【ʜᴀᴜɴᴛᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ɢʜᴏsᴛ ᴏꜰ ʏᴏᴜ】

[anaesthetize]

It's 2012, Steve Rogers has been out of the ice for two weeks, and he's helped fight off an alien invasion. That'd all be enough to throw a man for a loop, but on top of that, someone who looked like him seems convinced that Bucky is alive. Steve has to get to the bottom of this, the man's appearance, Loki's disappearance with the Tesseract — all the while fielding weirdly knowing looks and comments from his colleagues in SHIELD's STRIKE team.

Line Info

An AU based on the 2012 part of the time heist in Endgame. Steve knows Bucky is alive but not that he's the Winter Soldier, HYDRA thinks he's one of them, Loki is on the run with the Tesseract. Fully open to making this a GPSL with multiple people. Let's fix Endgame together.

Notes Etc.

I don't actually know how to start this sort of PSL, so thread ideas would be most welcome!

Comments

open starter;

[ex_serum683]

❰ the world has ceased to make any kind of logical sense.

not that it was particularly great at making sense anyway — steve went to his death in 1945 and woke up in 2012, he's fought off an alien invasion with the norse god of thunder, howard stark's son in a robot suit, a man who gets big and green when he's angry, and two spies — but it's especially egregious now. he'd thought that in the aftermath of the battle, maybe he'd get a chance to come to grips with everything in a way he couldn't manage in that cabin in the woods fury shunted him off to, but any hopes of that being the case were dashed when a look-alike had told him bucky was alive. loki couldn't have known about bucky, nor the compass the copy-cat had had, so now steve is left with... what, time travel? fury assures him it's not possible, not even in 2012.

that's not what really matters, anyway. what matters is that bucky is alive, or might be, is that person wasn't lying to him. he has to figure out the 21st century, and quick, to have any hope of figuring out where bucky might be. he has a list of things to do — steve likes lists, here in the future. they keep things organized, keep him from feeling like everything is spiraling out of control.

(it is, but at least it all feels manageable.)

first on the list is a trip to see peggy. she's 91 years old and finally, her nurses say, beginning to show her age. peggy isn't much of a help with the search for bucky — if she even remembers who he is, sometimes she doesn't even have that — but it is good to see her, even thought it hurts. she's at the tail end of a life well-lived, and steve can't begrudge her anything. her children grew up calling him uncle steve, and that's — well. it's something.

after the trip to see peggy is another trip, this time to dc. if anyone will have an idea of how to find bucky, it's nick fury and the shield spooks at the triskelion. they've got an aircraft carrier that can fly; frankly, there's nothing steve will believe they can't do. digging up a seventy year-old body should be a walk in the park compared to that.

therein begins the second mystery: everyone at shield is really weird around him. well, not everyone. it's kind of a crapshoot, really, which agents will treat him like a normal celebrity and which ones will fix him with oddly conspiratorial looks in the elevator. it's the whole strike team, at least, and jasper sitwell, and the goddamn secretary of defense. no one's said anything too weird, except for the times they say some kind of alarmingly fascist shit and then look at steve with a smirk like it's some kind of inside joke. he'd assume it was a weird future thing except plenty of people don't do it, so it's just a weird strike crew thing. it's strange in a way that makes steve restless, and he's avoided bringing up bucky because of it. he's spent a few days at shield, though, under the pretense of seeing the organization his friends named for him, and his suspicions keep being trod on but not tripped. he's almost ready to chalk it all up to future nonsense when the secretary calls steve into his office and says he has something to show him.

which is how steve ends up in a bank vault surrounded by definitely-not-future-bank-tellers all scrambling to prepare for something. it's sort of alarming, honestly, and steve's about ready to say fuck it and demand answers when secretary pierce walks over to his side, an amused smirk on his lips. ❱

I think you'll be very impressed, Captain.

❰ impressed with what, steve wants to shout, but he nods and crosses his arms and oh, that's a lot of screaming. he looks from the closed door into the depths of the vault to pierce and back again, reaching back for his shield — ❱

Just some routine maintenance, ❰ says pierce, placating, and steve's hand slowly drops from his back.

this is way more fucked than he'd thought.

it takes a few more minutes for the source of the screams to be led into the room, and when it is, steve can only stare. ❱

Captain, this is the asset. Our best field operative, the ghost of the intelligence community for fifty years. As you shaped the century, so too did he.

❰ the operative in front of steve has long brown hair, blue eyes, and no other distinguishing features because he's wearing a goddamn muzzle.

jesus fucking christ. ❱

You've been busy while I was under, ❰ is all he can think to say, eyes never leaving the man in front of him. ❱

[lacunas]

[ waking from cryofreeze is painful, each time a new sort of torment of limbs relearning how to move, organs recalling their true functions, his central nervous jumpstarting to get the signals working again. It's a torture all of its own, and the soldier doesn't even try to suppress the screams as his flesh warms, his guts spew out the chemicals he'd been pumped full of, and the echo of his left arm haunting his mind. they never wait until he's capable of standing properly to wash him down, frigid water straight from heavy hoses blasting the remnants of his long sleep from the body he inhabits. that's before the chair, which is its special hell.

it reminds him that he's the soldier, the assets, a ghost. it makes his face twist into something like a grin by way of hr giger, a twisted, mottled thing more frightful than pleasant. it's wiped away quick enough as he vomits again, his body still trying to understand how to live.

his handlers are never gentle, but that day they seem even more rough, pushing and prodding and delighting in his screams. he's stopped denying them his screams because it never matters, doesn't change anything. so he screams and screams, but doesn't resist, and accepts the muzzle as he's meant to, lets his handlers strap him into the black tac gear. no guns, not yet because they can't trust him, but that's fine too.

he's out. they'll give him guns later when they give him his mission, and he'll do what he's meant to like he always does.

pierce is a smiling, terrifying figure when he walks out, and next to him —

the soldier stops abruptly, earning scorn and muttered curses from his handlers. it's not that he's surprised to see someone new — they come and go like flies, only the best last long around pierce, around the soldier — but this one is staring, intense and firm.

he turns away, focuses on pierce, waiting orders. like a good soldier. because that's what he is, a soldier. the best, according to pierce, according to the men who handled him before, until he breaks some conditioning and then he's returned to the chambers.

the thoughts slide out of his mind as easily as they appear, replaced by the static that fills his mind until he gets a new mission. that's why he's here. he faces pierce, but his eyes cut back to the new man. blond and blue-eyed and bright, even with the firm set to his mouth and eyes. ]

Your orders?

[ he asks pierce, but he's still looking at the new man. he'd take orders from this man, which is a rare, rare thing: none of the handlers or strike teams he's been assigned to before have gotten that from him. but he's a weapon, a loaded gun, and the hands that direct him need to be solid and firm, sure of their mission. ]