I feel like this may have been prompted already, but I can't find it.
The set up: the Asset is deployed with a Strike team to a situation where, for whatever reason, they're out for long enough or in a situation where it's not feasible to have him wiped or frozen. I'm thinking snowed in to a tiny cabin and have to wait for extraction, their get away vehicle got destroyed far away enough or in a war zone so it takes a while for a pick up arrive, something like that. Just some situation where nobody's going anywhere and there's no mechanism to just put the Asset back under control.
Because, as we all know, the effectiveness of the wipes starts breaking down over time. Strike knows this too, they're not complete morons (Westfahl aside), so once they figure out that they're trapped with the Asset and a weakening degree of control over him, they back off on the trash. Or at least the violent parts. Because hey, they're snowed in, what the hell else are they supposed to do with no Netflix and no cell reception? But they don't want to get murdered in their sleep, so they're relatively gentle, thinking that's all they have to do to not lose control over the Asset.
And they're probably not going to get murdered, because pretty soon it's been long enough since a wipe that Bucky is starting to recover, a la your classic Bucky recovery fic, except without Steve &co's support and warm blankets, and Bucky's an absolute fucking mess as things start coming back together for him. He's starting to get intensely triggered by things that never used to bother the Asset, he's starting to put together the deep wrongness of being used like a thing, putting together that he's a person and this isn't what his life has always been. It probably starts small, so small that Strike doesn't really notice at first; things like avoiding touch, then shuddering when touched, escalating to full on panic attacks, etc, and it starts to get so bad that even Strike can't help but notice that the Asset is getting really fucked up. Maybe Bucky's coming back to himself enough to push back against violations of his boundaries, but he's only just starting to process esventy years of trauma as trauma and the ongoing triggers of being trapped with his rapists! With ongoing rape!
So what does Strike do about this? Feel bad that apparently the Asset is apparently a real person? (no of course not. Maybe Bucky even tries to bargain with one of them who seems nicer). Beat the shit out of the misbehaving Asset because he's obviously too fucked up having panic attacks to murder them? Gaslight the hell out of a recovering Bucky, playing for time until extraction by telling him that it's ok, they're his friends?
In my head, from one perspective this is one of those Strike-comedy fics where everyone is terrible but affably so, and from another perspective it's horror despair of Bucky being so close to being himself again but dealing with ongoing, unescapable triggers and trash.
Bucky recovery . . . while still with Hydra
The set up: the Asset is deployed with a Strike team to a situation where, for whatever reason, they're out for long enough or in a situation where it's not feasible to have him wiped or frozen. I'm thinking snowed in to a tiny cabin and have to wait for extraction, their get away vehicle got destroyed far away enough or in a war zone so it takes a while for a pick up arrive, something like that. Just some situation where nobody's going anywhere and there's no mechanism to just put the Asset back under control.
Because, as we all know, the effectiveness of the wipes starts breaking down over time. Strike knows this too, they're not complete morons (Westfahl aside), so once they figure out that they're trapped with the Asset and a weakening degree of control over him, they back off on the trash. Or at least the violent parts. Because hey, they're snowed in, what the hell else are they supposed to do with no Netflix and no cell reception? But they don't want to get murdered in their sleep, so they're relatively gentle, thinking that's all they have to do to not lose control over the Asset.
And they're probably not going to get murdered, because pretty soon it's been long enough since a wipe that Bucky is starting to recover, a la your classic Bucky recovery fic, except without Steve &co's support and warm blankets, and Bucky's an absolute fucking mess as things start coming back together for him. He's starting to get intensely triggered by things that never used to bother the Asset, he's starting to put together the deep wrongness of being used like a thing, putting together that he's a person and this isn't what his life has always been. It probably starts small, so small that Strike doesn't really notice at first; things like avoiding touch, then shuddering when touched, escalating to full on panic attacks, etc, and it starts to get so bad that even Strike can't help but notice that the Asset is getting really fucked up. Maybe Bucky's coming back to himself enough to push back against violations of his boundaries, but he's only just starting to process esventy years of trauma as trauma and the ongoing triggers of being trapped with his rapists! With ongoing rape!
So what does Strike do about this? Feel bad that apparently the Asset is apparently a real person? (no of course not. Maybe Bucky even tries to bargain with one of them who seems nicer). Beat the shit out of the misbehaving Asset because he's obviously too fucked up having panic attacks to murder them? Gaslight the hell out of a recovering Bucky, playing for time until extraction by telling him that it's ok, they're his friends?
In my head, from one perspective this is one of those Strike-comedy fics where everyone is terrible but affably so, and from another perspective it's horror despair of Bucky being so close to being himself again but dealing with ongoing, unescapable triggers and trash.