Chapter Text
Codenames: The Asset, Winter Soldier, and the Fist Of Hydra was looking at the museum piece on Steven Rogers: Target, Codename: Captain America. He tried to remember as he looked at the skinny man alongside another version of the same man but large. The writing explained the super serum. The Asset knew he had a version of the serum. Was Rogers former Hydra? The museum seemed to suggest the opposite but he had seen Rogers before. Memories of the bridge blurred with screams of the name “Bucky” twisted with the confused “Bucky”.
The same voice in an alley muttered “I had’em on the ropes”. Trying to dig deeper was an ice pick to his brain. It pulled him back to the task at hand.
The Asset was staring at a visage that reminded him of the reflection he saw in car windows or on particularly shiny metal. The eyebrows reminded him of the sight of his own over his mask in the occasional mirror he encountered on missions. The writing named this person leaning against Captain America as Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, or “Bucky”. It was clear why Captain America addressed him as such. The ice pick in his brain dug deeper.
He turned his head away from the exhibit, catching on someone who was trying far too hard to be nonchalant. They must be new. Hydra operatives had started following him early yesterday, not long after he stumbled his way out of the river. None were familiar. It was unlikely they worked for Pierce, another head then. He hadn’t only worked for hydra. The redhead from the bridge reminded him of other times. He worked for the Russian’s too. And obvious, as proven by the pictures before him in the Smithsonian.
Hydra was angry with him, he was sure of it. The punishment and subsequent Cryo was inevitable, but he needed answers. He had memories of the Target from before his time in the Red Room. It was shortly therein he started to be wiped. The Asset knew the longer he was off ice the more his programming fritzed, especially once he was moved to this particular branch of Hydra. The Commanders lacked the triggers for some of his early programming codes. His missions had become more and more focused on assassinations rather than training other assets or espionage. At least from what he could remember in his Swiss cheese brain.
Letting them take him in wasn’t an option. He needed to confirm whether Steve was a fellow asset, a handler, or a target. The Asset had been ordered to take out other handlers and assets before, but only when they had betrayed Hydra. If this target, the one who called him Bucky, the one he felt compelled to drag from the river after trying to execute him. He derailed Pierce’s plan. The news seemed to be unsure what side Captain America was on as well. He needed to find out.
The Asset’s attire was stolen from a small tourist stand on the edge of the Potomac and his utility pants were taken from one of the operatives that got too close. Several knives were conveniently tucked in pockets and a few guns he had scavenged from a cache in the city with a stack of cash added to his collection. He tried to throw his tail on the way to the museum but it wasn’t enough. The security guards were encroaching and he could see a few potential agents coming from the first exhibit. Of course they would look for him here. He had to run.
Delaying the inevitable meant delaying the pain. Maybe, if he could find the answers and hunt down the Target, he could find freedom. Or forgiveness. That meant hunting down Captain America.
He ditched the tail outside of the museum, taking off through a parking garage and out onto a busy street. Then the Asset carefully trekked north, stealing a motorcycle and getting from D.C. to New York. Crossing the bridge drew a strong feeling of nostalgia in his chest. It took nearly an hour of assessment of his own reactions and the unfamiliar sensation of emotions to name the feeling.