Whoa, before I posted this chapter, this thing had more views than words. I'm surprised how many people are reading this.
I'm pretty sure this site had that glitch where it didn't email out chapter alerts when I posted ch 5 on May 9, so if you didn't see that, go back a chapter.
As soon as he hears the footsteps (he should have heard them earlier) the Soldier vaults over the bed to grab the rest of his weapons while simultaneously pulling out some of the knives stashed on his body.
The screen is now reporting the weather as if he can't just look out the window and see that it's rainy, with clouds indicating a good chance of a storm coming.
Potter is still hiding in the wardrobe. The Asset opens the door. The boy evidently does not realize what is happening, has not heard the footsteps. Had he been listening to the news? Had he understood the news about his relatives' demise? He had seen the house explode when the Asset took him, but does not seem to understand that the Dursley's are dead and he will not be returned to their care.
Potter smiles up at the Asset, still clutching the animal crackers. Why does the boy keep smiling at him? Why do smiles do weird things to the chest?
The Asset is about to lift the boy out, but glimpses the figure outside the bedroom window out of the corner of his eye. It's a man, armed with a gun. The Soldier does not recognize this man.
The man aims the gun at him through the window. The Soldier shuts Potter back in the wardrobe instead of pulling him out, and orders the boy to stay in there until further notice. He is almost certain the boy will obey. The boy is not perfect at obedience, but he has stayed put whenever the Soldier told him to.
Fighting without Potter in his arms will be significantly easier, Potter is safer in the wardrobe.
The Asset presses up against the wall by the window, trying to get the best tactical advantage against whoever is outside. He sees a black van parked at the other end of the lodge, near the window by the fireplace in the large sitting room. Presumably the mysterious man's. It is not the car that the Asset stole at 0140 this morning, or the car the escorts had been in. Even his enhanced hearing did not detect the sound of it driving up, just like he hadn't heard the footsteps over the noise of the news report and his internal battle until just a few seconds ago.
Dealing with the man outside will be easy. Simply jump out the window, block some bullets with his metal arm, take the guy out.
Return to grab Potter and the supplies. Relocate.
RETURN TO BASE. DELIVER HARRY JAMES POTTER.
The plates on the Soldier's prosthetic arm shift. He's a highly trained assassin, he will not lose to the man outside the window. The man will not harm Potter.
The Soldier grabs his gun in his flesh hand.
марионетка
A code word has been given, but not from the man standing on the other side of the glass. It sounds like a recording being played back at a loud volume.
Code word accepted.
It is not the total reset, which requires a string of words. Ordinarily, he would need to obey whoever gives it, but it is a recording, not a person.
The Asset pauses without lowering the knife.
The front door of the lodge is busted open. Four more people swarm in- three men, one woman- all brandishing guns and shouting. None of them are the Asset's normal handlers, nor are they the escorts who had been sent with it before being incapacitated by the enemy asset with the weaponized stick.
The recording is still playing on loop, and some of the men are shouting the word too.
"Marionetka, marionetka!" They shout with the recording. The pronunciation is not vastly different from the English translation of the word, but they all have British accents and clearly are not fluent in Russian.
The recording is not of these people. All the same, they have the code word and are therefore superiors, even if the Asset has no recollection of ever seeing them before. Perhaps they are local sleeper agents for HYDRA.
It is not the Asset's place to question who they are. The Asset only needs to obey.
"Soldier, stand down." One of the male agents says, in English, still with a British accent.
An order. An official order.
OBEY.
The Soldier stands down. It follows orders, as it is meant to do. For the moment, the Soldier is functioning within acceptable parameters, unlike the past 13.5 hours.
Despite the fact the Soldier has lowered its weapons and is standing obediently and submissively, the agents eye it warily.
"Look at this." The bearded man scoffs and gestures towards the food. The box of animal crackers is still sitting on one of the tables in the dining area. His eyes fall to the bedroom.
"The Asset was going rogue. Trying to hide with the boy. Like he likes the stupid kid." They are talking about the Soldier as if he is not capable of hearing them, or not present in the room. This is common.
The bearded man is correct about the Asset malfunctioning. He is incorrect about the boy being stupid.
"Good thing they put a tracker in the the metal arm." A blond man- not at all like the one from the strange visions- says, glancing at the appendage. It is currently visible, as the Soldier is not wearing the stolen hooded sweatshirt.
So that is how they found the Soldier. He hadn't known there was a tracker in its prosthesis, but there was no reason to be told. A weapon doesn't know what its made of.
"Shut it." One of the other agents hisses at the one who'd muttered about the tracker, as if that was classified information. Will that agent be punished for revealing it?
The Asset is not permitted to do anything with this new knowledge of the tracker. He certainly isn't permitted to remove the tracking device, not that it would be easy to remove from his own prosthesis.
After he is wiped, the Soldier will not even remember there is a device in the arm.
"What did you do with the other escorts?" The woman demands, standing 3.3 m away.
"An enemy asset seemed to petrify them with a weaponized stick, which allowed him to do things like teleport. The escorts were useless to the mission when they were incapacitated." The Asset reports tonelessly. "The enemy asset was successfully neutralized with little damage to the Asset." The Asset does not fetch the weaponized stick from the backpack for them, but gestures to it. They seem worried about the gesture, as if it is the start of an attack.
"Why are you here?" The bearded man questions, but before the Asset can respond, the female follows up with a second question.
"Where is the Potter brat?"
"Wardrobe." The Soldier murmurs. Part of him does not want to provide this intel.
One of the agents, the tall one, strides into the bedroom wrong bedroom, mutters something about "even watching the bloody telly, who does he think he is", and yanks the wardrobe door open.
Inside, Potter tries to stifle terrified noise and shrink into the corner of the wardrobe, obviously wanting to disappear. The agent reaches in and picks him up. Potter stiffens fearfully in the man's arms, and the animal crackers he's been clutching in his bandaged hands crumble apart and fall to the floor.
The tall agent brutally pulls Potter's messy black hair away from his face to confirm that there is indeed that odd lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. One of the highly-identifiable traits of the target, the Soldier had been told at the briefing.
The boy's eyes green well up with tears, and he lets out a quiet gasp. It's obvious he's experienced with pain from his time with the Dursley's. Not only is the tall man yanking on his hair, he's also jostling the abrasions from the beating the boy had received last night.
"Stop." The Soldier does not know why it says it, but stop is what the false mission in the head is blaring. The Soldier is not allowed to give orders, except perhaps to the boy. But he says it to the superiors in the room, and the metal arm's plates shift again, as if preparing for a battle the Soldier is not allowed to fight.
"Stand down!" The man holding Potter sounds very worried. Perhaps they think he took out the escorts. But he is not capable of completely immobilizing people like the enemy asset. The man is not holding Potter the right way.
The child reaches out towards the Soldier.
"M-my Sol-der... keep me s-safe?" The words are choked out in little more than a whisper.
It is not an order. The boy cannot give orders, he is a target, not a superior. Why does the Soldier want to comply?
Get the boy, the unofficial voice once again gives orders in the Soldier's head.
"Shut it, you." The agent holding the boy gives the child a rough shake. Some of the tears in the boy's eyes start to leak out.
"There are abrasions on his back." The Soldier's hands twitch forward as if to take Potter from the tall man, but he stops himself and keeps them at his sides, where they clench into fists. Why are they clenched? He has been ordered to stand down.
The other people, even the man still outside the window, all aim their guns at the Soldier's head and shout at it. This is also nothing new, and a good idea. This way, they can put the Soldier down, or incapacitate it, if it malfunctions and attacks.
The Asset's prosthetic arm whirs, plates shifting. The fist clenches tighter. It wants to swing out, grab Potter. This is mission non-compliant. It is disallowed.
"Marionetka." The bearded agent doesn't quite stammer, but it is close. Coward. "Marionetka. Stand down."
The boy is still reaching out towards the Asset, a pleading expression on his face. The Asset's arms twitch in the boy's direction.
"He's not yours." One of the men tells the Asset, actually speaking directly to it. "He's HYDRA's."
The boy belongs to HYDRA, just like the Asset. It is none of the Asset's concern if the boy is hurt.
The mission was to deliver the target, Harry James Potter. The Soldier did not complete it.
Failure and defects are inexcusable. There will be correction.
The body remembers previous corrections, but there are no overwhelming images in the mind to accompany the phantom sensations of burns, beatings, simulated drownings. The experiments testing the limits of the Soldier's healing, electroshock treatment, the Chair.
Especially the Chair.
Respiration and heartbeat increase 20%. The body trembles slightly.
The Asset tries to be still as ordered. It deserves correction for failing the mission.
"Hands behind your back." The blond man who is not from the visions barks, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. The Asset complies, feels the cold metal snap around his flesh wrist. He does not feel it on the prosthetic arm.
This position means the Soldier will not be able to hold Potter as he was made to do in the escorts' car. The tall man is still holding the boy incorrectly, still touching his injured back. Potter is crying silently, but seems to realize the Asset cannot hold him with cuffed hands.
The fists are still clenched. At least the agents are smart enough to administer the cuffs behind the back, rather than in front, where the Soldier could more quickly malfunction and grab them in a choke hold. The voice giving the new, unofficial orders, tells the Soldier to do just that.
The Soldier is physically capable of breaking through the restraints, but it doesn't. It stands with its hands cuffed behind its back.
"Just reset him. They gave us the words."
RESET REQUIRED.
The bearded man glances down at a sheet of paper he produced from his pocket.
"Zhelaniye... Rzhavyy, Sem-nadtsat'..."
The Soldier knows the words. They increase respiration and heart rate by 13%.
"Rass-vet... Pech'..."
They make the mind think of a book. The man does not have the book, but he has the words, even if he stumbles a little over the pronunciations.
The mind slowly grows quieter, for the first time in over twelve hours. No more warring missions. There is only one set of orders. This is how it is meant to be.
The Soldier's fists unclench, and its muscles relax.
After the tenth word- "grusovoy vagon", грузовой вагон, Freight-car- the Soldier is completely still.
The head is quiet, soon to be filled with a mission. It stares at the handlers, awaiting orders.
"Soldier?"
"Ready to comply."
Sorry... but maybe everything isn't totally hopless...? Or is it? (also, HYDRA would have to be morons to not have some kind of tracker in his arm... I don't think they did in the movies, though. Otherwise they would've grabbed him after CA:TWS)
I only used the internet for the translations, so there's a chance they're inaccurate. And switching between the phonetic spelling and the actual spelling was intentional.
In response to a few reviews...
rachel (guest): Of course I've read owlet's "This, You Protect" and the whole "Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail" series. Many, many times, even though I only discovered that gem of a series in December. If anyone hasn't read it, I cannot recommend it enough. And you kinda hit the nail on the head, I think my version of Bucky's inner monologue was inspired by that. (I'm not sure if he's dissociating like he does in that fic and a lot of other fics I've read).
A lot of people have asked if I'm going to employ a time skip... I do plan on using them.