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nicholasistrying · 2 months ago

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The Winter Soldier's Spare

“Soldier?”

“Ready to comply.”

The HYDRA agent nodded slowly, closing the leather-bound book nestled in scarred hands. He placed it on the table next to the Soldier, walking around the weaponized chair with an arrogant breeze about him.

“Mission report: May 4th, 2012. Target: Michael Vasquez. Quiet neutralization. No witnesses.”

He materialized in front of the Soldier, leaning down to try and meet his cold gaze. There was nothing there, just a pale face and a hard set jaw.

“Relay.”

“Mission report: May 4th, 2012. Target: Michael Vasquez. Quiet neutralization. No witnesses.” He echoed, voice devoid of any emotion.

“Excellent.”

–

Things went sideways almost immediately.

For one, there were aliens appearing from the sky. The Soldier had seen a lot, most of which he couldn’t remember, but it didn’t hold a candle to the creatures reigning hell from above. The com in his ear buzzed with frantic Russian, staticky and breaking out.

“Sold–” Static. “F–” Static. “–ait further instructi–”

There was a loud explosion before the line went dead. He clenched his jaw, glancing around. He’d been stationed at a coffee shop, waiting for the target to roll down the street in a white BMW.

By now, the place was deserted. Why wouldn’t it be after aliens fell from the sky?

For some reason, they steered clear of him. The Soldier was glad, although he wasn’t really sure what that felt like. Maybe relieved. Spared a few bullets.

Screeching came from the telltale sound of wheels against grated concrete. His head jerked in the direction of the sound. Before the comms went dead, they’d been following the target’s vehicle with a tracker. No word had followed, but that didn’t mean he could abandon his mission. They’d extract him when they could.

He shrugged off the disguise they’d supplied him with, a green PVC jacket and a cap, and bounded toward the sound of screeching rubber. After wrestling with a duffle bag, he pulled out the Heckler and Koch, the familiar groove of a handle settling into his palm.

“Rita! Rita!? Open your eyes! Please, oh please, Lord, please for the love of God open your eyes!” The Soldier’s mind ran a mile a minute trying to decipher the language. Spanish. “It’s going to be okay! It–The tire popped, that’s okay! Rita, baby, we’ll get to a hospital!”

The right side of the car was being crushed by rubble from a fallen building. A woman lay face down on the dash, unmoving. The front windshield was shattered, giving the Soldier a complete view of his target.

He was injured. Busted lip and a bleeding nose. Still, nearly identical to the image they’d seared into his brain. Black, close cropped hair. Tan skin. Moles underneath his eye and in the corner of his chin. He was young. The file had said 26. Married, with a kid.

They didn’t tell him why he had to kill this man. They never did. Sometimes there was an item he had to retrieve, files or a weapon. Sometimes he had to bring them back alive. Most of the time, though, it was killing. Lots of killing.

Michael Vasquez, the target, managed to move his bleary vision to the Soldier’s fast approaching figure. It took a moment to process before he began to fight with the seat belt, spewing out pleas in rapid Spanglish.

“No– No, no! I didn’t tell anyone– I told them I wouldn’t say anything–” The Soldier was five feet away from the car, lifting up and cocking the gun. His face was obscured by the mask and goggles, but evidently, the target already knew who he was, and who he was sent by. “Please! My wife! She’s–She’s injured and–”

The Soldier pressed down on the trigger. One shot, right between the eyes.

Michael slumped forward in the same position as his wife. The Soldier eyed his surroundings. Aliens were still flying from above, although most of them seemed to be heading toward the busiest part of the city, where Stark Tower rose above New York. The streets were clear. No witnesses.

Mission successful. If he tried to focus, there was the smallest ember of pride in his gut before it was snuffed by a sniffle.

His head snapped to the car. Michael. Dead. The wife. Dead.

Silently, he lifted his boots to walk around the half-decimated car, shadow casting menacingly over the back door.

Metal on metal screamed as his left hand yanked the back door clean off. The Soldier was met with big, teary eyes.

A child, no older than maybe eight stared back at him. Terrified, scared shitless.

His handler’s voice echoed in his head, surly Russian laced with arrogance. No witnesses.

No witnesses.

The Soldier gripped the gun with both hands, lifting it to the child’s head.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. Didn’t say a word. The kid went cross eyed staring down the barrel, perhaps wondering why the Soldier wasn’t firing.

He wasn’t sure his damn self.

Morality, maybe. Whatever was left of it. Whatever HYDRA would manage to get out if he didn’t kill this kid. This witness. He’d seen it, after all, right? The Soldier’s figure, his father’s begging, the bullet’s exit point through the headrest.

Why wasn’t his finger moving? Why could he not complete the mission?

His mind reeled. Had he ever killed this young? Teens, sure. But not a child.

Too long. He’d been thinking too long, too much about himself, about his past. The kid was still there, unmoving, now staring straight at the Soldier. Shit.

Faster than he could comprehend, the kid was gone. He fired at the empty seat, not even stumbling when something appeared around his midsection. Tiny arms, barely able to connect around his back, and a face smushed directly into his stomach.

Violently, his world blurred for a second. Memories, distant, foggy, almost nonexistent, pried at a part of his brain HYDRA had meddled with. Bony hands and arms. Cherubic faces of childish glee. Smiling and laughing. Happiness.

When was the last time he was happy?

He?

Who was he?

“Thank you.” The child’s voice was slightly muffled by the Soldier’s leather vest, Spanish falling clumsily from a mouth with missing baby-teeth.

“Soldier!?” A new voice. His comms were back online. “Mission status?”

“Complete.” He grated out. His hands–hand. His hand was shaking. The flesh and blood hand. Why did he only have one?–“Ready for extraction.”

“Extraction en route.”

The Soldier stayed perfectly still, taking in his surroundings. It was quiet, now. The sky had gone dark for a moment, but the mission came first. He didn’t have time to worry about the alien invasion. The child was still wrapped around his stomach, not saying a thing.

He was dressed hurriedly, in a rush. A too-small jacket over a ratty shirt and even rattier jeans. He didn’t wear shoes, just mismatched socks with holes in them. The Soldier couldn’t see the child’s face, but he had dark hair and tan skin like his parents. Nothing else identifiable.

Desperately, he tried raking his mind for more details about the target’s file. The wife was an immigrant, naturalized nine years ago. The child was almost nonexistent on the documents, if memory serves correctly (it probably didn’t).

Criminal records. The Soldier knew the target wasn’t innocent. Several charges of child endangerment and reckless abandonment. This was the victim in question.

His eyes zeroed in on a kid’s backpack laying on the floorboard of the car. Multicolored, over-the-top, exactly the kind of junk a parent would get their kid for daycare. At the top, there was a clear slot, displaying a sloppily written name on the piece of paper behind it.

Oscar.

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nicholasistrying · 2 months ago

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steve rogers and his gay son (stucky edition)

"Steve, you know it's legal now, right?" Oscar gazed imploringly at the man across from him, who was busy thumbing the ring of his mug.

"Steve?" "I know, Oz. I don't know why you're bringing that up right now." The compound was quiet. They were the only ones home. Natasha was in the city doing gods-knows what. Tony was with Pepper in their cabin. Bruce was in Mexico. Clint was MIA. Thor was...somewhere.

Everyone else was Blipped.

Oscar glanced around, then looked back at Steve. His head was dipped, sitting with an uncharacteristic air of indignity. "...You know exactly why I'm bringing it up." He leaned across the table to try and get in Steve's face. Silence. It was suffocating. They weren't the best at talking with each other, but after the year they'd had, it was slowly becoming easier to talk about their feelings. Slowly. Very, very slowly. "It's wrong." Steve managed to force the words out of his mouth. Oscar rolled his eyes. "So Alex and I are 'wrong'?" Steve picked his head up, blue eyes suddenly alert. "No. No! No, not you two. You guys are...You're- You're not...wrong." "Neither are you, Steve." "I'm not anything."

He shook his head. Oscar gnawed on the inside of his lip, debating on whether he should or shouldn't press the subject. The last time they'd gotten into an argument over similar subject matter, he'd run away and been kidnapped and tortured for a few weeks.

Well, might as well get everything off his chest if that happens again.

"You loved Bucky." Steve's eyes locked onto his own. They were pleading, desperate for the kid to be quiet. Oscar pressed forward. "And you can say all you want that Peggy was your 'number one girl' and that you loved her, but all you're doing is lying to yourself, Steve." "Oscar." "You loved the idea of Peggy. The idea of having an ideal marriage. The idea of not being judged for loving someone. But you know that's not true. You- Have you seen the way you look when you talk about Bucky? I swear to God, you smiled harder talking about him pounding your face in than when you adopted me!" The man's expression fell a little. His eyebrows furrowed. "Really?" "That's not the point. You- You get this look on your face. You get all starry-eyed, and you light up. You don't look like that when you talk about Peggy."

"He was my best friend."

"Alex was my best friend, too. And now he's my boyfriend. Because the way you feel for Bucky, I feel for him."

Another shake of the head. God, he was difficult. Steve stood up, grabbed his mug, and brought it to the kitchen sink, washing it out. Oscar turned his chair around to face him, twiddling his thumbs.

"You put the shield down for Bucky." Steve turned the faucet off and stood at the sink, hands on the counter. "Twice."

"I'm done talking about this, Oscar."

"You split your team for Bucky."

"I'm done."

"And you don't think he feels the same?"

"He doesn't."

Steve didn't yell. He wasn't loud. His voice was just firm, resolute in what he was saying. Oscar flinched at the tone.

"He doesn't feel the same, Oscar."

The teen didn't say a word. Steve was admitting it, not to him, but to himself.

"Growing up, Buck was...He- He was a catch. All through our childhood, he'd have girls falling over their feet to be with him. We got older, things stayed the same. He's not...He doesn't like men. Not like that. And now it's...After HYDRA, I don't think he'll ever be in the right headspace for something like a relationship."

"Maybe not with someone who doesn't understand." He was choosing his words carefully. Having Steve open up like this was rare. "But you do, Steve. You understand being a man out of time. Working for a dirty organization. Losing almost everyone you love.

I've never met him. But I can bet that he felt the same way you do. And not just attraction. I mean the internalized homophobia, and the gaslighting yourself into thinking you're not what you are. I was the same way. And y'know what?" Steve turned his body to face Oscar, jaw clenched. "I used to think those same things. Then I met Alex. And he sat me down and had...pretty much this exact conversation with me. It took me meeting someone secure and confident in himself to make me realize what I was and how I felt about him. And for what, almost eighty years...you didn't have that. And now you do."

They stared at each other. Steve's expression might've been indiscernible to an outside viewer, but Oscar knew better. He was fighting a war in his head, throwing neurological shields and dodging bullets thrown by the critical side of his brain.

"Why are we even talking about this, Oscar?" He finally settled on asking, crossing his arms and tilting his head as he leaned against the sink.

A pause. "Because you were reading the book on yourself. And you had page 34 open."

Captain America: A National Time Capsule. One of the most renowned works of written history in their time. It was up there with the Starks' autobiographies and the Bible.

Page 34. Steve Rogers' Early Childhood: James 'Bucky' Barnes.

There were two chapters dedicated to Bucky. One at the beginning of the book, and one toward the middle. When Oscar had to read the book for school, he realized why Steve never read the other chapter.

The book was written in 2013, a year after Steve was brought from the ice. And it was a year before he'd find out Bucky was alive. In the book, he was dead.

Oscar figured Steve didn't want to stare at the obituary of his...whatever Bucky was to him, so page 34 was frequented instead.

There was a picture of Bucky smiling at the camera. It was taken amid World War II. He was dirty, his hair scruffy and shirt sloppily unbuttoned, but he was smiling. There were a few others behind him, the Howling Commandos, but they had their own separate chapter. For Steve's biography, Bucky got a chapter all to himself.

Oscar didn't mention the fact that he'd sneak a peek at Steve's sketchbooks and find pages upon pages of Bucky staring back at him. 1940s Bucky. Winter Soldier Bucky. Bucky in Wakanda. A mix of all three. Occasionally, there might be a still life, or maybe a drawing of Natasha, but it was too far and in between to make a difference.

He also didn't mention how Steve would take him on trips to Washington just to visit the Smithsonian, where there was not only a dedicated portion of the Captain America exhibit to Bucky, but videos and audio recordings of him. While Oscar pretended to be interested in Steve's past, his eyes would watch as the man gazed longingly into a video of him and Bucky, at a future they'd never have.

"Steve?"

His blue eyes were pointing to the floor. Maybe Steve knew that Oscar had seen all that. Maybe he'd done it on purpose, desperate for someone to finally confront him about it. Either way, his expression changed. Oscar knew what that meant. Their conversation was about to be over.

"There's no point in realizing that now." He mumbled, voice low. "He's gone."

He walked off, leaving Oscar sitting in the kitchen alone.

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