hydratrashmeme | Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Holy shitballs, look at us go. Welcome to Captain America fandom's resident wretched hive of scum and villainy: ROUND THREE. AKA Bad Guys Do Dirtybadwrong Things To Your Faves, AKA the Hydra Trash Party kinkmeme. As usual, BLANKET NON-CON AND NSFW WARNINGS apply: just assume going in that everything in this landfill is unfit for human consumption.

Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.

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Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.

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It wasn't exactly déjà vu, but Sam had to admit that standing in his kitchen frying eggs and listening to Natasha talk to a super soldier was bringing up some uncomfortable points of familiarity.

The Winter Soldier had told them to call him Barnes. He had washed up while Sam waited for Natasha to arrive from wherever his terse phone call had summoned her, though from hearing the sound of the running water Sam thought there had been a bath, not a shower. Barnes' clothes were not perfectly clean, but he'd refused Sam's offer of loaners and didn't smell nearly bad enough for Sam to be interested in pushing it.

He had no illusions about how Barnes viewed him.

"I didn't know why I had to save him," Barnes was saying, staring at the cup of coffee Sam had made him. He'd even drunk some. Sam intended to insist that he ate, if he was too screwed up to understand on his own why he needed to. "I pulled him onto the shore, made sure he was breathing, and walked away." Natasha nodded. "The next day I...I saw his face on the side of a bus." Sam glanced at him and saw one of those faint expressions: remorse. "I went to the museum. I saw." He stopped. The hiss-crackle of the frying eggs was the loudest sound in the room. "I saw who I used to be. I sat in the projection room for almost three hours, remembering."

From the look on Natasha's face, that wasn't as simple as it sounded. Sam grimaced and flipped the eggs, one-two-three-four. "I still don't have everything. I'm not sure everything I remember is true. But I remember Steve."

"How do you know Hydra has him?" Sam asked, flicking the burner off.

Barnes looked up and this expression was clearer; he might as well have been rolling his eyes at Sam's stupidity. "Because you don't," he said.

"We need to get some backup on this," Natasha said. "Clint's plane will be landing soon. And I think we should call Stark."

*

It took him a while to wake up, and he couldn't quite remember why that was unusual. He was lying on a thin mattress, not nearly comfortable but not a bare surface either, and his hands were tied together. So were his feet. It occurred to him as he came fully awake that he didn't have any idea where he was or where he was going--from the sound and feel he was in a vehicle.

He opened his eyes and discovered he was in a cage, a near-cube of bars that filled one end of a boxy room that was probably the back of a truck. It was just large enough for him to lie full-length. This can't be good, he thought, but it felt reflexive, more something he ought to think than a really urgent concern. There were guards with guns on benches along the side walls; when he started trying to sit up they all turned to look at him. From the far end a woman stood, and he frowned. He remembered looking up at her from a chair that reclined like a dentist's, for a few seconds before...his mind winced away from the memory.

"I'm glad to see you're awake," the woman said, crouching to make their eyes nearly level. "Can you tell me your name?"

He frowned in thought. Names flitted through his mind, NatashaSamBuckyRumlowFurySteveMariaPierce, and he picked the one that seemed the most important. "Bucky," he said, trying not to let his voice rise in inquiry. It occurred to him that he should be worried that he wasn't sure. "Bucky Barnes."

The woman's eyebrows flicked up. "Is that so?" she said. "Interesting. Well, Mr. Barnes, you should get a little more rest. We have a long way to go and when we get there, you're going to be busy."

"Why am I handcuffed?" he asked.

She smiled. "You're a very strong man," she said. "We weren't sure how you'd act when you woke up. It was safer, for you and for us."

That seemed...reasonable? "What happened to me?"

Her smile broadened. "That's not important anymore," she said. "All that's important now is your future."

oh god my heart is broken STEVE BABY

I'm really liking this.

OH gosh loving the structure of these updates with the Sam side and the Steve side. (And poor confused Steve picking Bucky's name fffffff you are amazing author!anon!)

I'm so hyped about where this is headed!

The first thing Sam heard Tony Stark say in real life was, "It's fine, Romanoff, I don't even have to check with Pepper unless there are at least six zeros." And then Iron Man was in his damn kitchen, and Sam just...didn't have anything left to boggle about that with. His ability to freak out had gotten kinda dented by randomly meeting Captain America jogging and took a serious hole in the fuselage when two Avengers showed up asking for his help, and the arrival of the Winter--of Barnes basically shot it out of the sky entirely. So: Iron Man, in his kitchen. Moving on.

"Speaking of it's fine," Stark continued, "why the hell didn't you morons call me?" He completely ignored Barnes, who stood against the wall with his arms crossed, looking exactly like the most dangerous person Sam had ever even thought about meeting. Even in skinny jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, both of them (naturally) black. The metal hand looked like a weird glove.

"Two reasons," Natasha replied. "One, SHIELD-slash-Hydra was watching you like a satellite-assisted hawk in one of the most surveilled cities in the world." Stark opened his mouth to object but Natasha overrode him. "And yes, you're good, but you wouldn't've know we were coming and they might have been able to get onto us before you could lock down. Two," she smiled grimly, "you helped with the Insight design, Tony."

Stark looked taken aback, which was something Sam suspected didn't happen very often, and seemed to actually think about it--likely even rarer. Sam knew the type, so smart that it never occurred to them that they even could be wrong unless it was rubbed in their faces. In Stark's case, rich-kid syndrome certainly didn't help. "OK, that's--actually fair," Stark said. "In my defense, the design of those engines was, like, migraine-inducingly bad. I couldn't let them exist in the world, it was an offense against nature. And engineering. Tony Stark," he said, turning to Sam and sticking his hand out with no warning at all. Sam, who worked with people for whom mood whiplash was par for the course, took it.

"Sam Wilson, nice to meet you."

"When we have two minutes, you and I need to talk about your awesome jetpack," Stark said.

"My awesome jetpack is at the bottom of the Potomac," Sam said. The wings were, at least. He thought the backpack part was probably buried in the ruins of the Triskelion.

Stark rolled his eyes. "No, that was your regular jetpack, I'm talking about the awesome one I'm gonna make you."

"Um. Great?" Sam said. Maybe his ability to boggle wasn't completely used up after all.

"It will be," Stark said, with breathtaking, totally unconscious arrogance. "Who's gonna introduce me to our friend here?" His hand went into his pocket--of a suit that looked like it cost more than Sam made in a year--and Sam wondered if he even noticed the way Barnes tensed until it came back out holding a foil package. Of dried blueberries.

"Barnes," the man said.

Stark paused in the act of ripping the top off his package and looked up, his brown eyes sharp and intent. "You know, that's really interesting, because wasn't Capsicle's best buddy named Barnes? Back in the war I mean."

"James Buchanan," Barnes said expressionlessly. "Don't call me Bucky."

"Huh," Stark said. "And you're the last person to see him, right?"

"Yes."

"Great." He put his briefcase down on Sam's kitchen table and snapped it open. "Let's start with that."

oh oh absolutely LOVE your Tony! <3

They stopped for a rest break about four hours after he woke up the first time. The woman (he wished she would tell him her name, it seemed rude not to know it) cleared the guards from the back of the truck for him to use the bucket in his cage, which he thought was very nice of her, though it had been awkward with his hands still cuffed together. He dozed off again once they were back on the road, another thing that struck him as strange for reasons he couldn't articulate. He thought he wasn't used to being tired much, except that on another level he was used to it. It was a puzzle, and the longer he thought about it the more disturbed he got.

"I'm hungry," he said finally.

The woman got up again from her position at the far end of the truck and walked back, confident against the slight motions even in her heeled shoes. It's not as if I had any choice about learning to fight in them, you know, said a voice in his head--not her voice, it sounded...British? English, the voice corrected, and he smiled a little, because it was just like her to insist on the distinction.

Just like who, though?

"Tell me your name again," the woman said.

"Bucky Barnes," he replied, more certain this time since she'd accepted it the last time.

"Where are you from, Mr. Barnes?"

He thought about it. He didn't think he had an accent, but he guessed you never did think that about yourself. "Ah...New York? City." A second's pause, then, confidently, "Brooklyn."

For some reason, that answer seemed to displease her.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

He blinked at her. "I remember looking at you. I was sitting in a chair. Then I woke up here," he said. Though now that he thought about it, that maybe wasn't true. There was another face, not one of the guards. Dark hair, too long, falling into winter-blue eyes; an expression of shock, horror--

"Bucky!" he exclaimed, and pain spiked through the base of his skull like a stiletto. He cried out and clutched at it, nearly hitting himself in the face with his handcuffs. Images tumbled through his mind almost too fast to follow, Natasha leaning against a van with an absurdly huge rifle in her hands, Fury's sheet-covered form, On your left, the STRIKE team, his DC apartment, Peggy, the Chitauri--

Finally he drew a deep, shuddering breath and glared out through the bars. "Who the hell are you and what do you want?"

She glanced at her wristwatch. "Hail Hydra," she said casually, and gestured.

Steve didn't really have anywhere to dodge; the third dart struck him in the neck and his vision washed over in black.

*

Steve woke up in the dentist's chair again, and this time he started to struggle right away. Something creaked encouragingly, but at the same moment the woman's voice said, "He's awake, we can start." The whir made his breath catch and he yanked harder at the weak bond, but before he made any meaningful progress the arms were in place and the contacts touched his face. "No," he said, and that was all he had time for.

*

He opened his eyes to find he was in a cage, a near-cube just large enough for him to lie full-length on the thin mattress that filled its bottom. There was a bucket with him, and a pile of foil-wrapped bars and a jug of water. It seemed like these things should have disturbed him, but they didn't. Outside the cage, a woman sat in a straight wooden chair.

"Good afternoon," she said. "Can you tell me your name?"

He frowned.

1) yay Steve trying to fight back!
2) saddest update ever
3) chilling HYDRA is chilling (for some reason, the bucket is really getting to me)

For a few days it was pretty much the Barnes and Stark Show. Natasha added her professional opinion a few times. Clint and Sam mostly fetched food, made coffee, and tried to pretend they weren't worried.

Clint had a bit of a fanboy moment when he realized Barnes was that Barnes, a reaction Barnes received with brief puzzlement and then disinterest, but he hasn't let it keep him from watching, very carefully. It was almost always from across the room, which was caution Sam heartily approved of; from across the room he might manage to get a shot off before the Winter Soldier could kill him, and even a supersoldier couldn't shrug off a .22 to the eye. However, watchful though Clint was, he wasn't hostile.

On the third day, Sam asked him about it while they were on one of their food runs.

"I know what it's like to do things you'd never want to do," Clint said. They weren't walking, courtesy of the car that Stark had casually presented the keys to, waving off thanks. It was tempting to get huffy about it, but on the other hand Stark could sure as hell afford an off-the-lot Cruze and Sam's former car was useful as a lawn ornament at best.

Sam glanced at his passenger. Clint's voice was casual in the careful way people used when there was something big under the surface. "If you don't want to talk about it, I'm OK with that," Sam said. "I was just curious."

"How much do you know about the Chitauri attack?"

"Uh, pretty much just what everyone knows. Some crazy guy claiming to be a Norse god showed up with a bunch of ugly aliens on rocket sleds, you all fought them off."

Clint nodded. "The crazy guy...I don't know if he was really Loki, like the guy the myths are about. But he had this thing, this staff. If he hit you with it right, it made you his." Sam could hear the loathing in his voice. "You were still you, you knew all the stuff you knew before, could do all the stuff you did before, but you...did it for him. Took his orders, tried to anticipate even."

Sam shuddered.

"Yeah," said Clint. "Pretty much exactly like that, at least once I came out of it. I did things I hate the idea of doing. I killed people who trusted me. I tried to kill Nat."

Sam tried to picture that and found he couldn't; the trust between the two of them was rock-solid, and it hadn't escaped his notice that the necklace Natasha wore was shaped like an arrow.

"So I know what it's like," Clint went on, still evenly. "What Loki did to me, if it wasn't magic it'll do till magic comes along, and when it broke it was gone. What happened to Barnes, I'm a little less sure about. I believe he's devoted to Steve right now, but who knows if that will last? I'm keeping an eye on him. But I can't hate him."

Sam nodded and settled his hands better on the wheel, trying to make his skin stop crawling. "He's not eating enough," he said, instead of letting himself dwell.

"I don't think he can," Clint said. "And a lot of things seem to make him sick."

Sam bit his lip, thinking of how much it would suck to have Steve's metabolism and not be able to eat enough, and all the reasons someone might end up that way. "We're getting extra plain rice."

"Good plan," Clint said.

Ooh yes, I love silent/stoic/gruff Bucky whose trauma is discovered anyway. Great Clint voice, too!

Steve had no idea how many days it had been, and even when he knew himself he had real trouble picturing what might have been before. There had to have been a before; men didn't just suddenly discover themselves full-grown and with the kind of skills he had--skills that had come as a surprise to him, when he'd woken up once before they managed to put him in the chair. He was sure he'd killed at least three of them before a dart had sunk into the meat of his right forearm as he tried to shield his face.

In the moments between waking and when the chair enclosed him, he ran over his memories frantically, trying to fix them in his mind, but he knew he was failing; he could no longer remember the red-headed woman's name, nor why the image of a very old lady lying in her bed made him want to cry. The only names that came back to him reliably anymore were his own and Bucky's, and Bucky's face wavered erratically between clean-shaven laughter and a scowl with hair falling in his eyes.

Steve's own beard wasn't growing much; he didn't remember ever shaving, so they must have been doing it for him while he was unconscious. It meant he didn't have even that rudimentary clock to keep track of his days.

The woman, who he sometimes remembered was called Doctor Risman, always asked him if he knew his name, if he knew where he was from, and he began to anticipate the questions eagerly because they were usually what tripped his cascades of memory--painful as they were, and only moreso each time, they brought him back to himself as much as he could get.

He had the feeling the periods of blankness, when he just accepted the world, were getting longer, and it terrified him.

*

"Can you tell me your name?" the woman asked.

He stared at her, trying to fight down the feeling that disappointing her would have unpleasant consequences. But nothing came to him, and finally he had to shake his head. It was a relief when she smiled, though something in him was...disappointed too. "Take all the time you need," she told him.

"I don't know," he said.

"You're Nomad," she said.

He turned that over in his head for a moment, wondering why it didn't seem to fit. But he supposed he couldn't complain too much if she gave him a name; it wasn't like he had another to counter with.

"Nomad. All right."

"Good. Now say: hail Hydra."

"Hail Hydra," he repeated obediently.

*

He was alone in a room with a man. The man was handcuffed to a bolt in the floor and had a bag over his head, and from the sound of it he was crying. Through a gag, most likely; he hadn't said anything coherent.

Nomad loaded the pistol with the one round he'd been provided. When he was finished, he looked down at the shackled man and said, "Why am I doing this?"

Doctor Risman's voice didn't come from anywhere in particular. "He's a murderer. This is justice."

"I'm pretty sure we don't execute people by firing squad anymore," Nomad said. "And when we did it wasn't like this."

"Kill him," the doctor said sharply, "or there will be consequences."

Nomad looked into the upper corner of the room thoughtfully. "I don't like bullies," he said, and shot out the camera.

Then he sat on the floor and waited for the knockout gas.

*

He woke with the peculiar lassitude in his limbs that meant he'd been in the chair. His hands were cuffed behind him. That was as far as he got before a booted foot slammed into his ribs. Nomad grunted and curled around the impact, but even as he moved another kick landed over his kidney. Reflex made him try to get to his feet, fight back, but his hands were fastened to the floor somehow and he couldn't rise more than a few inches.

They were canny enough to keep out of range of his shackled feet. The strikes were designed to inflict pain more than injury, but by the time it was over he could feel the stab of a cracked rib every time he drew a breath and he wasn't sure he could have stood if he'd needed to. It wouldn't last, but that wasn't as much comfort as it might have been; the knowledge that nothing would fix it but time was familiar and wearying, though he couldn't remember why.

He lay there panting until he heard the tap of Doctor Risman's heels. "You disobeyed, and we had to wipe you. This is what happens when you don't follow your orders," she told him cooly.

Nomad stretched his face into a painful grin. "I could do this all day."

"Disobey again and you'll have to," she said. "Wipe him."

Oh gosh I'm just clinging to these moments where Steve fights back. a!a you are amazing

Sam rolled to the side of the mattress and rubbed his eyes. The house had the deep quiet of the middle of the night. Stark had crashed hard around 2300 and they'd agreed it was better to let him get some decent sleep, but that meant Sam was using his vintage air mattress. To his credit, Stark had tried to protest, but Sam's mama hadn't raised him to make a guest sleep on the floor when there was a bed available. At least the man didn't snore.

When Sam wandered out of the bathroom he headed for the living room instead of back to his mattress.

Barnes sat in one of the straight kitchen chairs that he'd set in the living room, a spot with very good sight lines to the condo entrances. Natasha was on the sofa, apparently reading in the light of one table lamp. She looked up as Sam entered the room; Barnes continued to stare ahead but Sam knew better than to think he hadn't noticed.

"I'm up for a while," Sam said. "Why don't you get some sleep?" Natasha gave him a look of mild surprise but he shrugged. "Seriously. I'm wired."

She thought it over and closed her book with a snap. "Thanks," she said as she stood.

Sam wasn't ashamed to admit he watched as she padded down the hall to the guest room where Clint slept. Obviously he couldn't make a move, but that didn't mean he was blind.

"You want coffee or something?" he asked on his way to the kitchen.

Barnes shook his head, so Sam only fished out one mug. When he was done doctoring it he went back out and dropped into Natasha's vacated place on the sofa. He was about halfway through the coffee when Barnes said, "You don't trust me."

Sam raised his eyebrows and swallowed his mouthful. "You have to admit it's hard to trust a guy who tried to kill me less than two weeks ago."

"You're right not to trust me," Barnes said. "I'll kill you all if it'll save Steve." Sam had not yet come up with a response to that when he continued, "I'll kill him if it will save him. I won't let them do this to him."

"This?" Sam repeated. There were at least three possibilities just off the top of his head; he wasn't sure which ones Barnes had enough self-awareness to mean--and he felt an urgent need to know what was going to count as a fate worse than death.

Barnes lifted his metal hand and spread the fingers. Sam felt a pang of pity, but Barnes said, "This is what people see, but this is nothing." He stared at the hand like he'd never seen it before, like it wasn't part of him. "Pain is bad, but pain passes." His eyes, pupils huge in the dim light, flicked up to meet Sam's. "I made myself forget things because it was worse to have them twisted. But some things I didn't forget in time, and only some of them are wrong, and I can't tell the difference." It was the most emotion Sam had ever heard in his voice. "I won't let that happen to him too. Do you understand?"

"I don't think so," Sam said. "Thank fucking God."

Barnes gave him the ghost of a smile, and Sam could have wept because he knew what Bucky Barnes was supposed to look like smiling; everyone had seen that film clip in elementary school. "You understand enough," Barnes said.

*

The next morning, Stark found a lead.

I'm really enjoying this and you are an angel for writing so fast!

I'm doing my best but right now I have to go to bed. :)

Oh god Bucky's speech. It's so subdued yet so powerful. <333

I love this story!

*hands you grapefruit peelings and a wet handful of teabags

Nomad was pleased that he got to walk to the truck by himself. He went handcuffed and surrounded by guards, and had to get into the cage at the end of the short trip, but that he walked on his own feet was a sign of his reliability.

Doctor Risman seemed edgy, worried or maybe irritated. He didn't like it. Knock it the hell off, he thought. It ain't good for 'em to see the captain like this. Then he frowned, because Doctor Risman was not a captain. He didn't think she was military at all, though she was his CO in every way that mattered.

Once he was in the cage, the guards piled boxes into the rest of the truck to hide him, and he sat down to wait.

*

The trip in the truck was long, interrupted only by a muffled conversation that he decided was a border crossing. Some hours later the truck stopped and was unloaded. Nomad's cage was transferred from the truck to the hold of a cargo airplane.

The flight was even longer. By the end of it he was painfully hungry.

*

The new facility looked a lot like the old one, down to being built to the same plan. Nomad thought that was pleasing efficiency, though of course there were different details, the result of people customizing in use.

Once he was settled in his quarters (the word "cell" drifted through his mind and he ignored it) he had to wait. (This life, you're either bored out of your skull or scared out of your mind. It ain't like in the pictures.) It was tempting to pace but he'd learned not to waste energy, especially when he was hungry. It had been hours more by the time he heard the tap of Doctor Risman's heels.

She stopped on the other side of the bars, flanked by guards. One of them held a tray; Nomad only realized his attention was fixed on it when Doctor Risman said, "Look at me."

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, annoyed with himself. His physical needs were less important than careful attention to his CO.

"That's all right," she said. "I understand, but I need you to focus first." She held a folder out to him through the bars. Nomad accepted it and flipped it open to reveal a black-and-white picture of a man. "Describe him."

"Caucasian male, mid-twenties, dark hair, eyes probably blue," Nomad said. "I can't tell you how tall he is without scale but proportion suggests above-average height. He's military, a specialist. Sniper. He's--"

Doctor Risman made a click of her tongue and he looked up. His heart sank at her disappointed expression. "Put that down," she told the guard with the tray, and the man did. "I don't know how long I'll be busy." She turned and walked off down the hall, her guards trailing her.

Nomad lasted almost an hour before he tried to reach the tray. It was three inches beyond his fingertips.

*

He was alone in a room with a man who was handcuffed to a bolt in the floor. Nomad couldn't tell for sure but he suspected the man was gagged under the bag that covered his head; he had said nothing coherent.

He loaded the pistol with the one round he'd been provided, and waited. Hunger clawed at him; he couldn't completely stop his hands from shaking.

"This man is a murderer," Doctor Risman's voice said. The hooded man's head shook. "Kill him. Then you can return to your quarters."

Nomad swallowed and forced himself to focus. "Ma'am, this seems very irregular."

"Sometimes unconventional methods are necessary," she replied. Her tone softened. "There will be a meal waiting for you in your quarters. Better to get this over with."

Nomad thumbed back the hammer. The prisoner made a strangled sound of fear. "Who did he kill?" Nomad asked.

"His second-in-command found out he was selling weapons," Doctor Risman said. "He killed her to keep her quiet."

Nomad said, "You have thirty seconds to make your peace with God." He counted them off silently. At thirty, he pulled the trigger.

Steeeeeeb, you're breakin my heart.

Author, you continue to surprise and delight with the frequency and quality of these updates.

i completely echo this sentiment.

a!a, you are ruthless in the best of ways.

The voices you've given all these characters are AMAZING. Each one is so true to who they are. The plot is heartbreaking, interaction is wonderful - this is just top-notch.

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Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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