This is the longest assignment he’s ever been on, months spooling into years.
The iron fist of HYDRA was more accustomed to short-term operations, get in and kill someone with maximum efficiency and then get out,
but when operations require a subtler touch, that’s when the Red Room gets involved. HYDRA’s assets combined with the chameleonic wiles of Dreykov’s widows, their social manipulation: each wife embedded in an American home paired with muscle, their hulking soldier-husbands parcelled out like human weapons.
Hers is handsome and polite, and he barely spoke that first year at all, behaving more like a mute automaton she could order about: Fix the spare tire. Replace the light bulbs. Get rid of this dead body for me.
But the more time they spend away from headquarters, the more time that he spends on this assignment and isn’t reset, his brain thaws—
Her husband slowly seems more human. Social graces are necessary, of course, to maintain their cover: he learns how to smile, how to carry on a conversation. The first time they dare to host a backyard barbecue, it’s as nerve-wracking as if it were a white-knuckle mission, but he manages it. Cracks jokes with the other husbands. Their life goes on.
And then, today.
The soldier returns home with a heavy slope to his shoulders. He smells of gunpowder and blood. Finding his young blonde wife in the living room, he drops a duffel bag on the floor, and wearily settles on the sofa next to her with a sigh. Knee bumping against hers; his thigh warm against hers through his jeans.
His head is tipped back, looking at the ceiling.
He knows the shape of her and yet he doesn’t. He’s slept in a bed beside her for years. They’ve kissed, for show — a chaste peck on the lips in front of neighbours or colleagues — but he doesn’t steal a kiss if no one’s looking. He’s pressed his fingers into the meat of her leg to dig out a bullet, but doesn’t know the kind of noises she’d make if his fingers were inside her otherwise.
This, this is their marriage.
“Long night,” Jonathan says.
(Whatever name was redacted from the Winter Soldier’s original files, decades ago, he’s just Jonathan now. Jon. That’s the name on the passport, the fake driver’s license, the mortgage papers. They never breathe the name Yelena Belova between them, either. They’re not allowed to.)
“There was an idea,” the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine says. “The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more.”
There’s a sardonic edge to her voice as she echoes Fury’s now-famous speech. Bucky wonders, distantly, how the world found out about it, but Steve said it had happened on a SHIELD helicarrier and there’s probably audio and video recordings. SHIELD famously monitored and recorded everything.
See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could.
He’s been dodging the Contessa’s calls for a while, but he can’t really afford to avoid the CIA director’s attention; not when she’s armed with government connections, able to dangle his ongoing pardon like a carrot on a string. And Sam had said Keep an eye on her, which is how Bucky’s now here, at this meeting, at an eye-wateringly expensive Manhattan restaurant. An entire private room’s been booked out for them.
It’s an eclectic group milling around beforehand. He’d glowered in John Walker’s direction, radiating such constant withering hatred until the other man finally looked away, awkward. The quiet, dark-haired woman introduced as Ghost looks like she wants to fade into the background, a wallflower disappearing into the wallpaper.
They make for a strange party before the last three of their number arrive, all Russian: a tall, burly man with his arm slung paternally around a blonde’s shoulders (a familiar blonde), before she wriggles out from under his elbow. There’s another dark-haired woman behind them, scarred expression silent and stony-faced as Val launches into introducing the entire group to each other. Barnes, Walker, Starr, Shostakov, Dreykov, Belova.
Bucky’s barely processed it before they’re all sitting down, and he finds himself sitting across from the woman he’d once known as Mary, staring at her.
“The pitch is,” Val continues, “that there’s a vacuum in the absence of the Avengers. Let’s call it an opportunity space. Directory Fury was right about some things: there are problems that the good ole US of A can’t address directly with its agency resources, or can’t be seen addressing directly, and we require people of a certain skillset. You, ladies and gents, are that skillset.”
His grip has been tightening on his glass of wine. He’s not really listening. The director’s set down pamphlets about the Thunderbolts Initiative in front of all of them, distributed by a particularly harried-looking personal assistant, the group now sifting through what can only be described as marketing material.
He’d never even known Yelena Belova’s real name. He hadn’t been allowed to; he hadn’t had one of his own, and she wasn’t allowed to say hers while they were on assignment. And it’s her, because of course it’s her, he can’t forget a face that he woke up to for years, that he saw over the breakfast table for years, that he lived with. Back when they weren’t them. Back when HYDRA and the Red Room both still had their claws sunk in deep.
He breaks the stare first, gaze ducking down to his plate of (really, truly, stupidly expensive) steak while their recruiter keeps talking.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the soldier and the widow.
The iron fist of HYDRA was more accustomed to short-term operations, get in and kill someone with maximum efficiency and then get out,
but when operations require a subtler touch, that’s when the Red Room gets involved. HYDRA’s assets combined with the chameleonic wiles of Dreykov’s widows, their social manipulation: each wife embedded in an American home paired with muscle, their hulking soldier-husbands parcelled out like human weapons.
Hers is handsome and polite, and he barely spoke that first year at all, behaving more like a mute automaton she could order about: Fix the spare tire. Replace the light bulbs. Get rid of this dead body for me.
But the more time they spend away from headquarters, the more time that he spends on this assignment and isn’t reset, his brain thaws—
Her husband slowly seems more human. Social graces are necessary, of course, to maintain their cover: he learns how to smile, how to carry on a conversation. The first time they dare to host a backyard barbecue, it’s as nerve-wracking as if it were a white-knuckle mission, but he manages it. Cracks jokes with the other husbands. Their life goes on.
And then, today.
The soldier returns home with a heavy slope to his shoulders. He smells of gunpowder and blood. Finding his young blonde wife in the living room, he drops a duffel bag on the floor, and wearily settles on the sofa next to her with a sigh. Knee bumping against hers; his thigh warm against hers through his jeans.
His head is tipped back, looking at the ceiling.
He knows the shape of her and yet he doesn’t. He’s slept in a bed beside her for years. They’ve kissed, for show — a chaste peck on the lips in front of neighbours or colleagues — but he doesn’t steal a kiss if no one’s looking. He’s pressed his fingers into the meat of her leg to dig out a bullet, but doesn’t know the kind of noises she’d make if his fingers were inside her otherwise.
This, this is their marriage.
“Long night,” Jonathan says.
(Whatever name was redacted from the Winter Soldier’s original files, decades ago, he’s just Jonathan now. Jon. That’s the name on the passport, the fake driver’s license, the mortgage papers. They never breathe the name Yelena Belova between them, either. They’re not allowed to.)
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thunderbolts prelude.
There’s a sardonic edge to her voice as she echoes Fury’s now-famous speech. Bucky wonders, distantly, how the world found out about it, but Steve said it had happened on a SHIELD helicarrier and there’s probably audio and video recordings. SHIELD famously monitored and recorded everything.
See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could.
He’s been dodging the Contessa’s calls for a while, but he can’t really afford to avoid the CIA director’s attention; not when she’s armed with government connections, able to dangle his ongoing pardon like a carrot on a string. And Sam had said Keep an eye on her, which is how Bucky’s now here, at this meeting, at an eye-wateringly expensive Manhattan restaurant. An entire private room’s been booked out for them.
It’s an eclectic group milling around beforehand. He’d glowered in John Walker’s direction, radiating such constant withering hatred until the other man finally looked away, awkward. The quiet, dark-haired woman introduced as Ghost looks like she wants to fade into the background, a wallflower disappearing into the wallpaper.
They make for a strange party before the last three of their number arrive, all Russian: a tall, burly man with his arm slung paternally around a blonde’s shoulders (a familiar blonde), before she wriggles out from under his elbow. There’s another dark-haired woman behind them, scarred expression silent and stony-faced as Val launches into introducing the entire group to each other. Barnes, Walker, Starr, Shostakov, Dreykov, Belova.
Bucky’s barely processed it before they’re all sitting down, and he finds himself sitting across from the woman he’d once known as Mary, staring at her.
“The pitch is,” Val continues, “that there’s a vacuum in the absence of the Avengers. Let’s call it an opportunity space. Directory Fury was right about some things: there are problems that the good ole US of A can’t address directly with its agency resources, or can’t be seen addressing directly, and we require people of a certain skillset. You, ladies and gents, are that skillset.”
His grip has been tightening on his glass of wine. He’s not really listening. The director’s set down pamphlets about the Thunderbolts Initiative in front of all of them, distributed by a particularly harried-looking personal assistant, the group now sifting through what can only be described as marketing material.
He’d never even known Yelena Belova’s real name. He hadn’t been allowed to; he hadn’t had one of his own, and she wasn’t allowed to say hers while they were on assignment. And it’s her, because of course it’s her, he can’t forget a face that he woke up to for years, that he saw over the breakfast table for years, that he lived with. Back when they weren’t them. Back when HYDRA and the Red Room both still had their claws sunk in deep.
He breaks the stare first, gaze ducking down to his plate of (really, truly, stupidly expensive) steak while their recruiter keeps talking.
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