Chapter 16: Reopening Old Wounds

AN: I want it to be known that this story is not going to be abandoned. It's just going to take a while to get finished.

With that said, this chapter is going to be the start of the very darkest parts of this fic, so if you are young or easily triggered, this is your ONLY Warning. I might change the rating to mature or teen just to be safe.

This is a Steven centric chapter arch, where we see just how damaged HYDRA and the Red Room left Steven, even years later.

Let's just make it clear: for all that Steven it technically a Baby Boomer, he grew up so fast and lived and was raised in a War camp, and later fought in the War; I think that makes him Part of the Greatest Generation, and like all of them they are of the school of bottle-it-up-until-you-explode mentality about trauma. Steven did have some serious mental help for a while, as a necessity, but with Bucky being taken and Steve coming back and the Battle of New York, he's having some issues coping; understandably. So that said, Steven is acting in the extreme right now and falling back onto his old habits because he is dealing with things he'd rather be left buried.

So with that little explanation out of the way:

On to the Fic

Steven had been waiting for it to happen. Hoping praying, dreading that it would happen even, but for what it was worth, he still was stunned to silence when Jack walked into his office, an innocuous tan file in hand and placed it on his desk; not on the file stack of in-box work, on his desk, the bland printed words in red stamped Urgent on the cover. Steven looked up at his boss, after glancing at the cover for a startled second, and saw the look of painful resolve on his face, the determined but sad glint in his eyes. Steven turned away from his computer, writing the report could wait; if Jack had put this file directly on his desk then it was important enough for his full attention. Steven cautiously and slowly picked up the file before opening the folder's cover. A sick twisted cold wound up his spine and a cold burning fury began to burn in his breast as he set eyes on the pictures of the three that got away; three Red Room officers that had disappeared off the radar so well that even he couldn't find them, and the Three Red Room/ HYDRA agents that he wanted dead above all others.

The first was the image of a man in his mid-fifties at the time it was taken; it was poor quality, grainy and black and white rather than color so possibly from the seventies, but Steven knew it was taken in 1980 because it was the last time he had any Intel on the man. It was taken with an old camera so as to throw off the date, but Steven knew this man intimately, and knew just how old he was. The Programmer: Nikola Zhukov, a Class four series 10 telepath with an ego to match. He had got inside Steven's head and made sure that HYDRA always had a door in. He was the Red Room's chief conditioner, or in his and Bucky's case, Re-conditioner. The man had created the Winter Soldier and the Winter Knight, and he was the one man responsible for turning both Steven and his Ada into the Assassins/Boogie men they had become. The man knew how to reprogram any mind he attached himself to, and could twist Steven up into knots just thinking about the sessions he spent under his "care". Steven wanted nothing more than to rip his mind apart and watch him scream, before putting a bullet in his brain.

The next one was of a woman in her mid-twenties, but the photo was color this time, also grainy but from a cheap Polaroid possibly taken in the seventies, but Steven knew it had been taken in 1984. She was a severe looking woman with her dark blond hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head. If it weren't for the fact that she was a sanctimonious psychopath, with a classic textbook case of narcissism and a God complex, she might have been pretty, but Steven knew that her beauty was skin deep. Inside that woman was a rotten soul. The Doctor, they called her. Doctor Ekaterina Potemkin, though he doubted she kept that name, she'd always hated it. She was the Red Room's foremost expert in genetic manipulation and reproductive science; she was also responsible for the Red Room's Project Rebirth, the experiment that had eventually created Yasha. She was also the doctor that had extracted and fertilized Bucky's egg before implanting it. Ekaterina had her fingers in a lot of pies, not limited to genetic engineering but also even cloning. Those projects never saw anything further than the preliminary stages, but still, Steven was sure that she would clone him or his Ada if given half a chance. Odds were that HYDRA would have if she defected, as he had suspected, when she up and vanished right before the Purge. She also had a fondness for vivisection, of which Steven was one of her patients. He wanted nothing more than to rip her lungs out.

The last one had his breath stop cold and the phantom pain of a whip slashing across his back made him flinch and his hands grip the papers so tight he threatened to rip it apart. The Controller: Mikhail "Misha" Eukheriovich, former Soviet Colonel and second Handler in the Red Room. The man was Pure Communist hypocrisy at its worst. He liked the finer things but would rather spend other people's money to have it. He had come from a long line of Handlers and was the last in a line of Controllers that knew all his triggers, his Ada's Triggers and even the Widow's Triggers and codes. For all that his last handler was harsh; Vasily Karpov was kind in comparison to Misha and his Hellish Punishments and discipline. For all that he was a cold bastard and taskmaster, Karpov never went out of his way to hurt them; in fact Steven had every reason to believe that it was Karpov that had found out what they had done and put a stop to it. But for those ten years he was in control, Misha was his tormentor and made his life a living hell.

Steven looked up at Jack and saw the pity and grief in his eyes as well as the regret, and Steven knew his own must be complex mixture of pain, rage and fear. The CIA assistant director sighed and rubbed his eyes rather than meet Steven's gaze.

"How long," Steven asked after a long minute just silently reading Jack's thoughts. The aging man sighed and his shoulders drooped.

"We just got word on Mikhail today," Devinson said, "Ekaterina… it's been a month." There was shame in Jack's stance, in the slope of his shoulders.

"And Zhukov," Steven asked through gritted teeth, his eyes blazing with fury, his nostrils flared as he tried to keep his rage in check. "How long," Steven asked his voice as cold as ice. Then that ice turned to fire as he hissed through gritted teeth when Devinson didn't immediately answer, "how long, Jack?!" Jack flinched and hung his head.

"Six months," Devinson said, and Steven recoiled as if he were slapped in the face, a look of abject betrayal in his eyes as it warred with his fear and anger. "We didn't know where, just that he was here. We only got the word on his location this morning."

"You lied to me," Steven accused, his voice trembling with betrayal.

"No, I didn't lie," Jack retorted, as he looked up, his shoulders squared and his eyes hard, geared for a fight.

"Yes, you did," Steven snarled softly, his eyes hard and filled with tears. "I asked you every day if there was something new, if they'd found anything, and you lied to me; for six months!" Tears ran down Steven's face betrayal and rage warring for dominance alongside grief and guilt. "I could have saved him six months ago, if you'd just TOLD ME!" Steven roared. Jack weathered the storm of Steven's fury for a full minute of silence before he spoke.

"If I had, you would have torn this city apart to find him," Jack said cold resolve hardening his features. Steven snarled but sat back, fuming as the little objects littered around the office began to levitate and dance around the room. Jack eyed the eclectic selection of knives rattling on the wall with trepidation, but steeled himself, refusing to be cowed be Steven's display of power, or rather his current lack of control in his rage and guilt. "You would have turned it into a blood bath, and HYDRA would have gone deeper underground, and I would have been forced to put a kill order out on you!" Steven recoiled, his eyes blown wide as the objects flying around him suddenly dropped to the floor.

"You should have told me," Steven said, tears running down his face and the truth of the words struck home. "You know what they did to me," he said softly, his voice almost a whimper. Old pain and guilt flowing freely across his face just like his tears, as the wounds of the past were opened and his shame lay bare. "What he did," Steven sobbed and choked on his admission, before his face hardened in righteous fury again, "you had no right to keep this from me." Devinson sighed, his whole frame sagging with grief, but his eyes still full of resolve and compassion.

"I didn't tell you because we didn't have all the intel, yet," he said, "and I wasn't going to give you incomplete data for something like this." Steven looked at his boss in confusion, his brow furrowed, as he took in Jack's defeated yet resolved posture and determined and guilty eyes.

"Whaddya mean, Jack," Steven asked. Jack sighed and looked back up at his best Analyst, hating himself for doing this but it had to be done.

"I'm giving you this now because the Director gave it the green light," Jack said. "The Winter Knight is being reactivated." Steven's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. For all that he was a telepath and psychic, he never would have seen this coming. "You are being given permission to find the targets and take them out. Remove anyone that gets in your way, with lethal force if necessary. The dossier brief will fill you in." Jack turned to leave but stopped in the doorway, "for what it's worth, I was against doing this from the beginning, but you are the only one we have that can take them down with minimal collateral damage." A cold lead weight settled into Steven's stomach as realization set in.

"I'm gonna have to burn my identity," Steven said softly, as he looked up from the file spread across his desk. Jack sighed and nodded.

"If you have to," he said. Jack closed his eyes in painful resignation, defeat rolling off his form in waves. Though resigned to losing him he hardened his heart and looked back at Steven's sad form. "Just do what you have to do, Steven. Get these bastards off our streets. I don't care how you do it, I don't want to know; just get it done." Steven nodded.

"I can't be your liaison anymore if I do this," Steven said quietly. Jack's eyes closed as a little bit more broke inside him, for his friend.

"I know," Jack whispered.

"This means no more Captain Buchanan, Jack," Steven said with an air of regret. Jack turned and saw Steven gazing longingly at the photo of him and Captain Rogers from a few months back. "He'll hate me." He said, his voice almost broken, as his eyes glittered with unshed tears. "I don't know if I can be him all the time. I don't know if I can deal with it anymore." Jack swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. It was times like these that he saw just how fragile Steven's sanity and his grip on his will to live was; Strip away the persona of the confident proud Army Captain, and you had a traumatized soldier, a kid really, who'd been abandoned and left to fend for himself, and badly used by people who should have never had their hands on him. what was left was a man with more emotional scars than physical ones, and Steven had a lot of physical scars, but mostly it was his feelings of abandonment that really made things painful to watch; because anyone with a set of eyes could see that there was a good man underneath all the scars and rage, a good man who was scared to loose what little love and respect he had clawed back for himself even with a false name.

"I know, son," Jack said. "I know. All you need to know is in the dossier. Just read it and if you have any question's come right to me, okay?" Steven nodded and Jack left, a cloud of regret and guilt hanging over him like a thunderhead.

Steven in the mean time spent the next three hours reading the file and bringing him back up to speed on these three monsters. Even with the looming threat of burning his identity, Steven wanted nothing more than to put these three in the ground. They had been on his list from the beginning, and all throughout his rampage across Europe and the Soviet bloc, he drove himself to find them; but he never did. Turns out he now knew why; they'd escaped not long after Steven and, well, Michael, destroyed the Siberian base. Steven wanted nothing more than to be sick.

It only takes a moment for Steven to decide that the "Good" Doctor is to be his first target. Ekaterina had two sons, and both of them had followed in their mother's footsteps. Experts in their fields of reproductive medicine, but underneath the veneer Steven recognized the fields of their study and their understanding of genetics for what it really was: Human experimentation. The file of the two men was almost as big as their mother's, and Ekaterina had a rather impressive file. The only reason that Steven could logically deduce as to why they still had their licenses to practice was their work was for HYDRA and anything that was unethical was covered up. The Eldest had a penchant for gene-splicing, trying to add other animal genes to human ones to find the perfect combination that would yield the perfect soldier, while remaining human in appearance. The younger was into cloning, and not just any, human cloning. The man wanted to see if he could take an already good genetic specimen and augment that through selective gene alteration in a clone; all of this with the perfect soldier in mind. Genetic modification of a clone was wrong on so many levels, and the methods he was using in conjunction with his brother's made for some sick and twisted reading.

Steven knew that their research was HYDRA funded, as was their mother's, so by removing them he knew that they would no longer be committing crimes against nature. Not only that, Steven suspected that with their fields of study and practice, one of them, perhaps Ekaterina herself, might know where HYDRA was keeping his Ada; that above all else was his primary goal. Gathering evidence against HYDRA from the Doctor and her sons would just be one more nail in the coffin against the shadow organization.

While Steven wanted nothing more than to rip Zhukov's mind to shreds, the old man could wait. Aged though he was, he was over 80 at this point, the Programmer was still dangerous. If Steven didn't fortify his mind ahead of time he could fall prey to one of his old triggers. There was no one alive that could rip through Steven's mental shields as quickly and efficiently as Nikola Zhukov could. The man had gotten his hooks into Steven's mind before he had properly learned to build shields, and thus Steven was especially susceptible to him and his mental attacks. He was the reason Steven would instinctively slam down on his mental shields every time he so much as felt a brush against them.

Dangerous as he was, Zhukov was old now, and feeble; making him a rather laughably easy mark, despite Steven's susceptibility to his telepathy. The old man was in a rest home, suffering from liver failure and lung cancer, a result of his love of fine Cuban cigars and high quality Russian Vodka. His only protection was the security at his rest home, and while it was good, it wasn't Steven good; and it would be laughably simple to get in and get out. Not only that Zhukov had no family left, a result of driving away what little kin he had left on this earth, or their own deaths at his hands when he was younger. The thought made Steven smile, just a little bit before he turned his attention to the last two on the list.

The dossier on these two were thicker than the others and once he opened them, Steven had to swallow back his bile once he saw the SHIELD stamp on the younger of the two's files. It took him a moment to wrest back his anger and disgust before he opened the first file. Steven's breath caught in his throat when he saw the picture of Mikhail. He was older, and fatter, than he remembered, his once carefully groomed jet black hair had gone completely silver and his hairline was slowly receding, but Steven could never forget that cold detached look in the Controller's icy blue eyes, so pale they were almost lavender in some lights. There were lines on his face, and splotchiness to his cheeks that spoke of his excessive indulgences in wine. Steven's breath finally shuddered out in a trembling huff, half laugh half sob. It made sense that Misha would be fat now. The man loved to indulge in the finer things, just not on his own dime, and while he was in the Red Room he barely had the chance to do that, low as he was in the power hierarchy. He may have controlled their assets but Eukheriovich was not Lukin. It seemed that now, with money and power to back it up, (not his own, never his own,) Misha had indulged and his once trim waistline suffered for it. Steven's lips pulled into a feral grin, all teeth and viciousness, as he read the report on how they finally tracked him down. Steven had always warned the man that his fondness for that particular type of wine and meat combination would get him in trouble.

Oh, how he wanted to make the pig suffer! After all that twisted sick bastard put him through, the last thing Steven was going to do was make it quick. Oh, no; Misha's death would only come after he made him spill every last secret and only then after he made him watch as he destroyed everything that he cared for.

But Misha, for all that Steven's hate for the man burned with the fires of Mount Doom, was an afterthought compared to his son. Nickola was a twisted psychopath even when he was a child, and he only got worse as he got older. He went from a borderline personality to a truly twisted Narcissistic personality with psychopathic tendencies. He enjoyed seeing Steven in pain and took pleasure in being to one to make him feel it, emotional or physical. Misha had been training Nickola to take over his position once he was old enough, and gave him power over Steven in a way that even his father didn't realize. The pain and suffering the man had put him through when he was a teen, emotional and physical, had left scars on his body and psyche; and had cemented a cold burning hate towards the man he had become.

And it seemed that he had every right to hate the man. The file Jack handed him on the younger of the two Russians was twice as thick as his father's and Misha's was not insubstantial in size. What it contained was a perfectly assembled list of names and pictures of young athletic blond men, between the ages of twenty to thirty, the majority of them being young college students. Their profiles were similar yet different, but with one common factor: they were all missing persons that had disappeared around the same time Nickola was seen the area; and they all looked like Steven. Steven had compiled the profiles on Nickola and Misha himself, and he knew a pattern when he saw one. It seemed that the man that had profiled this did as well: Nickola was a sleeper serial killer. Steven recognized the behavior profiling style to be more FBI than Agency, and concluded that this was something that Jack had stumbled across recently enough to recognize the same behavioral patterns from this Un-Sub file to that of Nickola's own psychological profile. The worst part about this was that Nickola, or rather, Nicholas now, was a true believer; HYDRA to the core and as such they covered for him, and the fact that this glaringly large file had gone unsolved for as long as it looked this was, meant that HYDRA was covering for him. They buried this case file as deep as they could, and still Jack found it. That either said a lot about HYDRA's competency or about his boss' skill at detecting buried evidence. Steven preferred to think that his boss was just that good.

As Steven perused the file he came across a line of information in Nicholas' personnel file from SHIELD that made his heart both sink and his spine straighten: it seemed that the sick bastard had gotten married to a fellow SHIELD agent, not HYDRA SHIELD, and they had a child. A boy of fourteen named Alexander. The SHIELD file on the boy was pretty slim, as was the HYDRA version, but Jack's had an addendum that both lacked: he was a Mutant. Steven suddenly and fiercely felt a well of pity for the boy, rise within him. Nicholas had never made it a secret just what he thought of Steven being a Mutant himself, and so he knew just how scared of his father he must be. A long look at the kid's picture solidified his instant resolve to spare the boy and his mother. both more than likely suffered in silence under the man, as Steven knew intimately just what kind of abuses Nickola could heap upon a person; emotional and physical.

Misha and Nickola will know his wrath before he is through, Misha more than his son. Nickola may be a loyal and fanatical operative, but he never could control his impulses enough for his father to trust him completely. Misha would know exactly what Steven wanted to know, and thus he would bear the full weight of Steven's brutal justice.

After a long minute staring at the files and plotting exactly how to kill each one without getting exposed before he wants to, Steven set down the files on his desk, took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair, before burying his face in his hands. He choked back a sob of helplessness, before running his hands down his face and taking a deep breath to regain his composure.

"Why," Steve asked, to himself or God or heaven, he didn't know. "Why me," he pleaded softly. "Of all people, why did you give me these gifts, this power? Why would you dangle this… t… duty in front of me now, when I'm almost me again? Why… why can't the past just die? Why must I be haunted by it?" Tears welled up in his eyes before he looked at the clock on his desk. It read just after 6 pm, and if Steven wanted to get any semblance of rest he had to go home. The thing was, he wasn't sure where home was any more. Home was with his Ada in their house in Brooklyn, but without him, it wasn't home anymore; it was just a house. His DC apartment was not much better, but Yasha bunked with him when not on missions, and Jonathan sometimes stayed over, so at times it felt like home. But without his Ada's warmth and his presence it felt cold and lonely.

Regardless of his apprehension, Steven packed way the files into his briefcase and left for his apartment but what he found, when he got there, was not what he expected. Instead of his little brothers lounging on his couch playing video games, or eating his food, Steven turned into his kitchen to find Arion, his father, sitting at his table; his expression full of sorrow and resigned.

"Dad," Steven said softly, his face writ with confusion. "What are you doing here?" a bittersweet smile pulled across Arion's lips.

"I had work in DC," he answered, "I wanted to come see my sons." Arion came close and placed his hands on Steven's biceps, running his hands up and down the arms in a soothing motion. His head was down, and his eyes were thoughtful and sad.

"Dad," Steven said softly, "what's wrong?" Arion looked up and Steven saw a pained look in his father's eyes; a knowing look, one resigned and sad.

"Jack called me, Steven," he said. Steven froze; his whole form stilling and his expression closing off. "I know," Arion said, and there was no reproach in his voice or eyes, just resigned sorrow. There was slight relief there as well. Arion knew just what a festering wound of pain and rage those names were to Steven, and this was the only way to lance it and finally let it drain.

Steven's face crumpled as he dropped his briefcase and curled into his father's form with a wounded whimper, his face tucked into Arion's shoulder as the grief and pain finally overwhelmed him. Arion felt tears on his shoulder dampen his shirt, as Steven clutched to his father for dear life.

"I don't know if I can do this, Dad," Steven confessed into Arion's shoulder. Arion squeezed his eyes tight in pain before releasing that pain to simply hold his son.

"You will," Arion said firmly, in a soft voice, "you will, Steven. I know you will." Steven sobbed and shook for a moment.

"I don't know if I'm strong enough, Dad," Steven said as he pulled away to look Arion in the eyes. "What if I snap?" he confessed, "What if my mind splits again? Xavier said that under enough pressure and strain it could happen again. I don't want to be like that again." Arion held Steven firmly and guided him towards the sofa.

"You're going to be alright, Steven," Arion said and held up his hand to stop Steven from speaking. "You are so much stronger than that. You know your limits. You know your pressure points, your stressors. I have no doubt that you will bring these people to justice. I have faith in you, my son." Steven's face crumpled a little and a brittle smile pulled across his face. The smile quickly fell with the knowledge of what was to come. "What is it?"

"I'm going to have to burn my identity," he said, "it's the only way this is gonna work. I don't know… I …" Steven bit his lip in confusion and frustration. "I don't know if I can do it. I've spent so long hiding, using that cover, being Captain Steven Buchanan, that I … I don't know if I can shred that, and be … him … all the time." Arion put a hand on Steven's cheek and thumbed away the tears that had gathered there.

"You will," Arion said. "You just have to be yourself. It isn't hiding, or acting really if you are just yourself." A grateful smile pulled at Steven's lips as he sagged back into Arion's embrace, curling into his arms to simply be for a while.

TBC…

End Notes: sorry this took so long. I just had no motivation or time to write. Life got in the way and I just didn't write. I will try to be better and update more often.

Next up: Being a Role Model