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theycalledmeacurse"Mission report."
How many times has she listened to those succinct explanations of events, delivered dispassionately and with no sign of the man beneath the soldier. And if ever there was even the slightest hint... It wasn't until two years into her assignment that Rogue first encountered that particular Winter Soldier. There was something more together about him, a ghost of humanity in amongst the wreckage of a mind scrambled and taped back together with lies. He wasn't just a shell filled in with HYDRA's brainwashing, he was... broken.
Broken but not irreparable.
That was the first time she ever lied to her superiors. While every inch of her loathed HYDRA from the moment they recruited her, she had played her part to perfection, calling on every mental resource she had to evade their detection methods, to make them believe she was devoted to the cause. There was no other way to survive, and— She wanted to survive. She wanted to live, to somehow find the peace that had been taken from her. She wanted to have a home again. But the only way to do that was to become what they wanted.
Interrogation was her main role, along with occasional handler for some of the assets. Never the Winter Soldiers, they were far too volatile to be handled by anyone but the upper echelon, but when one of them fractured—
He was saying things unrelated to the mission. Pieces were falling that weren't part of the puzzle. Examine his mind, find the fissures, tell them what to fix. It should have been so easy. But when she'd touched him, there had been a faint, fuzzy memory of a scrawny kid with a thick New York accent, a friend lost long ago. Someone he would have died to protect.
It's that glimpse of humanity that is her downfall. There was no possible way she could have kept her distance from him after that. Someone she'd talked her way into working with him again, time after time, one mission after another, always peering into his mind to look for breaks in the facade. Unfortunately there was no way to avoid the wipes, not without drawing attention to what she was trying to do, and not when she couldn't be certain that he himself wouldn't notice that something strange was going on. But she did manage to skip a few, to let him linger in those memories a little longer, dredge up a few from the silt at the bottom of his mind. For each memory he found, she gathered up the pieces and kept them safe for him, biding her time and watching for any opportunity to get them out of this hell. To give him a chance at becoming himself again.
Fifteen years of being frozen and thawed every few weeks didn't make it easy.
And then Alexander Pierce had taken him to DC and everything had... accelerated. HYDRA exposed, the Soldier on the run, and the man who had once been that scrawny kid— She felt no remorse as she killed the agents who kept her prisoner, disappearing the way they'd taught the Soldier. She might never have been in the field in this world, but she didn't need that experience when she had the memories of others, imprinted psyches that were more killing machine than man. Half a decade of war was a hard thing to forget, at that.
It wasn't hard to find that kid from Brooklyn, the one who shouldn't be the way he is, who shouldn't be here now. But he is and he's the catalyst for all of this, so she watches him, waits for an opening, and then slips a folded piece of paper into his jacket pocket as she passes him on the street, so many weeks after the entire world changed.
I can help you find him. 2300, Central Park.
How many times has she listened to those succinct explanations of events, delivered dispassionately and with no sign of the man beneath the soldier. And if ever there was even the slightest hint... It wasn't until two years into her assignment that Rogue first encountered that particular Winter Soldier. There was something more together about him, a ghost of humanity in amongst the wreckage of a mind scrambled and taped back together with lies. He wasn't just a shell filled in with HYDRA's brainwashing, he was... broken.
Broken but not irreparable.
That was the first time she ever lied to her superiors. While every inch of her loathed HYDRA from the moment they recruited her, she had played her part to perfection, calling on every mental resource she had to evade their detection methods, to make them believe she was devoted to the cause. There was no other way to survive, and— She wanted to survive. She wanted to live, to somehow find the peace that had been taken from her. She wanted to have a home again. But the only way to do that was to become what they wanted.
Interrogation was her main role, along with occasional handler for some of the assets. Never the Winter Soldiers, they were far too volatile to be handled by anyone but the upper echelon, but when one of them fractured—
He was saying things unrelated to the mission. Pieces were falling that weren't part of the puzzle. Examine his mind, find the fissures, tell them what to fix. It should have been so easy. But when she'd touched him, there had been a faint, fuzzy memory of a scrawny kid with a thick New York accent, a friend lost long ago. Someone he would have died to protect.
It's that glimpse of humanity that is her downfall. There was no possible way she could have kept her distance from him after that. Someone she'd talked her way into working with him again, time after time, one mission after another, always peering into his mind to look for breaks in the facade. Unfortunately there was no way to avoid the wipes, not without drawing attention to what she was trying to do, and not when she couldn't be certain that he himself wouldn't notice that something strange was going on. But she did manage to skip a few, to let him linger in those memories a little longer, dredge up a few from the silt at the bottom of his mind. For each memory he found, she gathered up the pieces and kept them safe for him, biding her time and watching for any opportunity to get them out of this hell. To give him a chance at becoming himself again.
Fifteen years of being frozen and thawed every few weeks didn't make it easy.
And then Alexander Pierce had taken him to DC and everything had... accelerated. HYDRA exposed, the Soldier on the run, and the man who had once been that scrawny kid— She felt no remorse as she killed the agents who kept her prisoner, disappearing the way they'd taught the Soldier. She might never have been in the field in this world, but she didn't need that experience when she had the memories of others, imprinted psyches that were more killing machine than man. Half a decade of war was a hard thing to forget, at that.
It wasn't hard to find that kid from Brooklyn, the one who shouldn't be the way he is, who shouldn't be here now. But he is and he's the catalyst for all of this, so she watches him, waits for an opening, and then slips a folded piece of paper into his jacket pocket as she passes him on the street, so many weeks after the entire world changed.