sometimes you just wanted to fit him with a bell.

'If you don't mind,' Nick added.

Pierce stepped as close to the corridor as the phone cord allowed. 'Of course. Cream, no sugar, right?' The woman's voice poured out from the headset, muffled against his shirt.

'That's right.'

He ducked back into the kitchen and resumed the call. 'Did someone shoot him?'

'No. I—I—'

He knew what this was: shock. If he let her, she was going to keep stammering on the phone until the asset was dead. 'Listen to me,' he said, kind but firm. 'What's your name?'

'Gerber. Gerber-like-the—'

'OK, Gerber. Do not let anyone harm him, do you understand? Whoever's in there waving guns around, tell them to stand down. Those are my orders. Put him under—no, I don't care about the risk, he can take it. Tell them to put him under and tell the guards to stand down. Go do that now, Gerber. Now. Go.'

He put the handset down on the counter and went to the kitchen door. 'Be right up, Nick.'

If Nick answered, Pierce didn't hear him. He was already picking up the phone again. 'Talk to me, Gerber. Did you put him under?'

There was a small sound of hesitation, or perhaps panic, then she spoke again. 'Yeah. Yeah, he's almost under.'

'Good. Good job. You did well, Gerber. Is he fixable?'

'I, umm, I don't know.' She was tongue-tied again.

'Gerber, is he fixable?'

'They're just starting work on him, and… Do we terminate if he—'

'Christ's sake, no. Make sure everyone does their jobs. I want him in shape, do you understand? If you can't do that… just stabilise him. I'll be there as soon as I can.'

He hung up, took the coffees up on a tray. His hands didn't shake.

Come on, Nick. Clear out so I can go.

But of course the two of them weren't done, not yet.

'You know, the H in S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for homeland,' Nick said, not without a dollop of humour, then added, 'And I trust you're not going to give me the root causes lecture.'

'No. I'm just going to ask if you think we can afford not to think globally?' He stirred a little milk into his coffee. Grenade? Since when wasn't the asset capable of tossing grenades away like tennis balls? He looked Nick in the eye. 'I think you know that more than anyone.'

Nick picked up his cup. 'Go on.'

'No more near-misses. Pinpointing a threat before it even becomes a threat. Because you and I both know that these days, by the time we pick something up in Islamabad or Panama City, it's already in New York. By the time we pick something up in Seattle, it's already in D.C.. And if we ever pick something up in D.C., it'll be when it's already too late and we're picking through the pieces.'

'I'm well aware, Al.' He kept stirring his coffee. The noise of the spoon against the china was getting on Pierce's nerves.

The Gerber—what kind of a name was that, anyway?—woman had brought up termination. Termination, of all things. How badly injured was the asset? Past the point of salvage? He drank his coffee, which was still very hot but settled cold in his stomach.

His skin felt itchy.

'You're talking about Insight,' Nick said.

Pierce had changed the algorithm's name before feeding the materials to the right R&D team. Trust Zola to have picked something like Argus.

'You heard about that?'

Nick took a sip of his coffee. 'There isn't anything inside S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't hear about. Even when all there's to it is some slides from J3 and some pie-in-the-sky theorising.'

'And you prefer to keep both feet on the ground.' A shared sliver of a smile. The asset healed better and faster than ordinary people, but how much better? If he lost more parts, could they be replaced? 'I'm not going to pretend I understand the technical details. But if one day we had the ability to gather enough information to use it… I don't want to beat my enemies, Nick. I want to know who they are before they become my enemies.' He made a gesture before Nick could speak. 'I know, I know. The root causes lecture. I'm just saying that's what we both want, isn't it?'

The asset, alive but too damaged to be of use, stored in a dusty warehouse until technology yet to be invented could repair him. Frozen, out of reach.

Stop thinking about it. He'll read it in your face.

No, of course he wouldn't.

'If,' Nick said, his solitary eye still and knowing. 'You know, I never liked that word. Always seemed to have too much hidden in two little letters.'

A ring. No, it wasn't the telephone again, just some car noise from outside.

'"When" is better,' Pierce said. A flash of memory: he'd been one of the first people to see Nick after he'd lost the eye and the other man had made a sharp-edged joke about seeing it coming.

'You know why I joined S.H.I.E.L.D., Al?' Nick said, his tone flat. 'To protect people.'

Pierce took another sip of his coffee. 'People like saying "peace through strength". I've never thought it was about strength. It's about freedom. Freedom from fear.'

:=:=:=:

Two hours. It was almost two hours since the call. Trust Nick to want to discuss details of things that didn't even exist yet. He'd turn every stone in search of a frog, or a land mine.

He didn't recognise the woman who stepped forward to meet him inside the vault.

'Are you Dr Gerber?'

Her eyes were wide. With her features and her auburn hair, she reminded Pierce of a panicky fox. 'Yes. Gerber-like-the-baby.' It sounded like something she said automatically. 'We—'

'Where is the asset?'

'I think the surgeons are done with him,' she squeaked. 'He should be in recovery now. I—ah, I'm a biochemist, I don't—'

Pierce could see signs of a struggle as they moved to the back of the underground complex. There was a spot on the floor where broken glass and blood still hadn't been cleaned up. 'What happened here?'

'The asset, umm, attacked one of the guards. We had to send him to a hospital?' Her eyes widened a little further, looking for reassurance.

He nodded. Nothing ever got done here, or at S.H.I.E.L.D. in general, without at least one or two cover stories, and if worst came to worst, loose ends could always be cut off. 'We did meet before, Dr Gerber.'

The woman stopped.

'The meeting last year in New Mexico.'

'Oh. Right. I—'

He ignored her and made his way to the little surgical room near the back. He hadn't had many reasons to go there before. It was used for when they needed to fiddle with the attachment for the asset's arm, or patch something up before they stuck him back on ice, or when the asset needed something inserted or removed. Pierce had never concerned himself too much with it. He'd never even been into the small cubicle where they had him scrub and put a ridiculous paper gown over his suit, even though the asset could fight off most infections. Still, he didn't mind the precautions.

If it would help save the asset.

The asset had done his damage inside this room as well. A pile of spilled instruments had been swept into one corner, a nurse pressed some ice against a black eye. The commotion was over now. The team was clearing away sheets and gauze and surgical trays soaked with blood. A surgeon appeared at his side and began to drone on, verbose with nerves.

Pierce ignored him, and sat down by the asset. The flesh wrist and both ankles were cuffed to the sides of the bed and the lower portion of the metal arm was wrapped inside some kind of plastic that was too opaque for Pierce to make out anything other than a charred shape. The asset lay covered by a green sheet spotted with blood, lumpy here and there where it sat on bulky bandages. An anaesthetist worked away on him, adjusting valves on the tangle of drip bags connected to the asset's arm, unhooking the oxygen mask muzzling him.

The asset's face had been shaved recently and there were dark bags under his eyes. Pierce supposed that made the asset look younger, but maybe that was just his own age talking. The asset was in his twenties. The asset was always in his twenties.

It had been six and a half years since the two of them had first met.

He never forgot an anniversary.

'Can he be repaired?'

'There was quite a lot of damage to his left leg and lower abdomen,' the surgeon said. 'No irreversible damage to any major organs, happily. I've been told the arm should be fully functional after the engineers have replaced whatever needs to be replaced. But as for the rest…'

'You don't know yet,' Pierce said, not bothering to turn around.

The asset made a weak noise and his eyes rolled under the lids as the anaesthetist removed the tubing from his mouth and throat.

There were only a few cuts and faded bruises on the asset's shoulder and the exposed part of his chest. He healed so fast.

'Is he waking up?'

'He should be, yes,' the anaesthetist said. 'I just need to figure out the morphine dosage as…'

Pierce didn't listen; he already knew the asset was different from ordinary people. He waited, not daring to look at his watch. He didn't know how long it took until the asset's eyes finally opened a crack. Long enough for him to stop noticing the overpowering odour of antiseptic and, underneath, the smell of blood.

'Mission report,' Pierce said, his voice gentle as a caress. He raised his hand almost without noticing and brushed the asset's hair away from his forehead, just for a few seconds, before he let his hand drop back to his lap. 'Come on. Mission report.'

The asset could barely speak. The words came out in lumps. 'Targets… eliminated.'

'And the grenade? You didn't see it?'

'Saw it. Heard it.' He winced, closed his eyes again. 'But the team…'

All this for the sake of trying to shield those people? Good grief. 'I should let you die for doing something like that,' Pierce said, his tone still gentle. The asset stirred again. He was in pain, even with the morphine. The anaesthetist moved to adjust the dosage, but stilled when Pierce looked at him. The asset's eyes widened, but he didn't make a gesture, a sound. Pierce stared at him for a few moments, then looked back at the anaesthetist, and nodded. The man resumed his task.

Pierce might be annoyed at the asset, but he didn't want to punish him, not now. He wanted to reach inside his head, tenderly, and brush all the debris away.

'You'll be fine,' Pierce said, then added, 'Don't leave,' as though that would keep the asset alive.

It would, if it were up to the asset. He would force himself to obey, by sheer force of will, because there was no room for anything else.

Pierce remained by the asset's side as the morphine worked its effect and his breathing evened. He didn't want to lose the asset. It wasn't simply a matter of his usefulness, as large a consideration as that was. There was a tightness in his chest, and Pierce couldn't remember when he had last felt it. Alice in Bogotá, he supposed.

Sometimes the asset would try Pierce's patience. But then there was that moment, every time the asset was taken out of cryo. Before the flesh had warmed completely, when the asset's blood was still sluggish and his skin wet with his birth fluids. His eyes would open, blank at first, just two slivers of oceanic ice, grey-blue, cloudy with confusion and sometimes pain. Then the asset would see Pierce and his eyes would change, sharpen. Turn into compass needles pulled by true north.

To see that, focused on you: Pierce was sure few things on Earth compared to it.

'Don't leave,' he repeated, lower. This time it was an order.

He didn't like to think of the day when it would all be over, and what would happen next.

:=:=:=:

They told him the asset would be fixable.

:=:=:=:

'Wipe him,' Pierce said. He hadn't told the team to knock out the asset first, so they hadn't. He watched the asset's breathing quicken, then the machine started up and the asset sucked in gulps of air in between muffled screams.

He didn't stay for the whole thing. The asset was so infuriating when he made Pierce do this.

:=:=:=:

Harrison had told Pierce the Baron was always punctual, which was a quality Pierce valued, but even so the seconds that stretched after the appointed time felt like years. Neither of them said anything. Harrison had taken his jacket off, and he rolled up his sleeves before he started rearranging the few things on his desk.

Pierce did nothing. He wanted his mind in shape for what was coming next.

Last week he and Nick had talked about the latest work that had been done on the algorithm, and the reports from the data gathering and analysis team Nick had created around it. They didn't belong to any official division or department. Pierce already knew that, of course; the Hydra members in the team had been vetted by him personally.

The phone rang. Harrison let it do so twice before he picked up.

'This is Senator Harrison.' He sounded a little more subdued than usual. 'Yes, I will. … Thank you, sir.'

No mentions of Hydra, of course. This was a secure line, but even so you never knew who might be listening.

He passed the handset to Pierce. 'It's for you.'

Can never pass up an opportunity for a little jab, right, Harry?

'Hello,' he said to the receiver. The plastic felt cold against his face.

'Hello, Councilman Pierce,' the voice on the phone said. Pierce had tried to have no expectations, but he couldn't help but be a little surprised. The voice was smooth, perhaps even a little warm, accent and all.

'It's an honour to finally talk to you, Baron,' Pierce said.

'Oh, no need to stand on ceremony,' the voice said, breezy. 'May I call you Alexander?'

'Of course.'

Behind the desk, Harrison had taken out a cigarette and tapped it against his lighter. Pierce ignored his look.

'I've heard that a late friend of ours left you a very interesting legacy. Or another very interesting legacy, I should say.'

'Still early days, I'm afraid. Of course, if we were sure it'd work, I'd have let you know—'

'No, no.' He sounded amused. 'Please don't worry about that, Alexander. I think the Senator made a—what's the term?—too big a deal out of it. He made it sound as though you were going behind his back on this.'

Smoke curled in the air. The bakelite handset felt slightly slippery against Pierce's hand.

'Nothing like that, sir.' He used his flattest tone. 'I just didn't see the point of reporting anything until I was sure I had something to report. Something that isn't just numbers on a blackboard.'

'Like I said, Alexander, I'm not concerned about that.' Did Pierce detect the smallest tinge of testiness in his voice? 'You and your friend the Senator can sort it out amongst yourselves. It's not really a disagreement, is it? And besides, I think we all know there's not really anything that happens behind my back, surely.'

Trap?

'Of course, sir.'

'Besides, what I really want to talk about is our late friend's other legacy. You've been very successful with it.'

'Yes. He is very useful.'

'I really should have called you earlier to offer my congratulations. And thanks, I suppose. You have such a keen sense of where to use him that most of the time the Senator doesn't even have to tell you.'

The handset should be warm by now, but cold trickled down Pierce's ear. 'I believe he has served our interests well,' he said after half a second, then nudged his piece across the board. 'I would always be happy to hear from you, of course.'

There was a velvety chuckle in response. 'No, I think sometimes it's useful to keep things separate, Alexander. Two heads are better than one, isn't that the saying?' Especially if one happened to be cut off, Pierce thought. The voice went on. 'But some friends of ours—well, I'm thinking of a friend in particular, an oil executive, perhaps you've met him, he knows quite a lot of people. I think he'd like to see our other friend's legacy. I think he'd also have very interesting uses for him. In the spirit of serving our interests, of course.'

Pierce felt his hand squeeze the phone so hard he was surprised the plastic didn't squeak. The thought of lending the asset to someone else made something under his skin curdle. Letting another person step into the vault, or worse, wrapping up the asset like a gift and shipping him off. It made his skin crawl as much as the idea of someone rifling through his private appointment book, or sneaking into his home to inspect his nightstand or his desk drawers.

'Of course, sir.' He did his best to keep his voice warm. 'I'm sad to say it's not up to me, though.'

'Oh?'

The asset being returned damaged.

The asset being returned intact. That was worse. There'd be no clues left on the flesh and skin to tell Pierce what'd happened.

'He's been injured. Hard to say when he'll be ready to return to active duty…'

'Ah, yes, I remember.' Still cordial. 'Afghanistan, wasn't it? What an unlucky place.'

'… and when he does—his mind is unusual. Personally, it'd be easier if he could receive orders from anyone—'

'But he listens only to you, is that it?' The Baron still sounded breezy, but Pierce was sure he could feel the teeth, just under the surface. He didn't have time to think about his next move, though: the voice on the phone was already speaking again. 'I understand. A lot of our volunteers can be like that. Perhaps if our other friend relays his requests through you? I suppose you're a very busy man, though. It might not be too practical. It'd be almost impossible with a man like the Senator, of course, a man of his position. But in any case there's not even a point in talking about it now, I suppose. Though no doubt he will have a speedy recovery.'

The words kept sticking to Pierce's skin. 'No doubt,' he repeated, with a mechanical touch of good humour.

'It was a pleasure to finally speak to you, Alexander. I am sure we'll speak again, very soon.'

He didn't have enough time to unpack the Baron's words. The other man was already adding more.

'I hope Director Fury is doing well. My regards to your family.'

Pierce's mouth was dry. 'Thank you, sir.'

The line went silent, just a faint electronic crackle in the background. The the dial tone came back. Pierce let it wash over him for a moment, before he passed the handset back to Harrison.

'Spill,' the Senator said after a while. There were two cigarettes crushed on the ashtray.

Pierce said nothing, which he was sure was irritating the other man, even though it wasn't a ploy. He felt oddly exhausted by the conversation, but it wasn't that kind of low-grade fuzziness that sometimes happened when you'd been in committee too long, or agenda papers started blurring together. Instead it as though he was back to chasing suspects on foot instead of having a polite phone conversation while sitting in a plush armchair. If he touched his chest, would he find his heart racing, he wondered.

'He wanted to talk about the asset,' he said. He supposed that's all he would manage for a while. Hydra wasn't about leaders, it was about order. The closer you got to the centre, the more you were expected to know what to do without having to be told. You would know how best to achieve the vision. So there were circles within circles inside the Baron's words. Pierce had known that long before he picked up the phone, long before he found the first message on his desk all those years ago, long before he saw the asset's face for the first time, in a black and white photograph where he was shrouded in ice.

Had Zola's algorithm foreseen all this?

Harrison leaned back in his chair. 'I'm sure he did.'

'You know he can't say too much on the phone.'

'I think he can say enough.' His body and voice might be relaxed, but he wasn't, Pierce knew. And he might be too old, too savvy, and too weathered to be jealous, but it was still true Pierce had something he didn't, for all Harrison was at the centre of Hydra's circles for the entire continent. Pierce had something no one else did.

He thought of the asset again, of seeing him emerge from ice and death for the first time. Of that moment between his eyes being closed and him seeing Pierce for the very first time. His eyelids had been so bluish with cold Pierce had wondered if they were frozen solid, and if a thumb pressed against the skin would crack it open.

'He knew the asset was injured,' Pierce said.

Harrison sat up a little straighter and half his mouth pulled up into a grin. 'Of course he did. Just as I knew about your little side project before you told me about it.' Even this close, Pierce could see only a little grey in Harrison's hair, even though the other man was pushing sixty. Did he dye it? He had far more cameras on him, after all, but Pierce couldn't help but see it as a tasteless bit of pandering.

'I thought you weren't going to pull rank on me, Harry,' he said. 'And I don't really like being called on the carpet like I'm some kind of misbehaving child.'

'Come on, Al, let's cut the crap,' Harrison said, and reached for another cigarette. 'We've been friends for what, ten years now?'

'Eleven.'

'Eleven, then.' He took his time lighting his cigarette and taking a long drag. 'And this is the best piece of advice anyone's ever going to give you. Men like us, we spend so long grabbing the tiger by the tail, it can slip right out of our minds. But we should never fuck too much with something that can fuck us back even harder.'

Pierce smiled. 'I wouldn't dream of it, Harry.'

TBC…

Author's note: The Baron's oil executive friend is a shout out to Lukin from the comics. I don't think he really exists in the MCU, since Pierce pretty much takes over his narrative role in CA:TWS, but I thought it would be amusing to bring him up. Especially during Pierce's whole If I can't have him, no one else will thing. The Baron in this chapter is not necessarily the same Baron von Strucker we see in the first CA:TWS teaser. Or maybe he is! But he might not be, since a) Strucker is hardly the only baron in the Marvel universe; b) it's an hereditary title and all. I wanted to leave Hydra's ultimate leadership a bit up in the air in this fic, as I think it works better that way (and they're not exactly a mass movement, obviously).