Dumpster #4: I Don't See How That's a Party

[trashmod]

Okay, kids, you know the drill. Don't be a jerk except to fictional characters. Warn if you want, but read at your own risk, because hydratrashmeme is about as far from a safe space as you can get. Garbage we like: noncon, whump, aftermath, violence, mind control, inappropriate uses of Bucky Barnes' metal arm, bad guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves. Garbage you should find a different trashcan for: a/b/o, D/s-verse, soulbonds, mundane AUs, OOC evil!good guys doing dirtybadwrong things to your faves, rotting leftovers dressed up as a romantic gourmet meal. Nothing wrong with 'em, but this isn't the crowd you should be pitching to if you're trying to sell Brock Rumlow as anything but a human dumpster fire.

Link your fills on the fill post, post unprompted fills as replies to a header comment so the wall o' text is collapsible, and let me know if you're interested in helping out with the Pinboard archive.

[Rules in full] [Round 1] [Round 2] [Round 3] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by greenkirtle)] [Round 4 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]

All prompts or fills that contain Infinity War spoilers must go on the Infinity War spoiler post until May 26th. Spoilers in the main dumpsters will be deleted.

Round 4 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 5.

Comments

FILL: Daybreak part 6/? Re: Identity Porn in captivity

[(Anonymous)]

They lapsed into long stretches of silence, foregoing the prison cell small talk. Rogers’ breathing filled his ears, a very slight hitch to it, carefully concealed. It was measured enough that the Soldier knew his ribs were injured, every inhale and exhale timed and slow, none too deep.

He had questions. He had ideas on how to discover what made Rogers tick, how to lure Rogers’ secrets out of hiding. He had strategies.

What he wanted was to ask if his hip, the one Rogers wasn’t leaning on, was very painful. He’d clutched it in his preternaturally strong arm, fingers scraping bone so hard he’d been surprised to find he hadn’t broken the skin too badly. But the bruise was hideous, almost as dark as the bruising on his chest, snaking around his hip in a configuration that, while familiar, only barely resembled a human hand. He could have snapped it, crushed the bones until they crumbled between his fingers into a bloody paste and left the man misshapen and crippled.

He couldn’t ask. And, really, why would he? He didn’t even care much about his own pain. What would draw him to someone else’s?

He’d never had to stare at his work for so long, though. He was too efficient for that. Even in the darkness, he couldn’t stop looking in Rogers’ direction and thinking about it.

Rogers interrupted his jumble of thoughts. “So what do you know about this place?”

“It’s a fortress,” he immediately responded. He didn’t want Rogers getting any ideas.

This was going to be a dance. Rogers was smart but cared too much, unwilling to take what he must have concluded was the wisest course if it meant compromising his principles. He couldn’t stand suffering. That was a weakness. It was hard to say whether it was a note of gullibility available for exploitation or whether Rogers would take the plunge into fathomless water with his eyes wide open to the deception as long as it meant saving just one person. Or what he thought was a person. The Soldier had the feeling that Rogers would take the wolf in sheep’s clothes to spare it from the hunter, knowing full well what he was getting into.

So the question remained: if Rogers began to suspect him, would the Soldier be able to tell? Would it change anything? Or would Rogers angle for the humanity he thought must be trapped somewhere deep inside of him?

But he was getting ahead of himself, really. At the moment, Rogers appeared willing to trust him, at least as much as he’d be able to trust any random stranger in this situation after what he’d been through in the hands of the enemy.

Except he didn’t think it was random, he’d said. If he thought there was something inherently special about the Soldier, then the Soldier would just have to prove himself as ordinary as he could. He thought about the longer-term prisoners here; none made it very long, but a few had made it farther than most. They were obedient, pliant, largely silent and disinterested. They no longer expressed strong emotions of any kind. They weren’t terribly valuable, but neither had they proven themselves inconvenient enough to warrant termination, so they lived, such as it was. He was reminded, again, of his first meeting with Pierce. We’re in a business of compassion, he’d said as he gestured for his subordinate to shoot a prisoner in the head. That’s what this is all about, really. And you’ll enforce that mandate. Through our will, the world will be made whole again. And you will be in the vanguard of that movement.

“Hydra has a lot of those,” Rogers said. “Never had very much trouble breaking loose before.”

He’d implied before that he’d had run-ins with Hydra, and the Soldier was interested. Those worse places he’d slept, had those been rooms like this, maintained by the same organization? How far back did Rogers’ history with them go? He was sure that he would have remembered this man if he’d heard of him before, been briefed, even seen a file. Except those nagging, puzzling itches in his brain made him wonder. Maybe he had run into Rogers before. Maybe the sparks in his memory were from before his last procedure in the chair. That always left gaps in him. Rogers might not recognize him without the mask, without the uniform, without the murderous intent. A poisonous insect could very well be a leaf before it moved in that distinct way insects had and announced itself.

“You haven’t yet.” The hopelessness came unbidden. He was performing well. “What’s stopping you?”

“They’ve made some improvements to their protocols and equipment since our last round. But I’m patient.”

Rogers had to know that if Call Me Jimmy was a plant, it would be risky to openly admit to, let alone discuss, his intent to escape. So did that mean that the Soldier was giving him too much credit or just that he didn’t give a damn who knew?

“If I played along,” Rogers broke into his thoughts, “they wouldn’t believe me. They’d sooner expect me to grow wings than to roll over and not even try to escape.”

He tried not to startle at how unnervingly close Rogers had come to his train of thought. “So they know you pretty well?”

“We’re acquainted.”

He threw out some line to see where it floated. “A lot of guards,” he lied. “Constant surveillance. You must be important.”

“Guess that puts us in the same category.”

In a way, he wasn’t wrong.

He fed Rogers a few vague ideas about the security of the place, but his cover as a man who’d given up and become resigned to his surroundings made it plausible that he hadn’t given it much thought.

Rogers asked if he’d been held anywhere else before this, and a rushing sound filled his ears. The lights came back on. He didn’t answer.

Rogers changed the subject. The genuine disturbance the question had caused him, and Rogers’ acceptance of the effect it had on him, gave him ideas about how to redirect future conversations when he didn’t like where Rogers was heading.

The next several hours were spent alternately in silence or having Rogers explain the plots of movies he’d seen recently. It was surreal, but strangely comfortable.

His last thought, when the gas hissed into the room, was that it was too bad he’d have to wait to hear the end of the story. He’d have to ask Rogers to tell it again.

-

“He’s thinking about an escape.” The Soldier concentrated on the stainless steel table under him. It was so much easier when he was sitting up, not forced flat. He kept his outstretched arm still while they drew their blood samples. Something about the gas they’d used and intended to keep using; it didn’t really matter what it did to Rogers in the long-run, but they needed their asset at maximum functionality. Damage was not permissible.

Arrogant fool. Of course. And have you informed him this will not be possible?

“Yes.”

Have you asked any pertinent questions?

There was a scuff on the floor in the shape of a horseshoe. Horseshoes was a game. Had he played this game? “Pertinent to what?”

That’s not for you to know.

He almost shrugged. He almost asked what they expected from him if they refused to tell him what to look for.

“I want him to trust me,” he said. He should not trust me, he didn’t say. Wanted to say. The last thing he wanted was Rogers’ trust. He already knew it would be poisonous for both of them. Except for the very small, muted part of him that did, that wanted very much to somehow be found worthy in Rogers’ eyes and see what it would be like, just to see if there was a difference. “The only topic of importance he discusses is escape.”

You’ll deal with that, of course.

Of course he would.

-

More than a week passed with very little deviation from the routine. Call Me Jimmy would invite Rogers’ attention under false pretenses, Rogers would treat him like a human being worthy of acknowledgment and interest, and the Soldier would return to brutalize him in the night. Rogers was careful about what he said, but equally careful to not appear suspicious. The lights would die and flare again at random. Sometimes a tray would appear and Rogers would feed them both. Twice Rogers apologized, turned around, and relieved himself into the drain in the floor. The Soldier looked away, timed the stream to monitor for signs of increasing dehydration, said nothing.

There was an art to this. Rogers had managed to gracefully evade direct questions without appearing to do so, reveal little personal information while still coming across as accessible and warm, and carefully redirect topics he didn’t like without relying on lies. Or obviously relying on them, at any rate. It was breathtaking, really, in its skill and subtlety.

The Soldier’s excursions into the real world were mostly limited to two scenarios: quick, ugly kills, and longer, expert hunts. The protocols were different for each. The chaotic, brutal missions didn’t require much preparation, so he was handled less and was afforded the capacity to think between locations, but it was always dark and he couldn’t stray. The longer ones were worse in some ways, better in others. He was prepared thoroughly for these missions, drilled and trained until they could reach into his mind and find what they were looking for. The chair was integral to these preparations; it left him queasy, left him empty and waiting, and though he retained the ability to stalk and take down a target, had several days to himself where he could breathe real air and see grass and be around people who were neither prey nor handlers, his mind remained trapped in the rigors of its programming. He understood why they did this; armor for his mind was as valuable as armor for his body, and as necessary. But it was more disorienting than the straightforward missions, left him no room in his body for thoughts of his own to savor being outside and around people. He would remember later, back on his cot in the lab, like an errand he’d forgotten to run -- a comparison that would confuse him because he did not perform errands of any kind, nor did he forget orders, but it nagged him all the same every time.