Lent From Tomorrow (today was too small for us) - aimmyarrowshigh (2024)

Chapter 1: Chapter One

Chapter Text

“Dr. Steven Rogers?”

The boss he was waiting for was a dame, and a beta one at that. Not that Steve had any problem with that, he just—he’d thought the British lady on the phone was a secretary, not the big boss herself, and he suddenly hoped that he’d sounded polite. And maybe made his voice a little deeper, so’s to sound more employable.

He got to his feet. “Yes, ma’am, that’s me, ma’am, Steven Rogers.” He stuck out his hand to shake.

“Miss Margaret Carter,” the woman said. She smelled like almost-nothing, the scent of new paper before any ink. “You can call me Agent Carter.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve said. “I will, ma’am. I mean, I—yes, Agent Carter, ma’am.” He sat down again and nervously smoothed his necktie over his chest. “What’s, I mean to say, your sec—you didn’t say much about the job opportunity over the telephone, ma’am?” He cleared his throat. “That is to say, I’m very interested, ma’am, and grateful for the chance, but I’m wonderin’—wondering—what it is exactly that you want with me, ma’am.”

Agent Carter smiled at Steve. “You are the same Steve Rogers who won the Chauvenet Prize for Mathematical Expository Writing in 1927, are you not?”

“I am, ma’am. My mother was very proud.”

“I should say so,” said Miss Margaret Carter. “Given that you were only ten years old at the time.”

“Well, ma’am, I had lotsa free time that year, on account of rheumatic fever,” Steve said. His cheeks went pink. “I just didn’t want to get behind in school is all, ma’am.”

Miss Margaret Carter—Agent Carter—actually laughed at that. “We should all be such fine thinkers that we change the scope of mathematical thinking whilst on bedrest from Year 5. And you are the same Steve Rogers who convinced the New York Times to begin publishing a weekly crossword puzzle, are you not?”

“I am, ma’am,” Steve said, and his cheeks only got pinker. “That’s not to say, ma’am, I mean, I’m not a man who will ignore his work to play word games on the job, ma’am, I only think crossword puzzles are a good way to spend Sunday afternoons after church, ma’am.”

“But you don’t solve the puzzles,” Agent Carter said. “You write them for the newspaper, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve said. He smoothed his tie again. “On account of memorizing the Oxford English Dictionary, mostly, the summer I was thirteen, ma’am, because my asthma was real bad that summer on account of the looney gas factory opening up down the block from my apartment. The newspaper pays real well for each puzzle and I enjoy making them, but I don’t, that is to say, I sure am grateful for the opportunity for full-time work, ma’am, and I would happily pass along the job at the paper to someone else if need be.”

“I’ll think on that,” Agent Carter said kindly. “You may find yourself too busy to write a weekly puzzle. But then again, you’ve accomplished all that on top of earning a PhD in statistical modeling from Princeton University when you were only thirteen years old. Did you not?”

“Er,” Steve said. “I didn’t, ma’am. Complete the program, that is, ma’am, I—I got pneumonia in my third year, ma’am, and was in hospital too long, so I lost my scholarship, ma’am, and couldn’t afford to go back and finish. I’m sorry if you were misinformed about my credentials, ma’am, and I understand if I lose the job opportunity ‘cause of it.”

“I wasn’t misinformed,” Agent Carter says, with a small smirk in bright red lipstick on her face. “I wanted to be sure that you would be honest with me, Mister Steve Rogers. Thank you for not wasting my time with a lie.”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” Steve assured her. “I don’t like liars or bullies, and I find they’re usually one and the same.”

Agent Carter smiled. It looked like she meant it this time. “What do you know about the field of cryptanalysis, Rogers?”

Steve blinked in surprise. “Very little, ma’am, but I don’t suppose a great many people do know much about it. That would defeat its purpose. I know a little bit about—about Caesar and Beaufort ciphers, Polybius squares, the Playfair square… anything that might solve a simple cryptogram. I, I suggested cryptograms to the New York Times alongside the crossword, but they—the editors, that is, ma’am, they seemed to think that most people might find them too frustrating and not so relaxing as the crossword.”

“Well, luckily for the armed services, your editors were quite right. Not just anyone has a head for the kind of mathematics involved in solving complex codes and ciphers. But I suspect that you are just such a person, and not to put too fine a point on it, Rogers,” she said delicately, “But the Allies are in desperate need of your help.”

“My help?”

“I wasn’t going to mention all of your 4-F attempts at enlistment,” Agent Carter says delicately, “But they give me some hope that you might find working for the war effort fulfilling as a patriotic American, as well as arousing as an intellectual. If you are amenable, a train ticket for you to Washington D.C. is waiting at Penn Station on Saturday.”

Steve’s heart was thumping hard and off-rhythm in his chest. He had attempted enlistment in the Omega Corps five times, including twice under false names. Omegas didn’t serve on the front lines, but they did work in the field hospitals and provide urgent field medicine, and Steve’s sainted mother had been a nurse. It felt like something he was born to do, to finally give his birth as an omega some greater purpose. But even for the Omega Corps, Steve was too weak.

But for this job—this opportunity—Agent Carter wanted Steve specifically. Because of who he was and what he could do, what only he could do. He had never lived anywhere other than Brooklyn. Had never been on the train. And he did really only know simple transpositional modes for solving children’s cipher games.

But:

“I accept,” said Steve. “I would be honored to help.”

“Good.” Agent Carter kept smiling and stuck her hand out to shake. Her skin was cool and her handshake firm. “I already feel as though our chances of taking down the Nazis have improved.”

The train proved a trying beast. Steve spent much of the first hour of his big adventure with his head bent over a trash bucket, vomiting up his breakfast as the Crescent jerked and swayed along the track south towards Washington, D.C. His cheeks flamed with embarrassment and he was extremely grateful that the Unaccompanied Omegas car of the train was largely empty, which allowed the other passengers a wide berth away from his mortifying sickness. During a lull, he opened his window wide to allow crisp September to air out the cabin. A simple politeness.

Once he got his sea-legs—as it were—Steve found the train to be, if not his favorite way to travel, at least made of considerations for its passengers’ comfort. There were scent diffusers on the wall at every row of seats, and the omega hostess who came through to offer the other passengers lunch (and Steve a glass of tepid water), was dressed in a smart blue uniform that Steve found much more respectful that the omega inside it was a person than many of the other customer service uniforms he’d seen. He tried to look out the window at the scenery rushing past in a blur of red and gold and russet, but it made his head ache and his stomach feel queasy, so instead he closed his eyes, rested his head against the plush seatback, and tried to quell his nerves.

He had packed up all of his meager belongings in two suitcases and put his apartment in Vinegar Hill up for rent. The war wouldn’t be won in under a month, he reasoned; lodging in Washington would eat up the money that he earned at his mysterious new job.

And it was mysterious. Agent Carter told Steve that his work was too sensitive, too classified, to be discussed over the telephone—not that Steve had one—or written down anywhere, so he would receive a briefing when he arrived. She would meet him at the station on Saturday night, he would settle into his rooming house on Sunday, and on Monday he would begin his top secret work.

It sounded like a pulp novel. A lone omega moving to a strange new city for a mysterious new job—one that might help turn the tide of a brutal war, no less. Maybe he would get to meet a spy. Maybe he would get to be a spy.

Steve would make a rather good spy, he thought. No Alpha ever looked at him twice. He would be able to slip in and out of any room without attracting much notice from anyone.

At the station, Agent Carter waited for Steve near the tracks in a smart blue suit and a red hat. She carried herself like an Alpha even though the lack of her scent made Steve sure that she was a beta, and he wished that he had been able to cultivate that same fortitude. But instead, he wheezed in the humid early-September air as he dragged his suitcases away from the train.

“Let me help you, Rogers.” Agent Carter grabbed one of the suitcases and hefted it easily. “I have a car waiting. We’ll go to dinner first so you can meet the other project heads, Howard and Tony Stark. They’ll probably spend too much money, but it’s no object for them, so feel free to get a steak.” She sounded both fond and wry. Her high heels clipped a quick rhythm across the stone walkway and Steve struggled to keep up carrying the second suitcase.

He patted his breast pocket to make sure he had his asthma cigarettes. The Washington D.C. air thus far did not seem to agree with him.

Fortunately, Agent Carter didn’t seem to expect him to actually answer her until they were seated in the car, Carter at the wheel. Steve had never driven a car. Had scarcely been in one. He ran his hands over the wood, leather, and chrome interiors and was suitably impressed.

“I’ve heard of the Stark brothers,” he said, finally, when Agent Carter smoothly pulled out into the gnarl of traffic outside the train station. “They’re inventors, aren’t they?”

“They are.” Agent Carter sounded distracted and car-horns blew all around them. “Bloody American drivers… yes, Tony and Howard are inventors, but Tony in particular has skills that will serve our project particularly well. You’ll see why on Monday. Just let him brag toni—I’m using this lane!” She yelled at a passing car. Steve held on tighter to the handle on his door and felt a little green again. “Howard will be splitting his time between our project and various other needs of the military.”

“Right.” Steve swallowed hard and looked determinedly out the front windshield. “Does our project have a—a name, ma’am?”

“Project Hermes.” She swerved around the corner and the force of the turn sent Steve’s shoulder crashing into the car door. “He was also the god of language, you know.”

All omegas knew Hermes—the god of Alpha fertility—but Steve didn’t say anything, because he didn’t really want to distract Agent Carter from her driving any further. He just nodded and held on for dear life.

Steve felt immediately outclassed at the restaurant when they arrived, miraculously, in one piece. He was wearing his church clothes for travel—he’d need to set them over the radiator to dry out from his anxious sweating, if he wanted to wear them to Mass tomorrow—but they were threadbare, and rumpled from his day on the train. He smoothed down his hair as best as he could, but he’d never been the sort of man who used pomade. Not that he could’ve afforded it.

“You look just fine,” Agent Carter said kindly, smiling with her red lips at him.

Steve chose to believe her. He needed to think that she was the sort of woman who only told the truth.

The interior of the restaurant was dim, crowded, full of scents, and noisy. Of course, Steve thought: that would be a benefit if you were discussing top-secret work. No one would be able to hear you over the din.

“Pegs!” shouted a man at the bar. He jumped down from his stool and wiped his mouth and pencil-thin mustache with a napkin before he rushed over to kiss Agent Carter on both cheeks.

“Howard. This is Steven Rogers.”

“Glad to meet ya.” Howard pumped Steve’s hand full steam-ahead. “I was the one who turned Pegs here onto your Chauvenet paper, you know. That was some real crackerjack thinking, real crackerjack thinking.”

Howard was an Alpha but not a particularly large one, and the scent of him was pipe tobacco and caramel and the woody smell of graphite pencil shavings. He just kept shaking Steve’s hand, thumb on Steve’s scent gland like he thought nothing of it.

“Nice to meet you,” Steve said, finally. “I’ve heard of your work as well. I wanted to see it next month at the Stark Technology Exposition up in New York.”

“Oh, that.” Howard finally let him go to wave a hand dismissively. “That’s just the flashy work for future investors. The real work is done in the dark, isn’t it, Pegs?”

“It is,” Agent Carter agreed. “And where’s Tony?”

“Paying this mooch’s bill.” A second Alpha man, small like his brother, appeared on Howard’s side and leaned forward to kiss Agent Carter on both cheeks and then the mouth. Steve blinked and felt his cheeks grow hot. “Howard, you owe me $3 for your drinks and oysters.”

Three dollars! Just for drinks!

“And you must be Dr. Rogers,” continued the second man, who could only be—“I’m Tony Stark, of course, but you knew that, you're a smart man and everyone knows that. Glad to see you made it here alive with Pegs here at the wheel. Drives like a bat out of hell, doesn’t she? Glad you agree. Now where’s our table?” He turned around before Steve could even take a breath to begin his answer and started to flag down an omega waitress in a small white dress. “Honey, we’re ready for our table, the reservation is under ‘Stark,’ S-T-A-R—you know what, it’s spelled how it sounds, it’s not a hard name. That’s a good girl.” He looked over his shoulder at the rest of them. “Aren’t you coming?”

Steve looked over at Agent Carter, who just smiled and moved to follow the Stark brothers through the maze of white tablecloths and dimmed red lamps. Steve trotted along at the back of the party, hoping against hope that he was imagining the disdainful eyes following him at his appearance and the faintness of his scent. Look at that poor thing, murmured the eyes around him. What’s he doing with them?

Because of course—it hit him like a jolt—they would look like any other set of couples out for dinner and drinks together. Peggy and one of the brothers, and the other with… him.

Steve’s stomach hurt.

At their cloistered table, surrounded by dark wood paneling on three sides for privacy, Steve took a seat beside Agent Carter and across from Tony Stark. The red crushed velvet seat was cushy but itchy, and Steve felt like he might slip off and onto the floor. There were too many forks and knives by his plate.

Menus were handed to the two Alphas at the table—not to Steve or Agent Carter. Tony took Howard’s, too, and tapped both boards into a tidy stack before he smiled up at the omega waitress with a very white grin.

“We’ll all have the choice T-bone and French fried potatoes, mushroom sauce, and bring some extra horseradish for the table, too. And we’ll have… the… oyster co*cktail supreme… shrimp co*cktail… stuffed celery hearts… ooh, fried counts—you know what, dollface, bring us one of every appetizer on the menu. And a round of martinis, shaken.” He paused to take a breath and pointed at Steve. Steve startled in his seat. “You drink yours dry, Doc?”

“Uh,” Steve said. He’d never had a martini. They were expensive, and so was medicine. How was a drink supposed to be dry?

“Extra dry all around, extra olives,” Tony finished. He bobbled his head winsomely at the waitress. “You got all that, or should I write it down with my phone number?”

Steve wanted badly to roll his eyes, but the waitress actually looked charmed by the loquacious Stark.

“I have an excellent memory, Mr. Stark,” she said with a smile of her own. “But you can write down whatever you want for me.”

Tony’s dark eyebrows waggled.

Howard rolled his eyes, since Steve was too petrified and Agent Carter too polite.

The waitress left their table with a distinct sway in her step, backside drawing everyone’s eyes in her neat white uniform, and Tony grinned across the table at Steve.

“And that’s how you do it,” he said, as though Steve had asked. “But really, Doc, you like a dry martini? You’ll love these. They do ‘em great here. We do a lot of business here. This is our booth, you know, it doesn’t have our names on it but it might as well at this point. Because right above where you’re sitting—” Tony pointed—“There’s an insulation panel in the ceiling. Keeps voices from echoing at this booth and this booth alone. And the rest of the tables, well, they make their own white noise, don’t they? So this is the perfect place to discuss business. Plus, the offerings are delicious. And the food’s pretty good, too.”

He grinned again.

Steve tried very hard to smile back. Tony Stark was… different from what he’d imagined when he read the man’s work in Science magazine. Or even his verbose op-eds in the Times.

“Tony, be quiet now,” said Howard. He reached up beside him and cuffed the back of Tony’s head. “You haven’t let Pegs say a word this whole evening, and she’s a lot more interesting than you are. And better to look at.”

“That she is,” agreed Tony, waggling those eyebrows at Agent Carter. “So, Pegs, now that you’ve bagged the prize bass, what’re we gonna do with him?”

Steve frowned at being referred to as a prize bass.

“I want Rogers to head Room 6,” said Agent Carter, and both Stark brothers nodded as though suitably impressed. “He’ll need a crash course in cryptanalysis, but I have full faith that a mind like his will be able to find the alphabet where we’ve just been finding soup.”

“I’m telling you, JARVIS is close,” Tony said.

“The machinery, perhaps,” said Agent Carter patiently, “But it will be useless without the intelligence to back it up. JARVIS is what Tony has rather childishly named his computing machine,” Agent Carter explained to Steve beside her. “It can do ten million, million calculations per minute.”

“Wow,” Steve said. He actually was impressed by that .

“Just a matter of improving the wiring,” Tony said. He waved a hand, uncharacteristically—Steve could already tell—humble. “When you’re in on Monday morning, I’ll show you the diagonal board. That’s what makes all the difference in speed. Connects more than A to B or A to Z, you can connect A to M or N. Not literally, but, well, sometimes literally. Depends on the cipher, I suppose.” He grabbed a cloth napkin and unfolded it before taking a pen out of his pocket and starting to draw a diagram of straight and diagonal lines on it, mumbling under his breath. “I think I can speed it up even more, Pegs.”

“Let’s focus on giving it something to compute, first.” Agent Carter sounded amused. “That’s where you and your team will come in, Doctor Rogers. Are you comfortable leading a team?”

“I never have, ma’am,” Steve admitted. “But I’ve taught classes from first grade up through graduate students, so I suppose I have some experience in leading groups of people in a common task. At least if that task is mathematics.”

“Excellent,” said Agent Carter. “You will be working with the best and brightest your country has to offer in omegas. I want you to lead the front-end group of cryptanalysts in devising a method to this mechanical madness. While on the surface the codes we’re looking at are—”

Agent Carter cut herself off and they all fell to silence as the waitress returned with a massive tray of appetizers. It was enough to feed Steve in Brooklyn for a week: oysters and five dressings, shrimp in a shiny red sauce, fried clams piled in a pyramid, celery hearts stuffed with bleu cheese, mixed olives, a large chilled bowl of lettuce salad, a myriad of julienne pickles. Steve would have been happy with any one for his supper.

Once the waitress walked away again with a wink from Tony, Agent Carter began again. “The codes you will be working with are more than simple substitution ciphers. They never repeat their substitution keys, and there are more than—how many, Howard?”

“One-hundred fifty-one trillion,” said Howard around a mouthful of clam.

“Yes. That many.” Agent Carter delicately ate a Roquefort-stuffed olive. “And beyond the sheer number of substitution keys available, the messages come primarily in German, padded with nonsense text, and from equally encoded locations. Put simply, we are drowning in a sea of information that we know is there but we’re unable to put to any use because we can’t read it. I want you to teach us how.”

Chapter 2: Chapter Two

Chapter Text

Monday morning dawned with a quiet breakfast in the front room of his omega boarding house interrupted by the loud beeping of a car horn outside on the street. All of the other omega men at the table looked up at the noise.

Steve went pink around the ears. “That’s for me.”

He left half his plate of scrambled eggs behind and rushed out the front door to find Peggy driving a smart blue roadster. Steve straightened his tie and tried to smooth his hair down with both hands before he opened the door to the passenger seat and clambered inside.

“Good morning, Dr. Rogers.” Peggy didn’t look at him as she studied the road with a glare of pure hatred before pulling back onto the street. There was a disquieting thump, and Steve realized that she’d driven right up onto the roominghouse lawn.

“Good morning, Agent Carter,” Steve said dutifully. “You know, ma’am, you can call me Steven or Mr. Rogers… I’m not a doctor. I didn’t finish my degree.”

“You’re one of the smartest people in the world, omega, beta, or Alpha.” Peggy swung the wheel and they careened onto the next street. “I’ll call you ‘doctor’ if I want, because you deserve to be ‘doctor.’”

Steve sighed and held on for dear life as she raced the car around corners and up another street until she hit a gravel bypath near a thicket of trees. He tried to get a lay of the land—he knew the alleyways and corners of Vinegar Hill with his eyes closed—but although the screeching car ride lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, Steve couldn’t get a solid grasp on any street names or landmarks. He certainly wasn’t near the landmarks of the city.

Finally, the car stopped. The wheeze it let out when Agent Carter turned it off sounded relieved.

“Come along,” Agent Carter said, opening her car door. “The rest of the way is easiest on foot.”

Steve followed Agent Carter down a tidy path through the trees and up to a long wrought iron fence with a tall gate and a sign proclaiming POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE. Peggy pulled out a little badge from her handbag and waved it in front of the fence’s heavy lock.

Steve, in amazement, watched the lock turn itself with a loud click.

Agent Carter smiled and waved Steve through. “One of the brothers’ inventions. An automatic lock. It senses a specialized magnet in the badges that forces open the pins of the lock mechanism. Ingenious. You’ll get your own badge this morning from your personal assistant, Miss Lewis.”

“I have a personal assistant?”

“I don’t think you appreciate yet just how integral you are to this operation, Dr. Rogers.” Agent Carter stopped at a heavy wooden door to what looked like servant’s quarters, judging by its relative simplicity compared to the ornateness and immense size of the rest of the mansion. She waved her badge over the lock again and again, it opened itself. “Or just how busy you are going to be.”

The door opened into a silent hallway, which Steve followed Agent Carter along until she hit another heavy wooden door down to a cellar. Another automatic lock later, and they emerged into chaos.

“Gee.” Steve stopped in his tracks and watched as desk after desk of omega women were scribbling and typing and tinkering and translating and telegraphing and talking. Two omega women ran past Steve, nodded politely to Agent Carter, and then kept running until they reached the back of the room, where the largest, strangest machines that Steve had ever seen dominated the space.

Tony Stark climbed down from the top of one of the machines and landed with a flourish in front of the omegas who’d run over.

“Alright girls,” he said, “Let’s try another one.”

One of the women began to recite a long string of letters to Tony purely from memory, and Tony changed the positions of twenty thick wires with blunt plugs on the ends on what looked like a massive cribbage board. The other turned endless dials, apparently according to whatever was written on the long slip of telegraph paper she held.

After a moment, mechanical roaring filled the room, drowning out the chatter of the rest of the women.

Steve looked at Agent Carter.

She smiled, although it was tight at the corners. The weight of the war was heavier in this room filled with maps of occupied Europe all over its stone walls. “Welcome to Room 6!”

“It’s… busy!” Steve shouted over the noise.

“Follow me,” Agent Carter shouted back, waving a hand. “We’ll find your desk and meet Miss Lewis.”

Miss Lewis turned out to be a bombshell omega who Steve could have sworn he’d seen on billboard advertisem*nts and in blue comics. She smiled with plump bright red lips and a little gap between her front teeth and waved with red-painted fingernails. On her desk was a telegraph machine and a pair of headphones surrounded by crumpled papers, fresh sheets of paper, and a typewriter.

“Hi!” she stuck out her hand for Steve to shake, and the scent gland on her wrist offered up dark coffee, crème brûlée, and some heady flower that made Steve’s nose twitch a little with the need to sneeze. Psychosomatic hayfever. “I’m Darcy Lewis of the Philadelphia Lewises. I’m going to be your personal assistant, so I guess that means I should ask if you need a cup of coffee!”

“Hello, Miss Lewis—”

“Please, call me Darcy!”

“Alright, Darcy… no coffee for me, thank you, it’s—” Bad for my heart. “Not to my taste.”

Darcy looked shocked by that, if the widening of her kohl-black lashes around her eyes was any indication. “Suit yourself! I live on the stuff! Have you gotten the tour yet?”

“That’s what we’re doing just now,” interjected Agent Carter. “You were our first stop. Why don’t you tell Dr. Rogers what else you do here?”

“Telegraph booking!” She gestured to the Morse code machine on her desk and all of her various papers. “Whenever our boys overseas intercept a German message, they telegraph it right over to me or one of the other gals on the line right here. I have a good memory, so getting a long string of gobbledygook in Morse is no problem for me. I type it up on an indexable card and run it over to Jane.” She looked very proud. “If I miss a letter, the whole code could be mucked up. So that’s why I don’t have any earrings on. Need to wear headphones to hear Morse properly!”

With that, and a beatific grin, she turned back to her desk and the headphones went over her ears. Her bubbly countenance was supplanted almost instantly by a look of serious contemplation, and she moved one hand to the telegraph machine to be ready when a message came through.

Agent Carter smiled at Steve. “Let’s follow the same path as an intercepted message and pop over to meet Dr. Jane Foster. You’ll be working quite closely with her, at least at first as you learn the methodologies she’s already tried and that have not been successful at breaking the German ciphers.”

Steve nodded. “Alright. Is that the same Dr. Jane Foster who just stepped down from the presidency at Vassar?”

“It is.” Agent Carter gestured for Steve to move behind her so that two omegas carrying those index cards of scrambled letters could go running past. “She stepped down to be able to devote all of her time to our project. I suspect she will move into private research after we’ve won the war.”

Dr. Jane Foster held court over an entire back corner of the cavernous basem*nt, and every inch of her space was covered in stuff. Maps, blackboards, corkboards, substitution cipher formulas, transpositional equations, photographs of bloody battles, diagrams of the locations of mines dotting the Atlantic coast of Europe. Darcy’s index cards of ciphers were everywhere, stacked in precarious piles all over the desk and the floor. A half-eaten sandwich on a china plate sat on the desk chair, and Jane Foster herself sat on the floor with her shoes beside her.

“Assuming a three-rotor configuration, let’s let P denote the plugboard… L, M, and R denoting the left… middle… right… and R—no, we’re using R, let’s use U, U to denote the reflector… and the rotations can turn up to twenty-six permutations per… but it has not worked on an exponential substitution matrix… E… equals P… so it has to be cyclical…” Dr. Jane Foster spoke aloud to herself as she scribbled away on a blackboard set flat on the floor in front of her. Chalk dust was thick in the air, and she erased another three figures as Steve and Agent Carter stood to watch. Her left hand reached out in the vague direction of her sandwich on the chair, but missed it by at least a foot.

“Jane,” said Agent Carter, patiently. “Jane. Jane. Dr. Foster!”

“Hmm?” Dr. Foster looked up. She had the dazed look of someone deep in the whirling vortex of mathematical quandary, something Steve knew well. She was much younger than Steve would have guessed having been the president of a college, even an omega-only college like Vassar. The only lines on her forehead were between her furrowed brows as she considered the interruption of her process.

“Dr. Foster, this is the new team lead, Dr. Steven Rogers.”

Steve stuck his hand out for Jane to shake, and she instead used it to lever herself back up to her feet.

“Where is your degree from?” she asked, standing six inches too close to Steve. She smelled like chalk, mainly, but beneath that was the scent of pomegranates and honey and crisp ozone, like stars. She moved as though to push up a pair of glasses that she wasn’t wearing.

“Er,” said Steve, and his ears felt hot, “Agent Carter gives me undue credit. I didn’t finish my doctorate, but I was in courses at Princeton as a teenager.”

Dr. Foster squinted at him. “Steven Rogers. The continual structures of prime numbers and their linear intervals according to the Rogers Theorem, 1927. We offered you a placement at Vassar some years ago, did we not?”

“You did, ma’am,” Steve admitted. “I had to decline as I—” Got polio that year. “Was committed elsewhere at the time.”

“Hmm.” Dr. Foster made a noise through her nose. “A shame. I would have enjoyed having you on the faculty. Academia always needs more young omega blood and fewer stodgy old Alphas who stick too closely to tradition.” She stepped back and gestured to her floor blackboard. “Do you have any thoughts about the substitutional matrix for the Enigma yet that I mightn’t have tried?”

“Not yet,” Steve said, absorbing the lengthy equation lining the top of the blackboard. “I haven’t actually seen a cipher yet.”

“Aha. Well.” Jane reached into her pocket and pulled out a plethora of Darcy’s index cards. “Take a look.”

The codes were written in five columns of five blocks of five letters each, and Steve didn’t immediately spot any double-letter pairs. Above the columns were three letters between parentheses and simple single-digit numbers.

“What are these?” He asked Dr. Foster, pointing to the parenthetical.

“I suspect they may be the individual telegraph operators’ identification codes,” Dr. Foster said. “But I can’t prove it yet. Those are the only blocks that tend to repeat every so often, some more than others.”

Steve’s brain began to churn. “May I borrow this?” He waved the index card.

“Please do,” said Dr. Foster. She wandered to her desk and found her half-sandwich. “It’s two weeks old, so we’re considering it a dead code. Its best use now will be to help us solve the live ones.”

Steve nodded and tucked the index card into his own breast pocket. “I expect I will be back later on today, and we can do a broader pattern analysis of the repetitions.”

Dr. Foster nodded with her mouth full, and then her attention was off them entirely as she turned to a separate blackboard behind her desk. She had two sticks of chalk stuck in the bun in her hair.

Steve looked to Agent Carter, who eyed him speculatively.

“Do you have any ideas about what those markers might be?”

“I can’t make any educated guesses just yet,” Steve said. “But the fact that they repeat suggests that they have set meanings where the rest of the ciphers change on a per-message basis. If we can break those set parameters, they may give us more information regarding a keyword for the substitutional matrix. Am I correct?”

“So far as we can tell,” agreed Agent Carter.

Steve bobbed his head back. Agent Carter waved him forward until they reached a desk seating a pair of women with red hair. One, small and impossibly young-looking, sat in the chair as was proper, wearing a red dress that had seen better days but was still neat and clean. Her long hair hung in two braids like a child. The other woman wore slacks—in public! At work!—and leaned her hip up against the side of the desk like she was the picture of barroom insouciance. They were speaking quickly back-and-forth in a Slavic language Steve didn’t recognize.

“Ladies,” Agent Carter said, and they both jumped. The younger one looked sheepish, but the one in slacks just raised an eyebrow. “I’d like you to meet your new group leader, Dr. Steven Rogers. Steven, this is Miss Natasha Romanov and Miss Wanda Maximoff.”

Wanda hurried to stand. “How do you do,” she said, in a prim voice deeply colored by an accent from somewhere far-off and very cold. “I think I recognize your name… from newspaper, yes? The puzzles?”

“Ah, yes, that’s me,” Steve said. He held out his hand before Wanda could finish her curtsy, because he didn’t deserve a curtsy like some swell Alpha and he wanted to treat her like an equal if they were going to be working together. “I write four crosswords a month for the Times.”

“I like very much!” Wanda enthused. “They helped very much for me to learn English. Speaking is harder, but to read—yes. Thank you.”

“Wanda is our linguistic expert,” Agent Carter explained. “She speaks how many languages of Europe fluently, again, Miss Maximoff?”

“Eight with fluency,” Wanda recited. “To read, two more. My mother said she has vision of me writing great novels someday, so she taught me as many languages as she knew. And my brother, but he… this is not his strength. He wanted to be in Olympics as a runner. I stay inside, read books.” She smiled, but it didn’t meet her eyes.

“Ten languages!” Steve switched to French to ask, “What do you speak?”

“English, French,” Wanda replied, in a French that sounded straight from the Continent. Her scent seemed Continental to Steve, too, something dark and smoky like incense and hardy tea. “Sokovian, mother tongue. Russian. Romanian. German. Yiddish. Hungarian. To read, also Norwegian and Swedish.” Her cheeks colored faintly pink. “I will translate codes once they are broken.”

“Well, I’m certainly impressed, miss,” Steve said kindly. “You hardly look old enough to be out of high school.”

“Oh, she isn’t,” Agent Carter said. “I intervened on behalf of Smith to offer her a visa and scholarship to study just so she could be part of our little program here. She is a great novelist, back in Sokovia—oh, don’t be modest, Miss Maximoff, you are. It’s what got my notice.”

“Silly stories for pups,” Wanda demurs. “A magical witch who makes herself handsome Alpha but cannot control her children. Silly, funny. Not great novel.”

“Still quite a triumph for someone only fifteen,” Agent Carter said with finality. Steve blinked. Fifteen! She was even younger than he thought. He wondered what could make someone so young have such sad eyes.

“And this,” Agent Carter continued, looking meaningfully at the woman in slacks, “Is our resident expert on spycraft.”

“Gee,” Steve said. He held out his hand to Miss Romanov. “A real spy?”

“I can’t answer that honestly,” Miss Romanov said coolly. Her hand, too, was cool when she slipped it into Steve’s for a firm shake. She smelled like the model for omega perfume, like jammy cherries and the honey cake Steve’s Jewish neighbors ate at their New Year. “Not much I can say with honesty, these days.”

“Oh, Natasha, don’t scare him off,” Agent Carter sighed. “She’s just come back from a trip to Soviet Ukraine.”

“Got a shot through the gut for my trouble.” Natasha raised her eyebrows again. Steve wondered if that were her version of a smile. “Wanna see?”

“Er—”

“Natasha!” barked Agent Carter. “Honestly, you’re going to make the poor man keel right over.”

Natasha didn’t smile with her mouth, but something in her eyes sparkled at Steve. “We wouldn’t want that to happen.”

She turned her head back to the younger redhead, Wanda, and when she did, Steve had to hold in a gasp—where her scent glands should have been on the smooth, white sides of her neck, Natasha instead had tidy square surgical scars. He glanced surreptitiously at her wrists where her hands were still shoved in her pockets, and there, too, the glands had been removed.

She smelled like a perfect omega perfume because that’s what she wore. To smell whole.

Steve had never heard of anyone having all of their scent glands removed. Of course, he hadn’t seen her hips or inner thighs—he almost blushed purple at the thought, and wouldn’t that have invited questions—so he couldn’t say whether all of her glands were missing, but it certainly seemed like the most likely conclusion.

Was that common for spies?

“Steven?”

Steve blinked and noticed that Agent Carter had begun to move away from the redheads’ desk, apparently finished with that introduction. He bobbed his head to the two women and hurried to catch up to her.

Agent Carter had to shout right into Steve’s good ear for him to understand her over the din near the massive, whirring megaliths.

“This is JARVIS!” She waved a hand. “It’s the computing machine we mentioned briefly on Saturday night. I’ll let Tony explain it!”

The bearded Stark brother appeared from behind the massive hunk of metal, grease-stained rag in his hands, and grinned at Steve and Agent Carter.

“Are my ears burning or is that the tinnitus?”

“Explain your infernal machine to Dr. Rogers, Anthony! And then send him back to Jane! I need to check in on the wireless.” Agent Carter leaned forward so Tony Stark could kiss her on both cheeks, and then she clipped across the workroom, leaving Steve alone with him.

“You ever hear of the bombe?”

Steve shook his head.

“Good, you shouldn’t have, it’s top secret. The theory for it was developed a few years ago by the Poles, since the Nazis hit there first, and then a few big old prototypes were built in Britain by their best brains, but well, not to mince words, but I’ve got one of the biggest brains in the world, so when they realized they still hadn’t managed to crack the German code, they called me in and I went over to not-so-jolly old London town and came back to build this baby. Like Pegs said, JARVIS can try out ten million, million combinations of letter substitutions in a matter of hours. More than any human could get to in a lifetime, even with a brain like yours or mine.

“See,” Tony stepped back so he could point to the cribbage board of wires, “When JARVIS here finds a correct stecker pairing, that’s two letters that have been swapped, electricity cuts to that wire and it stops the rotor and that goes… over here, to the Typex machine, which pops the correct letter onto this handy slip of paper ribbon. And on the machine goes until every letter’s been unscrambled. There are twenty-six to the power of twenty-six options for every letter in every code, and they scramble their own Enigmas, that’s the coding machines, differently every day.”

Tony looked exhausted. “And we haven’t had any luck yet unscrambling any of them correctly. Sometimes the machine will print out a load of gibberish that includes one or two words in German, but just as often it prints out a load of gibberish with a word or two in English or French or Pig Latin. If you can help us devise a way to find the correct keywords to plug into the boards… well, Doc, we could end this war.”

Steve shivered. “I’ll do my level best, sir.”

“Ack, don’t call me ‘sir,’ I’m not Howard, he goes in for that hierarchy stuff. Just call me Tony.”

Steve smiled at him and nodded. “I’ll do my level best… Tony.”

Chapter 3: Chapter Three

Chapter Text

A week passed in a haze of jumbled letters and mind-numbing blocks of random ciphers on endless index cards. Then two weeks, and an infinity of information. Steve settled into Washington, D.C., and his new life fairly easily—it wasn’t Brooklyn, but nowhere was except Brooklyn itself. To him, Washington felt almost provincial in comparison. He knew that the other omegas on his team mostly felt the opposite, like it was moving to a massive, bustling city: Wanda, especially, had felt out of her depth, and she reached out to Steve that first week with a shy smile and a platter of homemade Sokovian sweet rolls baked in the kitchen of the women omegas’ dormitory.

Steve, as a male omega, had had to find other lodging—with apologies from both of the Starks and from Agent Carter; Steve brushed it off as expected, since male omegas weren’t exactly common, and he’d figured there wouldn’t be space for him in the dorm. But Washington D.C. was city enough that he’d had his choice of nearby boarding houses for male omegas, and he had found one just a few blocks’ walk from Stark Mansion. It was a nice place, with nesting closets and a bathtub in every room beside the gas stoves, and breakfast included in the rent. The elderly, mated couple who ran the place seemed to understand that most, if not all, of their renters had jobs that they couldn’t talk about because of the war, so they were friendly without being nosy.

Steve was one of six renters with two empty rooms left for more to come. Because of the nature of secrecy, there wasn’t much chatter over breakfasts—fluffy scrambled eggs, hearty oatmeal, and even some cutlet of meat each day except Fridays when there were sardines on toast—but Steve did befriend a tall, rangy omega who lived two rooms over down the corridor. His name was Scott Lang, and Steve knew that he was working with some kind of weaponized technology at Pym National Laboratory, but he knew this only because he happened to see Scott getting off the bus and heading into the labs one day, not because Scott had loose lips. What Scott actually told him he was doing for the war effort, the reason he was in D.C. and not back home in San Francisco, was “security consulting.”

Steve said that he was working in supplies, which was what Agent Carter instructed them all to say if anyone asked what they did up at Stark Mansion.

He got the idea that what they were doing was even more secretive than whatever was being cooked up at Pym Labs.

But Scott was smart—not as smart as Steve, but Steve had never met anyone else with a memory like his or the aptitude for math—and they had a lot to talk about from their college years. Like Steve, Scott had eschewed the traditional omega areas of study and had degrees in mechanical engineering, but he, too, had his doctorate cut short by misfortune. It took a bit of coaxing, but Scott finally admitted that he’d gotten in trouble with the law just before he finished the program, and he was too embarrassed to go back and finish even though his record was clear now.

“I needed to feed my pup,” he’d admitted, staring down at the chipped dinner plate on Steve’s little table. “And I don’t regret that.”

“You have a pup?” Steve was surprised. “Why are you living in an omega boarding house, then?”

Scott’s smile turned wistful. “She’s back in California with my friend, Luis.” His hand floated up to touch the unmarked scent gland on his neck. “My Alpha never Bonded me and left when I was in San Quentin. He didn’t want a pup, or, well, he didn’t want my pups, so it’s just her and me. And Luis, helping out when he can. He’s a beta. We run a security business back home. Then I got the invitation to come here, and well, the pay was more than we’d make in five years. But it’s too dangerous for Cassie to be here, and I work all hours, and it was just… it seemed better to let her stay at the school she knows and in the house she knows.”

Steve read between the lines: whatever Scott was doing for Pym, if the enemy found out that he had a pup, they could use her life as leverage. He gained a new respect for his friend.

Scott cleared his throat and smiled brightly again. “What about you? Any pups? A mate?”

Steve shook his head. “Neither. I live alone in a drafty one-room in Vinegar Hill, the same one I grew up in when it was just my ma and me. My father died in the Great War, so being alone is—it’s what I’m used to and it’s alright. I’m a substitute math teacher around the borough during the school year and I write crossword puzzles for the New York Times each week. I’m sad that I’ve had to give that up for the time being, but whoever they’ve got writing them now is fairly good. It took me nearly an hour to solve this week’s puzzle.”

“I’ve never been to New York.” Scott stuffed the last of his hamburger steak in his mouth and swallowed. “I’ve seen it in the movies. It looks like it’s either nice or horrible with no in-between.”

Steve laughed. “I live in the in-between, so I can tell you not to believe everything you see in the movies, I guess. I’ve never been to California. I’d never been anywhere until I got the call for this job.”

“I’ve been to England,” Scott offered. “Between the Great War and, well, this one. You know they have a beta king now? Can you imagine a beta winning for president?” He shook his head. “Maybe someday.”

Steve raised his eyebrows and finished his own plate of hamburger steak. “Maybe someday there will even be an omega president.”

Scott laughed. “Free nesting blankets for everyone and paid heat-leave for all!” He shook his head. “That would be the life.”

Back home in Brooklyn, Steve was a card-carrying Socialist who’d penned anonymous letters to the editor of the Times arguing for just that—not the free nesting blankets, but that paid heat-leave should be a right, not a luxury. But here in Washington, D.C., he knew his views wouldn’t be so popular and had agreed with Agent Carter to forego his party membership until the end of the War. “For image,” she’d said, “You need to look supportive of the President.”

Steve didn’t much care about that, but he did care about helping to end the war before it hit America’s shores. Although he’d started to read the Times back-to-front every day that he could afford a paper when he was five years old, and he thought he knew about the war before arriving in Washington, the daily briefings from Agent Carter that came over the telegraphs from the European and Pacific fronts were brutal, demoralizing, and difficult. Steve became much more aware of the amount of positive propaganda that jingled across movie screens with hopeful newsreels about Allied troops’ victories when he was confronted every day with evidence of their defeats.

And, of course, he was experiencing defeats of his own.

Three weeks after settling into his role at Stark Mansion, they had made no further progress on actually deciphering the intercepted German messages. Steve had begun to bolt awake from deep sleep with new ideas, and he knew from the strange looks that he got when he explored the park the previous Sunday that he had taken to mumbling aloud to himself like a lunatic.

He knew in his heart that they were close to a breakthrough, but there was no logic behind the feeling. Maybe it was just the natural instinct to counteract so much bad news day after day, to create a false sense of impending change, of impending hope.

“This is hopeless,” Jane declared, and she stuck chalk-covered fingers into her hair. “We have nothing on which to base any guesses, and the Germans are steamrolling their way across Europe like they know it.”

Steve slumped forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. Letters and equations hammered at the inside of his head, threatening to spill over into a tension migraine.

“Perhaps we’re biting off more than we can reasonably chew.” He didn’t open his eyes. “There’s more information on the intercepted messages than just the ciphers themselves.” He peeked at Jane with one eye. “If we can map where the messages are coming to and from, key cribs will reveal themselves. For example… today, today, if a message were sent to or from an outpost near the Denmark Strait, we could reasonably guess that ‘U-boot’ or ‘Unterseeboot’ could be a crib, because our boys have sunk a German U-boat in the Strait last night. You see?”

Steve jumped up and grabbed as many maps and newspapers as he could before spreading them all out over the desktop. Jane came up beside him and peered over his shoulder. “We can connect messages through their traffic hubs and find cribs through the daily briefings.” He looked up and directly at Jane. “The marking with the most traffic will surely be Berlin. We can start there.”

“I’ll get the books of dead codes and perhaps Natasha and Wanda to help us,” Jane said. She had streaks of white chalk in her dark hair, but she looked younger than she had in a week. “I think you’re onto something, Rogers.”

Steve smiled.

Steve’s hunch proved correct: they were able to map the traffic of incoming and outgoing German messages through the so-called extraneous code at the beginning of each intercepted telegraph. Darcy took point and began to label each telegraph slip with its translated location before passing them off to Jane or Steve, who would use information from Agent Carter or Natasha to find relevant keywords that might have been used in the messages. After a hand-test of the keyword within the code, they would pass the messages off to Tony or Howard and they would program JARVIS to run its magic.

“Science, Rogers!” Tony yelled, standing atop the huge machine. “Computer science! Wave of the future!” He jumped down and clapped Steve on both shoulders. “You’ll see, Rogers, by the time we’re little old men, every household in America will have a computer, and we’ll see peace in our time.”

Over the next month, the difficult work began to develop a rhythm. Steve would arrive at work and greet Darcy, who met him with a cup of tea—he insisted she didn’t need to do that, but she said that if she didn’t she would feel like a poor assistant since he never troubled her for coffee—before gathering with Agent Carter and Natasha for a briefing on the last 24 hours’ developments on the Western front. Steve would then take the briefings and head over to Jane and their endless maps to begin trying to mark out the locations of different Enigma operators. Some were easier than others: Berlin sent and received the most messages, so Steve grabbed Wanda or a German dictionary and would try words from the briefings against the rolling ciphers to find crib words for the day. He would work until Darcy came to get him and told him it was time to go home, and then he would bicycle on aching legs from Stark Mansion back to his boarding house to pretend like his work was simple and not secret. He worked sixteen-hour days, made do on little to eat, and sorely missed the familiar sights and sounds of Brooklyn when he tried to sleep at night.

But slowly, Steve and Jane were able to triangulate almost all of the Enigma operators sending messages around Europe to direct the movement of the Nazi horde. One befuddled them. It never sent or received messages from Berlin, but it did send and receive from everywhere else—almost like the Germans had a secret second capital city, a second commander-in-chief directing troop movements. But its codes, too, proved harder to decipher than those coming in or out of Berlin, and never seemed to use the most common phrase they cribbed to decode the full message: heil Hitler. Most every other message from every other location either began or ended with the screed, but none from Location KJS.

“I haven’t heard anything about a mole burrowing through the war machine,” Natasha said apologetically. “So I don’t think we’re looking at a resistance group.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “In the meantime, Agent Carter, I think we need to request the RAF seed the coastline again.” He sighed and looked up, smiling sadly. “I hate to ask you to direct a bombing raid of your own country, but it was the most helpful technique we’ve found so far for finding crib words.”

Agent Carter nodded. “It’s a war, Steven. I have no illusions that my hands will be clean by its end.”

Steve’s stomach ached. He had not yet become so jaded to the cost of war. He wanted his work to save lives—although he knew that in saving the lives of the Allies and civilians in Britain and France, he would by necessity be hoping for the deaths of Nazis and their civilian allies.

Later that day, Natasha got off the wires with gory news of a German teenage omega boy, a resistor of the Party, who had been caught and beheaded for his crime of treason.

No one ate lunch, and everyone worked late. The Nazis had to be stopped.

A few days later, an RAF officer drowned retrieving codebooks from a sinking German U-boat. He did not survive, but the books made it to associates of Agent Carter in London, and they beamed across the wires different code phrases that the Germans routinely used within their ciphers. Steve patiently added them to his growing catalogue of possible crib words, then sat with his back to the chaotic room, closed his eyes, and tried to think through the logic of the newfound codes.

He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there when someone laid a hand on his shoulder and he jumped.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Steve!” Darcy stood beside him holding a cup of tea that had sloshed onto its saucer.

Steve looked up at her with quirked eyebrows. “What direction does a clock move, Darcy?”

“Um… clockwise.”

Steve nodded. “Except when you’re the clock.” He stood up so quickly that his heart trip-hammered and he felt woozy. “I need to talk to Tony and see the JARVIS. I’ve had an idea.”

Steve and Darcy hurried to the back of the Stark Mansion basem*nt to where Tony Stark was underneath one of the massive bombe machines, muttering to himself and banging with a wrench.

“Tony,” Steve said, panting a little from walking across the entire basem*nt at such a quick clip, “Get out, we need to test a decryption method and I want you to take a look.”

The Alpha wheeled himself out from beneath the JARVIS and accepted Darcy’s hand to pull himself to his feet.

“What’s the new method, Doc?”

Steve began to rub the back of his neck. “Well, I thought of this imaginary German fellow with his wheels and his book of keys—the fellow who’s the opposite of Darcy. Who sends the messages from the German side of things. He would open the book and find what wheels and settings he was supposed to use that day, correct? He would set the rings on the wheels, put them into the machine, and the next thing he would have to do would be to choose a three-letter indicator for his first message of the day. The location indicator.

“So I began to think, how would he choose that indicator? Suppose he was a lazy fellow, or in a tearing hurry, or had the wind up, or something or other and he were to leave the wheels untouched in the machine and bang the top down and look at the windows, see what letters were showing and just use them!

Steve waved his hands. “Then another thought struck me. What about the rings? Would he set them for each of the three given wheels before he put them into the machine, or would he set them afterwards? Then I had a flash of illumination: If he set them afterwards and, at the same time, simply chose the letters in the windows as the indicator for his first message, then the indicator would tend to be close to the ring setting of the day. He would, as it were, be sending it almost in clear.

“There’s a sporting chance that the indicators would cluster around the ring settings for the day. We might be able to narrow down the 17,576 possible ring settings to a manageable number, say 20 or 30, and simply test these one after the other in hope of hitting on the right answer.”

Steve looked up at Tony. The Alpha’s eyebrows were both raised, but he looked more impressed than incredulous.

“It’s worth a shot,” he said. “Darce, do you have a fresh code?”

“I do,” Darcy said, and she fished in her pocket for an index card. “We’re looking at the indicators up at the top, correct? I only followed some of what you said, Steve.”

“Yes, yes, we need to know the three-letter indicator and Tony, if you could program the rings to match, then we might be able to see possible stecker pairs on the rings. I might well be wrong,” Steve admitted, “But I figure that if it’s just one more wrong guess, then at least it’s one we’ve eliminated.”

“Let’s hope the Gerries are lazy, then,” Tony said. He took the card from Darcy and opened up a panel on the JARVIS to start positioning the rings and the wires.

When he was finished, he banged the panel shut, patted it like a friendly dog, and said, “Alright, Doc, let’s fire him up and see what happens.”

Steve and Darcy covered their ears as JARVIS began to run with an electrical roar. Tony gestured for them to follow him, so they did, and slowly the sound lessened as they crossed the wide space.

“Nothing to do now but wait,” Tony said. “Doc, you look dead on your feet. Darce, bring the man a cup of tea and a sandwich, be a good girl. And bring me a coffee, too, willya?”

Darcy looked at Steve for confirmation before she left. Steve and Tony both sank into chairs across from one another, and Steve had to admit: he felt like death.

With an unpleasant jolt, he realized that he was likely going into pre-Heat. He had lost track of time while in Washington, but it had been nearly three months since his last Heat and for all of his body’s failures and ailments, he had at least always been quite regular.

He rubbed both hands over his face. He didn’t have time to take five days off his work and lie about in his nesting closet, miserable and achy and panting.

“You alright, Doc?”

“I’m fine,” Steve snapped. He closed his eyes and exhaled. “Sorry, Tony. Yes, I’m fine. I just hope this decryption works. We need a win.”

“It’s not all on you,” Tony says. “If we win, we’ll win together.”

Steve nodded, tiredly, and he murmured a quiet thanks to Darcy for the cup of tea and raisin-cream cheese sandwich.

“Made the sandwich myself, and everything,” Darcy said cheekily. She grinned with the gap between her front teeth on full display, and Steve appreciated her attempt to lift their weary spirits.

He ate the sandwich, drank the tea, and waited for JARVIS to finish its attempt to decode the message.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally, the sound of typex keys clicking downward began. Clack. Clack. Clack.

“Well, something’s happening,” Tony said. “We’ll see if any real words pop out. Maybe they’ll even be in German. Heck, I’ll take Dutch at this point.”

Finally, the massive bombe machine powered down and a thin strip of paper snaked out of the silent typex machine.

Steve stood up and took the paper, prepared to have nothing but more alphabet soup stare back at him.

KUCHEN SCHNEEFALL SCHLAF WALNUSS DRACHEN HALT LEGEN SIE ALLE TRUPPENAKTIVITÄTEN SOFORT NACH KAIROUAN AB HALT PANZERARMEE AFRIKA UNTER GENERALFELDMARSCHALL ROMMEL WIRD IN KÜRZE ZU IHNEN HALT WILLKOMMEN NASE FRÜCHTE FARBE EICHE

Steve read the paper once, then twice, and the third time he began to laugh.

“What?” Darcy and Tony asked, crowding him. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s German!” Steve whooped. “It’s German! Someone get Wanda! Someone get Agent Carter! We’ve got German! Darcy,” Steve turned to look at her and found her only inches away from his face. “How fresh is this code?”

“It just came in this morning,” Darcy said, and a smile spread across her red mouth. “Steve! The code only came in this morning!”

“And it’s German!” Steve yelled again, and then suddenly Darcy was kissing him on the mouth and then Tony was kissing him on the mouth and then Darcy and Tony were kissing on the mouth and all three of them were shouting “GERMAN!” and laughing so hard they almost fell over right onto the typex machine.

“What is it?” Agent Carter asked. She had dark circles under her eyes but otherwise looked as perfect and unruffled as ever. “Has it worked? Steve, have you done it?”

“We did it!” Steve yelled. He brandished the code slip with no small amount of victory. Even the low-growing pain in his abdomen from the upcoming Heat seemed lessened with the upswelling of hope. “It’s German, alright! And from this morning!”

“Wanda,” said Agent Carter urgently, thrusting the slip into the young girl’s hands, “What does it say?”

Wanda’s eyes flashed as she read over the line of printing quickly. “[TK RANDOM GERMAN WORDS] Stop. Divert all troop activity to Kairouan forthwith. Stop. Panzer Division Africa under General Field Marshall Rommel will join you shortly. Stop. [TK RANDOM GERMAN WORDS]. This is a new code?” She looked up with her cheeks flushed red. “We need to tell the Army now! The Germans are moving tonight!”

“We need to tell the Army now!” Steve and Darcy echoed. “The Germans are moving tonight!”

It struck Steve suddenly how young Agent Carter really was—he’d assumed she was in her forties, but the look on her face now spoke of being no older than twenty-two. She grabbed Steve’s cheeks in both hands and then she, too, kissed him soundly on the mouth. “Steven Rogers, you brilliant man.” She took the code slip from Wanda and the two women disappeared, rushing off to inform their military liaison, Colonel Phillips, of the enemies’ troop movements.

Steve felt dizzy as the adrenaline left him and he staggered over to the nearest chair to sit down. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked.”

“It worked,” Tony agreed. His voice was softer than usual. “I think that means you deserve some rest, Doc. Go home. You saved lives here today. You deserve to get some sleep.”

Steve buried a yawn in his cupped hands and nodded. “Do you really think so? That we saved lives?”

“If Phillips listens,” Tony said a little darkly. “Then yes. Undoubtedly.”

Steve smiled, holding back another yawn. Darcy helped him up from the chair and he shuffled off to find his coat and hat so that he could make it back to the omegas’ boarding house like a civilized person.

He fell into bed without supper and slept like the dead until the sun rose the next morning, light shining through the still-drawn blinds from the day before right into his eyes.

Oh. Pain lanced through Steve’s abdomen. He was well into pre-Heat now. Tomorrow or the next day, he would need to remain here at the boarding house and nestle into his nesting closet with a hot water bottle and a grimace.

But today, he needed to find out whether his deciphered code had really worked. Whether he had really changed the course of this terrible, stupid, awful war.

Steve forced himself to dress as quickly as he could manage with the cramps setting in more often than not, and he carefully ate a breakfast of plain oatmeal and dry toast. The bicycle ride from the boarding house to the road nearest Stark Mansion took him a few minutes longer than usual as he couldn’t quite get his shaky, aching thighs up to his normal speed.

He burst into the basem*nt expecting—

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Something out of the ordinary. Not exactly a cake and balloons, but something besides business as usual.

“Steve,” greeted Darcy, handing him his usual cup of tea. “No news yet from Agent Carter or Natasha about what happened yesterday evening when they ran the message upstairs to Phillips.”

“Oh.” Steve’s heart sank. Maybe Phillips didn’t even register the message. Maybe it never made it across the bouncing airwaves overseas to the troops in North Africa. Maybe nobody wanted to listen to an omega and disregarded him.

Agent Carter clipped into the room, looked around briskly, and spotted Steve.

Her red mouth, normally pursed in stress, spread into a wide, white, lovely grin.

Steve paused with his cup of tea halfway to his mouth. “Ma’am?”

Agent Carter’s fingers were dry and soft when she grasped onto one of Steve’s wrists with both of her hands. “Steven… Dr. Rogers… I—you—that message—”

“Ma’am?” Steve asked again, his brow creasing.

“You prevented an ambush late last night,” Agent Carter said, her voice thick with emotion. “Allied parachute airmen from the 509th Alpha Infantry regiment were able to drop in Youks-les-Bains and capture the city. There’s only the Vichy French there, and we can’t—well, that is to say, there’s no guarantee of support for Allied troops in North Africa as of now. But because of you, we got our boys behind the line and they were able to back up the British unit on the ground and… and beat back the Germans right out of the area. It would have been a bloodbath if we didn’t know they were on the move, Steve. You saved… probably a thousand men.”

Steve blinked. “Not just me.”

“It was you,” Darcy argued. “You came up with the method that worked to decrypt the message.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Darcy insisted. “This is your victory.”

Agent Carter squeezed Steve’s wrist gently. “A thousand men are alive today because of you. Let that sink in and fuel more good work.”

A ball rose in Steve’s throat. Damned pre-Heat hormones. He bit his lips together and swallowed hard. “Thank you. Excuse me.”

He escaped his office and walked quickly through the basem*nt to the stairs, where he slipped past the door and turned the corner to the stairway landing.

A thousand men are alive today because of you.

Steve sank down to his haunches and buried his face in his forearms. He breathed in his own light scent deeply, trying, and failing, not to cry.

The last two months had been so long and so frustrating and so devoid of hope.

He doubted every day of his life that he had a reason to keep fighting through all of the aches and the pains and the difficulty breathing and the cramps and the loneliness and the migraines and the futility of being an omega in a world built for Alpha men.

His wet eyes were hot against his forearms as he shuddered into the release of pent-up emotion. Five minutes. He just needed five minutes, and then he would go back in and get to work again.

His mother had always told him, love, you are going to do something great. I can’t wait for the whole world to see you as I do.

She was proud of him when he published his first math paper—the Chauvenet winner—but other than catapulting him from the fourth grade into college in the span of one season, it didn’t really change his life. The money from the prize went almost in its entirety to medicines and doctor’s pay, although he and his ma were more secure on their rent for a year or two there. He’d changed the world of mathematics, but he’d hardly done anything to change the world. Sarah was proud of him, but Steve still ached to do something more. Something that he could point to and say, I did that. He wanted to change the world in a way that he could point to someone and say, they’re alive because I was born, Ma; you didn’t make the wrong choice when you fought to keep me alive.

She wasn’t alive to be told that a battalion of Alpha soldiers got to live another day because of Steve. But he sat on the basem*nt stairs and had a short cry and knew, steadfastly, that she was proud.

After he had calmed himself, Steve groaned and uncurled. He went to the omegas’ restroom to fix his hair and splash tepid water on his face. He still looked like death, so a little red around his eyes wouldn’t make too much difference.

Then he straightened his shoulders and marched back out to find Natasha and Wanda at their desks.

“Alright, ladies. What do you have for me today?”

Chapter 4: Chapter Four

Chapter Text

Steve groaned in misery and curled up into a tighter little ball, both arms crossed hard over his cramping stomach. His catechism classes had always taught him that Heat was the punishment from God that all omegas had to suffer for committing the original sin after God had been so good as to make omega Eve from the rib of Adam, the first Alpha. And every Heat, Steve believed it. He could feel the meager slide of slick between his legs, and his slick glands throbbed uncomfortably inside him. He would need to touch them sooner or later, massage out more slick with his fingers, but that always hurt and he couldn’t make enough slick to—

To what? Take a knot?

Even miserable, Steve huffed an unamused laugh at that. He didn’t have an Alpha, anyway. He never had, and when he was honest with himself, he knew that he never would. He wasn’t bad-looking—he had the small frame typical of a male omega, all bird bones—but his scent was too faint to attract anyone’s notice, and those who did catch his scent knew instantly why he would be an unsuitable mate. He was sickly. He would never carry strong, healthy pups.

There were plenty of people who would take one sniff of Steve and say that it was good he’d never find an Alpha. Good that he couldn’t be bred. Better those weak genes died off with him. He’d once overheard a neighbor telling his mother that she ought to just pray that Steve died of his pneumonia, that she’d be better off without him and he would be better off in Heaven than stuck in a world where he couldn’t fulfill his purpose as an omega.

That was one of the only times Steve had ever heard his mother raise her voice, but oh, Sarah had shouted at the neighbor. Steve lay in bed half-delirious with fever when she had kicked the neighbor out of their apartment and came to rest her cool lips against his dry forehead. They never spoke about it. Steve supposed that she thought he was too sick to have heard.

Even when he was well, Steve wasn’t quite sure that he disagreed. When he was in Heat, he definitely agreed.

There was a soft knock on the door of Steve’s nesting closet and he whimpered pathetically.

The door opened and Steve hissed at the burn of bright light on his oversensitive eyes. Even with all of the lights doused and the curtains drawn, the glow of sunset outside was unbearable.

“Hi, pal,” Scott said softly. He held a glass of water and a plate with a sandwich on white bread. “You doing alright?”

Steve turned over onto his other side, flouncing away from Scott. Scott was an omega, too. He had to understand—of course Steve wasn’t doing alright.

But then, Scott had an Alpha once upon a time. He had a pup, and he had his friend Luis to help him through Heats even if he was just a beta. That was better than nothing. Than no one.

“I know,” Scott said from the door of the nesting closet. He didn’t have the bad form to ask if he could enter, and he stayed outside. “But you need to drink some water and get something to eat. It’s been a whole day.”

Steve grunted into the pile of blankets and soft clothing that comprised his sad little nest. It just smelled like himself, and that wasn’t satisfying at all. Scott’s soft, floral omega scent from the doorway didn’t add anything that Steve wanted, either, and instead it made some part of him that lived in the base of his spine and was made of primal urges puff up, angry and competitive. Scott smelled fertile. Scott already had a pup. He would distract Alphas away from Steve’s nest, and Steve was the one in Heat.

“I’ll just leave this here for you, right outside the door,” Scott said. He seemed to pick up on Steve’s prickly mood. “Please eat it and drink the water, Steve. I’ll come by tomorrow with some breakfast before I leave for work, too.”

Steve wanted to bite, I’ve taken care of myself during every Heat since I was twelve, I don’t need your pity. But Scott was just trying to help. And Steve hadn’t had the time to stockpile easy, soft foods in his room in the lead-up, like he usually did, because he had been so busy at Stark Mansion.

The door to Steve’s room thumped shut and there was the scrape of the lock. Steve let himself groan in displeasure now that he was alone.

He had spent a whole week in pre-Heat in the presence of not one, but two unmated Alphas, and neither Stark brother had taken any notice of him. Neither had offered to help him out, or even given a sign that they noticed his Heat encroaching.

He didn’t really want either Tony or Howard, either, but it would have been nice to be noticed. It would have been nice to have the option not to be alone.

After a while, Steve sat up. He fought his way through the pile of blankets to the front of the closet, and he picked up the sandwich and the glass of water. It wasn’t Scott’s fault that he already had a pup, or that Steve never would. Refusing the food and drink would be stupid, and even in the thick of Heat, Steve wasn’t stupid.

He choked down the cold cut sandwich and drank his water, and he immediately wished that he had another glass. It took five long, painful minutes to unclench his muscles enough to stand up and wobble over to the faucet in his kitchenette. The city lights peeking through his heavy Heat-proof curtains made his eyes water and sting.

God, Steve hated Heat.

After another glass of water that dribbled down his chin and splashed onto his thin chest, Steve minced his way back to the nesting closet and practically fell inside. He swaddled himself up tight in his thickest quilt and pushed his face into the cradle of softness. His insides burned.

He just wanted to sleep it all away.

The war didn’t end in the five days that Steve was trapped at home in his nesting closet. He made his slow way back to Stark Mansion on the sixth day, shivering in the wet November morning chill. The ground under his feet was pale with a coating of frost, and Steve wore two sweaters under his coat. He would need to buy a pair of winter gloves with his next paycheck, if he ever managed to leave Stark Mansion during hours that the department stores downtown were still open for business. He kept his hat pulled down low over his ears and glowered at everyone he passed on the sidewalk. His Heat might be over, but the ill humor continued.

“He’s back!” shouted Tony when Steve made it down into the basem*nt of Room 6. “Heya, Doc, how you doin’?”

“Still not a doctor,” Steve grumbled. “I’m fine, Tony. How is everything coming along here?”

“No big breakthroughs without you,” Tony admitted. “War is hell, Doc. Nat and Pegs have the latest news.”

“And?”

“It’s all bad.” Even Tony’s perpetually roguish face looked tired and wan. “Of course it’s all bad.”

Steve hung his coat in his office and went to find Natasha and Agent Carter for the day’s dispatches, and to get up to speed on anything of note that happened while he didn’t have access to newspapers.

The Battle for Velikiye Luki had begun and Natasha would depart once again for the Eastern Front come December.

A British airborne force landed using gliders in Norway with the intent of sabotaging a chemical plant in Telemark that the Germans could use for their atomic weapons program. Neither of the two aircraft-glider forces were able to land near their objective and the operation ended in failure with 41 killed.

Roosevelt had enacted a draft of all eligible Alphas and betas aged eighteen or older, and suddenly America was minus 500,000 youths as they were called up to be sent overseas.

The British were making headway into deep Libya on the Southern front of the war. The Navy had an actual victory in the waters off Morocco.

“That was thanks to you, Steve,” Agent Carter said, warmly. Her hand was a light weight on Steve’s shoulder. “You gave us the tools we needed to be able to decipher the plans for a torpedo run off Casablanca, and instead we sank those U-boats with hardly any loss of Allied life.”

Steve tried to smile. One victory in a week that suddenly sent half a million young Alphas and betas off to an endless war felt hollow. One battle did not a war win, and all that.

He was getting a tension headache.

“Excuse me,” Steve said, after Agent Carter and Natasha had handed him all of the news dispatch cards. “I need to…” he didn’t finish, just turned and escaped back to his office.

He rarely worked in his office: it was small and cramped and smelled like the Starks. The lone excuse for decoration was a poster on the wall that read, Just Keep At It! in bold red letters. But he had a desk and a chair and a blessed door that he could close, and Steve took advantage.

He rested his eyes for five minutes, then started to page through the news dispatches again to look for keywords that they could use for cribs in the next day.

A knock sounded on his door, quiet and off-rhythm.

“Excuse me, please, Dr. Rogers?”

“Steve, please, Wanda, how many times do I need to tell you that? I’m not really a doctor.”

“I am sorry, Steve. May I have a minute of your time?” Wanda fidgeted nervously beside Steve’s desk, and she dug one hand into the pocket of her threadbare but tidy red dress.

Steve set aside the crib sheet he was working on and tucked his pencil behind his ear. “Of course. Is something wrong?”

Wanda shifted from one foot to the other again. “I am unsure. There is… perhaps an anomaly? But I know we are not supposed to look at the old codes once they are handed over to Colonel Phillips, so…”

“If you’ve discovered something wrong with our method, Wanda, then it’s perfectly alright. For now, it can be our secret, if that makes you feel better.” Steve smiled kindly at Wanda, and Wanda smiled tentatively back. She was a pretty girl, even with the perpetual look of red tear-rims around her eyes. “What did you mean by an anomaly?”

Wanda checked over her shoulder, presumably for Agent Carter or for silent Natasha, before she pulled the long strips of paper out of her pocket. “Look, here, at these messages. I translated myself from German to English, so I know them very well. We turned the messages over to Colonel Phillips, and the news on the radio, it seems the messages were correctly translated, the time and place for attacks. But Natasha, she tells me… the fighting in these places, from these messages here—” Wanda points specifically to three of the slips—“It was much worse than on the radio, they said. She said that it was… ah, it does not translate directly to English, it was… a decimation. And so fast, like a snap of the fingers. The same at all three places, and the same rumors, she said, from the field, of… a… a… wraith. A single Nazi soldier caused the decimation, she said the man who survived tell her. And only one man from all three of these battles survived.”

“That’s unfortunately not terribly unusual,” Steve said gently. “It’s a bad war they’re fighting over there.”

“I know,” Wanda said, and her voice was much older than her fifteen years. “But the similarity of the rumors, it made me question… look here.” She smoothed out one of the code strips. “The order of the words in English, I made make sense for Americans, see? But the original in German…” she points to the other row of text. “It is scrambled. Like a word puzzle. But it is far too simple to be a code, just to scramble the completed words, no?”

“I would think so,” Steve said. He pulled the pencil from behind his ear and grabbed a blank sheet of paper from his desk so he could copy down the German text again in his own fine hand. “So you think there’s a code within the code within the code?”

“Perhaps,” Wanda hedged. “I think, perhaps, there is a code that would tell why these three battles were so deadly. But I cannot put time towards it, because I have all of the translations to do, and Miss Agent Carter watches me so closely and I am not supposed to keep the dead codes, because they are for the military men, and—”

“Don’t worry about it, Wanda.” Steve smiled at her again. Something did, indeed, prickle his brain with the same feeling as a good mystery when he looked at the unfamiliar German words. “I can take a look at these. After all, if we can help our boys over there keep from suffering the same fate as the ones lost in these three battles, we should do that, right?”

“It is our job,” Wanda said. She rocked from one foot to the other again. “May I, that is to say, if it is alright, if you do find something, will you tell me? I—I know it is not my fault,” Wanda said, jerkily, “But the messages I translated, the men who died only went to those places because I said it is where they should go. And if I was tricked… it was my fault.”

“It was not your fault, Wanda,” Steve said firmly. “No matter what happened with those battles, none of the soldiers’ deaths were your fault. You weren’t over there pulling the triggers on those Nazi guns or driving those tanks. And you weren’t sitting in a bunker somewhere in Berlin, callin’ the shots that started this war. You did not do anything to cause those men’s deaths.” He clapped his hand on her skinny shoulder. “I swear it, Wanda. Blaming you would be like blaming the bombmakers instead of the bombardiers.”

Wanda nodded like she didn’t really believe him. “Still, I think I would like to know. Please.”

“Of course,” Steve said. “I don’t speak German, yet, ‘cept for the words that show up in most every crib, so odds are if there is a code within the German translation, I’ll need your help anyhow.”

Wanda almost smiled at that, nodded, and turned on her heel to walk quickly back to her own desk and the stack of waiting code slips. She left five on Steve’s desk: three from the deadly battles—a decimation, she said —and two others that must have struck her with the same scrambled order of the words.

Steve tapped the eraser of his pencil against his desk, staring down at the tidily typed letters and the spidery, strange cursive of Wanda’s handwritten notes on the slips.

Something is amiss here, said his brain, and Steve agreed.

He licked the tip of his pencil and got to work.

“There he is!” Tony’s yell was its usual volume of inescapable. “The good doc! Come in, come in.” Tony slapped Steve on the back and it was deadened by the two layers of sweaters and heavy coat. “Welcome to the upstairs of the house, can’t believe none of you have ever found your way up here before now. I’d give you the grand tour but it would take so long we’d miss dinner and I don’t know about you, but I’m already starving. We’ve got the radio set up to listen to Frank’s proclamation when it starts, but Pegs is insisting on listening to the dreary news of the day until then instead of Guiding Light, which was my vote.” Tony kept patting Steve’s shoulder even as Steve tried to take off his coat.

“There’s a good man,” Tony continued. “Just make yourself at home. Jarvis!”

Steve jumped and looked up at Tony in confusion. Why was he calling for the bombe machine? It wasn’t a futuristic robot that could come at his master’s beck and call like a dog.

A slim man in the black-and-white suit of a butler appeared to take Steve’s coat.

Tony grinned. “That’s our man, Jarvis. Been with us since before we were born. He’s been with the Starks for two hundred years, haven’t you, old man?” Tony yelled after the butler’s retreating back. He turned that grin on Steve. “I like to name my best inventions after him as a tribute, don’t you know. The man makes a sensational dry martini and little nibbles. Speaking of, I don’t have a drink in my hand and you don’t have a drink in yours, and we need to fix that straightaway. Come on, then, follow me to the party.”

Steve felt, as ever with Tony, a little like he’d been run over by a truck made of words. But he followed Tony through the richly appointed, if somewhat old-fashioned, front entrance hall of the grand mansion and through to the sitting room. It was hard to believe that below them, sixty omega women were still scurrying about, listening to telegraph messages from overseas and attempting to unscramble German codes. There was no hint of it on this floor, no sign of the work for the war effort. The Stark brothers didn’t even have an American flag up at their front door. There were no stars in the window. It could have been any other Thanksgiving in any other year.

Steve supposed that was the point of being covert. It was good there was no trace.

It still made him feel strange. His fingers itched for a pencil. He could have sworn that he was getting close to a breakthrough earlier…

“Steve!” Natasha, Darcy, and Howard all cheered when Steve entered the sitting room. Agent Carter lifted a martini glass towards him in a little welcome toast, but stayed quiet and perched near the radio, listening to the news broadcast from London. Wanda waved with a little deviled egg in her hand. Jane’s face was buried in an issue of Science magazine.

Steve couldn’t help but to smile. He didn’t have many friends back in Brooklyn—he got along with his neighbors for the most part, now that he wasn’t in school and had spent his angry teenage years burning the candle at both ends to find work, mourning his lost doctoral chances, and getting into fistfights to defend himself. But he would have spent Thanksgiving the same way as any other day, back home; he might have scraped up enough money for a turkey cutlet instead of chicken or liver, but he would have been quite alone. It felt strange to be part of a coterie. But he couldn’t deny that it made him feel warm.

Omegas were meant to be part of a pack. Perhaps Steve had found his.

Inevitably, over tomato juice co*cktails and dry martinis and Jarvis’ excellent crudites, talk turned to the war. Steve caught Wanda’s eye and shook his head minutely—he had not made any progress on the code-within-a-code, but he remained sure that there was something there to be found. Tony whined and groaned about the shop talk on the holiest of holidays, one that’s about food, but the patter of news hosts on the radio didn’t exactly distract them from the reason they were all in Washington, D.C. for Thanksgiving in the first place.

“My parents are at the club for Thanksgiving,” Darcy said, grinning redly around the rim of her glass. “They wanted me to come home and join them, but I would so much rather be here. The food at the club is excellent, but the company’s better here. I’m sure my mother will telephone tomorrow to tell me all about how their turkey was dry and that so-and-so has an Alpha son asking about me in his letters home.” She rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you want to find an Alpha once all of this is over?” Wanda asked curiously.

“Well, sure,” Darcy said. “And I’ve already got enough penpals over there. I don’t need someone who’s only just thought of me now. There are plenty of fellas who thought of me straightaway!”

Even Natasha laughed aloud at that.

Steve didn’t often drink, since money was too tight back in Brooklyn to waste on booze, and he didn’t like the headaches that came a day later, but he did enjoy the loose feeling of two martinis sipped slowly over the course of the afternoon. Somehow Natasha ended up petting his hair, and he liked how that felt, too. He was still barely a week outside of a bad solo Heat, and the gentle attention soaked into his skin like he was a sponge.

At four o’clock, Agent Carter shushed everyone’s chatter and turned up the volume dial on the radio for the beginning of the Thanksgiving Day Salute to the Armed Forces and its Presidential Proclamation.

“We’ve met him, you know,” Tony said during the introduction to President Roosevelt.

Howard rolled his eyes, but added, “Nice fella, for a Democrat.”

Even Jane had stopped reading through the collection of Science to say, “Hush!”

The radio crackled softly into the quiet, and then President Roosevelt’s familiar voice filled the sitting room. He was rumored to be a beta, not an Alpha at all, because his wife was seen as far too energetic and domineering to be omega. Steve didn’t believe the rumor on either count: you had to have the confidence of an Alpha to even run for president, and Steve counted himself among the most stubborn people he’d ever known, and he was omega, after all.

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord,” intoned President Roosevelt. “Across the uncertain ways of space and time our hearts echo those words, for the days are with us again when, at the gathering of the harvest, we solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God.

“The final months of this year, now almost spent, find our Republic and the Nations joined with it waging a battle on many fronts for the preservation of liberty. In giving thanks for the greatest harvest in the history of our Nation, we who plant and reap can well resolve that in the year to come we will do all in our power to pass that milestone; for by our labors in the fields we can share some part of the sacrifice with our Alphas and betas who wear the uniform of the United States.”

“And some omegas!” said Darcy, a little more drunk than the rest of them. She pouted, most of her lipstick gone. “The Omega Corps are fighting, too!”

“Shush,” said Jane, again.

“It is fitting that we recall now the reverent words of George Washington, ‘Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy Protection,’ and that every American in his own way lift his voice to heaven.

“Inspired with faith and courage by these words, let us turn again to the work that confronts us in this time of national emergency: in the armed services and the merchant marine; in factories and offices; on farms and in the mines; on highways, railways, and airways; in other places of public service to the Nation; and in our homes.”

“And sometimes in a drafty old mansion basem*nt,” muttered Darcy. Jane hit her on the thigh.

“Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do hereby invite the attention of the people to the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, which designates the fourth Thursday in November of each year as Thanksgiving Day.”

“Hear, hear,” said both Stark brothers, raising their glasses, as the radio crackled again and then the Alpha emcee of the Salute took over the airwaves again from Roosevelt.

“To a longer shopping season before Christmas,” said Tony, grinning.

“To lots of food and soon,” said Howard.

Agent Carter tutted. “To the Armed Services across the world fighting to smash fascism.”

“To smashing fascism!” agreed Steve, raising his own glass. It was almost empty, and he had the sneaking suspicion that if he wanted to avoid the headache tomorrow, he ought to stick to water with supper.

They all moved as a pack from the sitting room to an equally richly appointed dining room. Somehow the Starks had managed to buy an enormous turkey—it must help to have so much money and to know the President of the United States—and it was golden-brown and steaming in the center of the table. Although he’d been nibbling on mixed vegetables and Thousand Island dressing and deviled eggs all afternoon, Steve’s stomach rumbled at the savory smell of the turkey.

It felt strange to sit down for a holiday meal without saying grace—Steve’s sainted mother would have been horrified—but the oddness was tempered when Wanda, on one side of him, reached to take Steve’s hand in her own.

“Now we say for what we are thankful, yes?” she asked. She looked down to the head of the table where Tony was busy tucking a napkin into his collar. “That is what the other girls in the dormitory say that you do on Thanksgiving.”

“Er, sure thing,” said Howard. “We can go around the table. That’s a good idea, Miss Maximoff.” He cuffed the back of Tony’s head again when Tony opened his mouth to protest, then forcibly took his brother’s hand.

Steve held Darcy’s hand on his other side, and after a minute they were all joined at the hand. The other omegas’ wrist glands felt warm and steady against Steve’s own. It reminded Steve of holding his mother’s hand at church or to say grace before their own—much more meager—Thanksgiving meals.

For the first time in two months, he felt almost relaxed. His mind wasn’t whirring a thousand miles an hour.

They went around the table one by one and spoke of the things that they were thankful for in such a horrible year—that they were able to help the war effort, that they had roofs and food and friendship, that they weren’t in Philadelphia at the club (just Darcy). Wanda quietly said she was thankful to be in America and that she hoped next year, her brother would be with her. Natasha and Steve squeezed her hands on either side of her.

“Is that all?” asked Tony (thankful for bourbon, computer science, and the upcoming apple pie). “Can we eat now?”

It was Agent Carter, not Howard, who hit Tony on the shoulder this time, but everyone around the table agreed it was time to eat while the meal was still hot. The Starks’ cook was indeed worth the pretty penny they must have paid him, and if Steve had thought Tony ordered more food than anyone could possibly need the first night they met, then the spread the Starks put up for Thanksgiving was obscene. Even with eight people seated at the long dining table, there was no way they would finish the enormous shiny-brown turkey and a ham that most of the table couldn’t eat, alongside mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, creamed carrots and peas, boiled corn, cranberry sauce with orange juice, and fluffy white Parkerhouse rolls.

Steve decided he didn’t want to know how much of the meal came from the black market, considering how many sugar stamps must have gone to the cranberry sauce and the rolls and the glaze on the ham and dessert, besides. They had margarine for the rolls and the corn, which Steve didn’t eat as it tended to give him a headache and a sore stomach, but the gravy was nicer on both than even butter could have been.

In the background, the radio continued to play softly as emcee Don Ameche smoothly transitioned between commercial jingles and big-band tunes to usher in the holiday season. Darcy was still tipsy even after soaking up some of her vodka-tomato juices with turkey and rolls, so when the “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” came on, she sang along using a teaspoon as a microphone.

Steve hadn’t laughed so hard since—

He wasn’t sure he had ever laughed so hard.

The applause on the radio was drowned out by their applause in the Starks’ dining room. Darcy blushed and grinned before tucking back into her plate.

The radio crackled with snare drums and then the bleat of horns in staccato as the next song started.

“A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I got a gal… in Kalamazoo…”

Steve jumped up to his feet so quickly that his knees hit the bottom of the table and all of the china rattled.

“I figured it out,” he blurted, interrupting Tony and Jane’s debate. “I think I figured it out.”

Wanda looked up at him with huge eyes. “Just right now?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “We need to go downstairs to the workroom. I need to show you all something.”

As a group, they all set their napkins on their chairs and hurried through the dining room and into the kitchen, to where the servants’ staircase was hidden behind a handsome mahogany door. As they approached the basem*nt, they could hear the wireless radio still playing the Salute to the Armed Forces’ big band music and the incessant chatter of the typists’ machines as they took messages and tested cribs before sending them back to JARVIS.

Steve led the practically-galloping pack to the office he so rarely used, and they all squeezed inside. Steve reached into the locked bottom desk drawer and took out the dead code slips that had stymied him so.

“All of these messages,” he said, fanning out the telegraph array for Agent Carter, Tony and Howard, Natasha, Darcy, Jane, and Wanda, “Led us to send troops to battles that had unusually high death tolls. Correct?” He looked at Natasha. “Our boys essentially walked into ambushes at each of these locations.”

“That’s true,” Natasha said. She looked down at Wanda’s spidery, Cyrillic-flavored handwriting on the translations. “They’re spread across the Front, though, and the rumors—”

“What?” asked Agent Carter. “What rumors?”

“I talked to the only survivor from any of these five battles,” Natasha said. She sounded defensive. “He was shellshocked, so I’m not sure how lucid he really was when he told me about what happened. But he said that… well, he said that there was no opposing army. Just one man in a terrifying black gas mask. That he was strong and fast, more than a person should be. And that he was able to tear a man’s head right off his body with his bare hands.”

An uncomfortable silence followed her words.

“Well,” Tony said, finally. “That can’t be true. There’s no such thing as an übermensch even if the Gerries wish there were. Right?”

“Maybe.” The tone in Natasha’s voice was quite pleasant, but it still made Steve’s spine stiffen.

“Regardless,” Steve said, “Something happened at these five battles that made them different to the others happening all across Europe. And something was amiss in these codes.” He met Wanda’s eyes. He wouldn’t tell her secret, that it was she who noticed something long after she was meant to file these slips away as dead codes.

“If you look at the initial German translations, the phrasing is strange. Scrambled. It was simple enough to unscramble the words to read the messages. But look, if you keep them scrambled…” Steve grabbed a piece of chalk and one of the small slates that was mostly empty of writing. He scrawled out the words from the oldest message like an acrostic poem, one word on each line going down the slate. “Look at the first letter of each word in its scrambled order. It’s the same for this message… and this one… and this one… and this… and this. They all spell out A-N-L-A-G-E.”

He looked at Wanda again. “What does ‘anlage’ mean in German?”

Wanda paused, and Steve could see her rolling the word around in her head, bouncing it from German to Sokovian and then to English as she worked out the definition. “It is not so simple to define, but… it is like… not like a blessing, but like, like an advantage or hmm… belongings? Like a belongings that brings good fortune. The opposite of a liability.” She hummed thoughtfully. “An asset. Like… chattels in reserves. The saving grace.”

“Asset,” murmured Steve.

“Asset,” agreed Wanda.

“Chattels in reserves,” said Agent Carter. “Like a one-man army.”

“It’s not possible,” argued Tony. “Howard, back me up!”

“I don’t know about all that,” said Howard. “But I do think that ‘anlage’ sure sounds like a crib word. Why don’t we bring one of these messages over to old JARVIS and try decoding it again, using ‘anlage’ this time? Maybe they’ve somehow double-booked it. Double-cooked it. Decodes one way to reveal the location of the next skirmish and decodes another to tell—the Führer, whoever—to send in this alleged wraith.”

Steve tapped the side of his nose and pointed to Howard. “My thoughts exactly. The code reads so strangely because it’s layered—the initial Enigma cipher, the acrostic crib, and then the Anlage cipher.”

“Well, hell,” said Tony. “Let’s give it the old college try.”

They trouped over to the bombe and Tony patted it genially. “Ready, ole JARVIS? We’ve got a strange one for you.” He took the code slip from Steve and programmed in the wires and rings to use ‘A-N-L-A-G-E’ as the keyword, and then they all stepped back.

Over the roar of the machine, Tony yelled, “This will take at least an hour! I think that’s about time for a slice of pie and a cup of coffee!”

Howard laughed and slapped Tony’s back. “Good thinking!”

Steve was loathe to leave the machine without one of their small group nearby to keep an eye on it, and Wanda seemed resistant to leave Steve by himself with the code that was her pet obsession. Agent Carter and Natasha promised to bring them each a slice of pie and a cup of tea.

When the others had gone, Steve turned to Wanda and smiled. “You were right. There was something else there.”

She nodded. “Yes.” She looked troubled. “I do not like that we were tricked.”

“No, neither do I,” admitted Steve. “But I suspect they’ll be just as upset that we’ve figured out their gambit. We can prevent our soldiers from landing in ambushes with their Asset from now on thanks to your keen eye.”

“But it will still be out there,” Wanda said. “This Asset.”

“Perhaps not,” said Agent Carter at Steve’s shoulder. Thanks to the mechanical cacophony from the bombe, they hadn’t heard her approaching—with two plates of pie and two mugs of tea on a tray in her hands. “Forgive me for startling you. But I think that you two may have just handed us the key to winning the war, you know. If we can get our hands on this Asset, whatever it is, that’s one fewer weapon in the Germans’ arsenal and, potentially, one in our own. Steve, I want you to devote your energies to finding the location these messages are flowing through. That must be where they’re keeping this weapon.”

Steve nodded. “I can do that.”

“Do you have any idea what the location is, Steve?” asked Agent Carter. She sounded like she desperately wanted a cigarette, or perhaps twelve hours’ sleep.

“Jane and I are close,” he said. “Look, all of these messages are either to or from location KJS. We know that isn’t Berlin, because we’ve already mapped out the major traffic hubs from the central war office, but since these messages aren’t attached to Berlin, they’re harder to place. I’ll run another message from KJS through the Eins Catalogue and see if we can find anything that might have been missed in the dead codes.”

Wanda was muttering to herself, staring off into the distance beyond JARVIS.

“Are you alright, Miss Maximoff?” asked Agent Carter.

“Location KJS. There are consistent mentions of difficult travel and requests for supplies by train,” Wanda said. “I remember having to translate the word for ‘avalanche,’ because I did not know this word.”

Natasha, Jane, and Darcy had reappeared beside Agent Carter. They all seemed to want to group together, full and drowsy, near the humming, whirring JARVIS as it ran the combinations of coded stecker pairings through the ANLAGE code.

“Get the weather dispatches,” said Natasha and Agent Carter at the same time.

Darcy dashed off with Jane at her heels and they returned a few minutes later with heavy books of telegraph cards in their arms.

“We may not find anything in the dispatches,” warned Natasha. “The location might be somewhere far remote. It may not even be in known occupied territory. We may need to expand our search to Russia even though they’re holding the front there.”

They each took a book of telegraph cards and sat down right on the floor near JARVIS to begin combing through the dispatch messages sent each day from Allied telegraph relays with weather reports from around Europe.

Ninety minutes later, Wanda had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on her book of index cards, JARVIS was still running the code, Jane’s glasses had disappeared, and Steve’s back ached.

“I found it!” Darcy exclaimed. “I found a mention of an avalanche!”

“Where?” Steve, Natasha, and Agent Carter all asked in one voice. Jane echoed a moment later, her hands flapping as she tried to find her glasses (which were atop her head).

“Look? Luke? Lee-uke,” Darcy read, frowning at the card. “Switzerland. Leuk, in Valais. The Alps.”

“Switzerland is meant to be neutral,” said Natasha. Her brow had drawn together in a wrinkle.

“If they’re providing an Asset to the Axis powers—” said Agent Carter, cutting herself off and shaking her head.

“They may not know the Germans are housing a weapon in their sovereign land,” offered Steve. “The Alps are vast and some parts are nearly impenetrable, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” admitted Agent Carter. “But this complicates matters. We can’t storm into Switzerland and battle the Germans for the Asset, either. The military can’t be seen as involved in any affairs on Swiss land lest we draw fire from the Swiss military ourselves.” She was quiet and looked thoughtful for several minutes.

“Agent Carter?” asked Steve. “Ma’am?”

“The military cannot be involved in affairs on Swiss land,” she repeated. “But Steve… you are not part of the military. Our project here is decidedly separate.”

“You’re thinking—” said Natasha.

Agent Carter nodded. “You’re too embedded, Natasha. You have your own assignment. But Steve…” She stood up abruptly. “I need to find Colonel Phillips. You’re all free to return to the dormitory for the evening, but Steve, if you wouldn’t mind waiting here?”

She rushed off. No one else stood.

“We’ll stay here with you, Steve,” offered Darcy. She had shifted Wanda’s sleeping head into her lap. “I’m too curious to leave now.”

“I want to see what that cipher reads,” admitted Jane.

“I want to be part of this mission,” said Natasha. “Even if I can’t run point.”

Wanda gave a little snuffle and rubbed her cheek on Darcy’s thigh.

Steve smiled a small smile. “Thank you. I have to confess, I’m not sure what’s happening. But I’m glad for the company while we wait for JARVIS to finish running the code. I’m very intrigued to find out whether we were right or if I simply read too deeply into a jumble of German.”

They all fell quiet under the mechanical whirring and thumping of JARVIS behind them. Jane got up after a while to refill their coffees and teas so that Darcy didn’t need to disturb Wanda’s sleep.

“She sleeps so rarely,” Natasha said lowly to Steve. “She has nightmares. Worries about her family back in Sokovia.”

“I suppose a big turkey dinner did her good,” Steve said back. He accepted the fresh cup of hot tea from Jane.

By the time JARVIS stopped running, a long slip of code paper spitting out of its typex, Jane and Darcy, too, had dozed off leaning against one another. Steve and Natasha remained awake and vigilant. Steve didn’t think Natasha ever slept. He couldn’t imagine her so vulnerable.

Steve got up and groaned at the creak in his knees from sitting in one position for so long.

He grabbed the typex slip.

And he gasped a sharp breath that made his chest seize.

“What is it?” asked Natasha, getting up much more gracefully.

Jane, Darcy, and even Wanda woke, too, probably at the sudden silence of JARVIS, and they untangled and scrambled up to look at the slip in Steve’s hands.

“We were right,” Steve murmured. “There was a code within the code.”

The slip read: LONGING RUSTED SEVENTEEN DAYBREAK FURNACE STOP DEPLOY ASSET TO GLOMFJORD FORTHWITH STOP NINE BENIGN HOMECOMING ONE FREIGHTCAR.

Chapter 5: Chapter Five

Chapter Text

It transpired that working a mission ‘off the books’ meant being fairly drowned in them—in paperwork, at least. Colonel Phillips was not at all happy to hand the reins over to Agent Carter, let alone one of her ‘pet omegas,’ but the code’s origin in Switzerland and the inability of the US military to cross its borders gave him no choice. Even Agent Carter was too tied to the military apparatus to risk being caught orchestrating the mission to locate and acquire the Nazis’ mysterious Asset, so once she explained to Steve what she needed him to do, she was hands-off and stayed on the other side of the Stark Mansion basem*nt with Howard and the other military projects.

It was Natasha who delivered Steve the mountain of paperwork.

“Welcome to the glamorous world of spycraft,” she said drolly. “I hope you can read quickly.”

“I can,” Steve said absently, looking at the stack of brown personnel folders as tall as he was.

Steve was to put together a team of top operatives to pull from their regular battalions and set on a new course through the Alps as they raced to find the home base of the Asset before the Nazis realized the Allies had figured out their code-within-a-code. Since they could not technically be part of the Allied military, they were going to function as guerilla fighters—commandos. Steve was to run point on their mission from Washington and function as their de facto captain, despite being a sickly omega with no military experience.

“Think of it as a field promotion,” said Agent Carter. “And you don’t even need to wear the uniform or march in the snow.”

The first order of business was actually putting together the team of commandos. Steve didn’t want to take the best fighters away from the front lines, but if the Asset were really as fearsome as Natasha’s stories, and his death toll, led him to believe, he needed people who were just as strong, fearsome, and cunning. And he needed people willing to take orders from an omega sitting at a desk thousands of miles away.

Steve pored over the brown file folders of information about top-vetted military men, Alphas and betas alike, from all branches of the armed services. He also took a stack of discreet manila folders from Natasha with information about several men from other Allied countries whom she said they could trust, who had worked difficult and classified operations with Americans—probably herself—in the past. Steve prized that recommendation above the official commendations notated in the margins of several brown folders.

WALKER, Johnathan. Alpha. Captain, Army. Custer’s Grove, GA. Three Medals of Honor. He didn’t read as a team player, and something in the cut of his jaw made Steve feel like he was an Alpha who wouldn’t take orders from an omega and a beta woman. He passed that brown folder to the pile of rejections.

WILSON, Samuel. Beta. Tuskegee Airman, Army Air Forces. Delacroix, LA. 99th Pursuit Squadron. Steve considered the man in the photo, smiling out at the camera with kind eyes and a gap between his two front teeth. Steve had read about the Tuskegee Airmen, the trouble they were having with being allowed to actually fly any missions because higher-ups thought their presence took opportunities—opportunities to fly and die—away from white men and Alphas. They were stationed in Sicily now as sitting ducks.

He moved Samuel Wilson to the pile of accepted candidates.

MORITA, James. Alpha. Private, Army. Fresno, CA. 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Nisei Squadron. Steve’s stomach hurt at the thought of these American men who had no choice but to enlist to feed their families—families being rounded up and sent to internment camps out in California, or whose livelihoods had been shuttered by blackouts and curfews and new laws in Hawaii. Steve didn’t like bullies, no matter where they were from, and while he mourned Pearl Harbor like every other American, he didn’t agree with sending people to camps any more when America did it than when Germany did. He accepted James Morita.

DUGAN, Timothy Alloysius Cadwaller. Omega. Corporal, Army Omega Corps. Manhattan, New York, NY. 107th Infantry Regiment. On principle alone, Steve would have accepted anyone in the Omega Corps who was considered strong enough, skilled enough, and sneaky enough to make both Peggy’s and Natasha’s lists of recommended servicemen. But Steve’s father had been a member of the 107th—though those days predated its openness to omega troops—and that sealed the deal. He decisively chose Timothy Dugan.

JONES, Gabriel. Alpha. Private, Army. Macon, GA. 92nd Infantry Division. Fluent in German and French. After the trouble with the code, and its still mysterious depths, having someone fluent in German would be an asset to the squadron. Plus, if he spoke French, then he could translate between the Americans and Brits and anyone Steve chose from Natasha’s covert files on the French Résistance’s Secret Army.

People like DERNIER, Jacques, of Marseilles. A member of the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance, Dernier had been involved with the Resistance since before the word resistance was used: as far back as 1940, Natasha noted his help in moving crucial refugee targets through the free port at Marseilles—including Wanda. As much as he was humanitarian in his quest to help people pass to the United States with forged paperwork and a network of underground safehouses, he was also fierce and skilled at fighting. Natasha made particular note of Dernier single handedly killing an entire cadre of Germans when they approached a Résistance stronghold.

The last of the recommendations came from Agent Carter—FALSWORTH, James Montgomery. Beta. Brigadier Major, British Armed Forces. Birmingham, England, UK. His Majesty's 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade. His record was strong and he seemed like a skilled strategist, but compared to the heroics of Natasha’s recommendations and the service records of most of the other troops in the brown folders, Falsworth seemed like an offhand selection. It made Steve wonder: was he the reason Agent Carter became involved with the war? Was he the person she referred to as over there for her? And if so, was it more of a mercy to select him to track down and obtain the Asset or to leave him with his parachute brigade?

Steve waffled over the choice overnight, but finally he chose James Montgomery Falsworth to be the final member of his commando squadron to be sent on a covert, highly classified, deeply deadly mission to bring the Asset back to Stark Mansion. He added two WASP pilots—Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau—to the list to oversee the final flight from the Commandos’ landing field at Camp Lehigh in New Jersey to the landing strip outside of Stark Mansion.

“Steve?”

Steve jumped where he sat cross-legged on the floor, staring down at the military portraits (and one rough snapshot of Jacques Dernier) of the men, and two women, he was potentially sending to their deaths. Who knew what it would take to dismantle and transport the Asset from the Austrian Alps to a basem*nt just outside of Washington, DC?

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Natasha said, and she ran her hand over the backs of his stooped shoulders in apology. “I was just coming to see if you had selected the team. It looks like you have.”

“I think so,” Steve said. His stomach clenched. “Are you sure that only five ground troops is going to be enough? You’ve heard more rumors about the Asset than anyone.”

Natasha was quiet for a minute. She squatted down on her heels beside where Steve sat, and she surveyed the portraits as well.

“Do you remember your first day, when Peggy told you that I’d been shot in the Ukraine?”

“I won’t ever forget,” said Steve. It didn’t really mean much, since his eidetic memory never forgot anything. But the spirit was what counted, he thought.

Natasha nodded. “I think it was the Asset who shot me. And he left me alive. His sole focus was on Dr. Erskine—that’s the scientist I was tasked with bringing out of Poland and back here with us—and it was like… it was like he couldn’t even see me.” She shook her head, red curls brushing her cheeks. “There’s no telling what will happen when your commando squadron goes up against him. But it’s possible that he’ll come quietly. Some do, if they want to defect or to live the rest of their days outside of a jail cell. And Steve,” Natasha added, touching his shoulder again, “Even if they die on this mission, they’re soldiers. They could die any day. They know that.”

“I know,” Steve said. “But it will still be on my orders. And I’m not a military man, I don’t have the right to—”

“You are more qualified to plan this mission, alongside Peggy and myself, than any military man could be. You’re the only reason we know the Asset exists, let alone where he—is kept. You have to believe in this mission. You’re the leader. If you don’t believe in yourself, this will fail. And I’m afraid that if we fail, we will lose.” Natasha bit her lips together as she stared into Steve’s eyes. “We can’t lose, Steve. We cannot.”

Steve nodded. “I know.” He took as deep a breath through his nose as he could, with his bum lungs and all the chalk-dust in the stale air. “I believe that these are the best candidates for the mission. We’ll send them in prepared with the best information we have. We’ll succeed.”

Natasha clapped Steve’s shoulder. “Good man. Give me those files, I’ll bring them to Peggy and she’ll take them up the chain to Phillips.”

Steve’s choices were approved by first Agent Carter and then Phillips and the other Generals in the top brass. His team of commandos would be detached from their units across the military and sent to congregate at the Austrian/Swiss border, treacherous terrain even with a full troop at one’s back. Falsworth would detach from the Brits and meet them there, and somehow Natasha was getting word through the network of Resistance fighters and spies to Dernier.

Steve started staying late at the Mansion to wait for a telegraph message to come through that they had all made it to the rendezvous alive. He couldn’t help feeling like these were his men, his commandos, and he really was their captain—responsible for their safety and their success or failure. The mission could only go so well as Steve’s intel and his strategy in the men that he had chosen. They were walking into what was almost certainly going to be an ambush against a fearsome predator, and Steve wanted to arm them with as much foresight as he could gather.

“Not yet,” Agent Carter said to Steve late one night about a week before Christmas as he sat on the hard floor, book of telegraph index cards in his lap, waiting. “Natasha thinks that Dernier won’t make it to the rendezvous until tomorrow, anyhow.” She held her hand out to help Steve up. “It’s snowing out and freezing. You’ll catch your death. Let me drive you back to the boarding house.”

Steve stifled a yawn and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Steve watched the falling snow swirl around the lamplights as Peggy swore and swerved her way down the streets to the omega boarding house. The Alps had another avalanche this morning; what if Dernier had been trapped in the crush of snow? What if the whole team had gone missing and couldn’t send a message, and the mission was over before it had even started? What if the secret faction of Nazis had figured out that the Allies were onto them and moved the Asset under the cover of a blizzard? What if—

“Stop thinking so loudly, Steven, I’m trying to drive,” said Agent Carter. “We all back your mission. It’s going to be a success.”

“I hope so,” Steve said. And he tried to think more quietly for the rest of the white-knuckle drive.

The omega boarding house was pleasantly warm when Steve opened the front door and scraped snow off his shoes just inside. He hung his hat and coat on the shared rack and carried his shoes up the stairs to his room so that he didn’t track melted muck on the hardwood.

Scott was just coming out of his room, wrapped in a red dressing gown and slippers and carrying his toothbrush and empty cup, when Steve made it to the top of the flight.

“Hiya, pal,” said Scott. “Long time no see. I hope I didn’t offend you or anything…?”

“No, nothing like that,” Steve said. “I haven’t been at home before eleven o’clock all week.”

“Nearly two weeks,” Scott said. “I’ve had to cook for myself. So of course I’m spending all of my income at the automat up the road.”

Steve laughed, softly because the hour was so late. “I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as I’m back next time it’s early enough to have supper. I don’t want you to go broke on account of me, but you know how work can be.”

Scott hummed in agreement. “I do.” He held up his toothbrush. “Well, I’ll let you get some grub and go to sleep, and I’ve gotta nod off to dreamland myself. Early days.”

Steve nodded and waved his shoes the same tired way that Scott waved his toothbrush, and they parted ways. It hit Steve all at once that he was starving and exhausted, and he couldn’t decide which was the more pressing issue. He decided to eat cold deviled ham straight from the jar while leaning up against the radiator to as it warmed up and slowly began to heat the room, and then he fell into bed still in his clothes. He pulled the blankets right up over his head and tried to will himself to stop thinking so loudly long enough to fall asleep.

In the morning, with his teeth fuzzy and his eyes crusted shut, Steve rued his choices of the night before. He had only one more clean shirt to wear beneath his sweaters, and only one more clean set each of underwear and socks. The war would need to be calm enough in the next day or so for him to do his laundry. He blew hair out of his eyes and wondered if it would ever be peaceful long enough for him to get a haircut.

It was still dark outside when he walked to Stark Mansion. Steve buried his nose and mouth in his scarf and triple-checked his pocket to make sure that he had his asthma cigarettes, as the cold air triggered attacks.

So did excitement, Steve remembered when he reached his office:

There, sitting on his desk, was an envelope stamped CLASSIFIED in red ink. Inside was a short telegraph card reading, VANILLA SALT SUGAR STOP RENDEZVOUS ACHIEVED STOP EN ROUTE TO LOCATION ONE STOP CAKE PEPPER CHOCOLATE.

The commandos had converged on Switzerland while Steve slept.

They were en route to find the Asset.

Steve shivered and breathed in the steam of his cup of tea. He smiled up at Natasha once the tip of his nose no longer felt frozen.

“Are you doing anything special for Christmas?” he asked.

Natasha blinked, one eyebrow arched. “I suspect that Wanda, Jane, Darcy, and I will all be at the synagogue, as it’s a Friday evening. Unless of course we’re here working still.”

“Oh,” Steve said, ears going hot. “I didn’t realize that—”

“It’s fine,” Natasha said.

“Are you…” Steve started, feeling tongue-tied, “Do you have anyone missing in Europe like Wanda?”

Her surname was Romanov, after all.

Natasha was absolutely silent for several minutes as Steve finished his tea and Natasha paged through the daily briefing slips before she answered.

“We didn’t have the money for everyone in the family to come to America at once, so my father and I came by ship first,” Natasha said finally. “My mother and sister are still over there.”

“Well,” Steve said, “I’m sure that with you working as well, you can send for them soon.”

Natasha looked up. “That was twenty-one years ago.”

Steve straightened and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault,” said Natasha simply. “The Russian line is holding, and my—” She cut herself off with a breath through the nose. “My father says that his girls are the toughest in the world.”

“But that’s why you always ask about the… camps,” Steve said. “Not just for Wanda.”

He watched Natasha’s delicate throat, with its ugly square scars where her scent glands should be, as she swallowed.

“Not just for Wanda, no,” Natasha said. “I ask for all of us. Someone needs to be asking questions.”

Steve was quiet for a long minute after that, watching Natasha skim through the briefing slips.

“I don’t know much about—Hebrews,” Steve said, awkwardly. “But I know I don’t agree with what the Germans are doing. It’s wrong. And I’m sorry. We should have gone into the war sooner and done something to stop him.”

“It’s not him,” Natasha said, not looking at Steve. “You don’t get a system like this started by just one man. You get a system like this when thousands of people over hundreds of years believe the ideas that one man will eventually use to spur them to action.” She smiled thinly, without mirth. “Old Adolf didn’t invent the concept of hating Hebrews. And he didn’t build the camps or fill them by himself, either. I don’t blame just one person. I blame everyone.” Her voice was thick, and she coughed once, delicately. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Steve risked laying his hand on her arm. “When we win the war, I hope there will be a reckoning.”

Natasha rested her other hand on top of Steve’s. He could see where her wrist gland had been cut away, the clean unnatural scar of it. “I hope that enough of us are left to call for a reckoning, by the time we win.”

Steve nodded.

Natasha squeezed his fingers. “You should come with us to shul on Christmas, unless you have other plans. You shouldn’t spend your holiday alone.”

“Would I be welcome?” Steve’s eyebrows rose.

“Sure,” said Natasha. “You’ll be with us gals. You should come out with us more, Steve. No one should spend all of their time by themselves.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Steve. “This time of year, I get ill easily. I don’t go out much because of that. But if it’s alright, I will come with you on Christmas. It would be nice to—it’s been years since I spent the day with anyone,” he admitted. “Not since my ma died. I don’t put up a tree anymore without her, and I’m too old to believe in St. Nicholas.” They both chuckled. “So other than midnight Mass, and maybe a turkey cutlet for dinner, it’s not really been a holiday at all.”

“You really don’t have an Alpha back in New York?”

Steve laughed. “No. Never.”

“And no pals whose mothers would let you sit at their table?”

“No.” Steve shook his head. “I was always… I left normal school in the fourth grade. Didn’t make any friends in college, because what kinda twenty-year-old would make friends with a ten-year-old who ruins the class curve? And the other kids my age back home, once I got back, they just… I was the only male omega on my block, anyway. Spent a lot of time ill in bed. Knew too much math,” he laughed again, wryly. “Not exactly friend material. It put me in a sour mood most of my teens, which didn’t help.”

“No wonder you get on so well with all of us,” Natasha said.

“Why?”

“Because we’re all omegas who spent our tender years all alone, for one reason or another. We’re a mansion full of misfits. Even Tony and Howard.”

Steve snorted. “Don’t let them hear you say that. I think Tony fancies himself a playboy.”

“That isn’t the same thing as having friends,” Natasha said. “He is a playboy, but I think that’s a lonely life, too. He’ll change once he finds the right omega and settles down.”

“Maybe.” Steve couldn’t imagine a Tony who could settle for just one person. “They’ll have to be a hell of an omega.”

Natasha laughed again. “You can say that again.”

“They’ll have to be a hell of an omega.”

Natasha nudged Steve’s shoulder with her own and finally extracted her arm from beneath his hand. She stood up, brushed off her slacks, and reached down to help Steve stand, too.

“I’ll let the gals know that you’re coming with us on Friday,” she said. “You should come by the dormitory for dinner beforehand, too. Eat something besides bachelor cooking.”

“I can cook,” Steve protested. “I don’t want to put you all out.”

“Just come, Steve.” Natasha smiled. “And let me know when you’ve finished with the dispatches.”

Steve had never been to a Jewish church before. He walked past one often enough back in Brooklyn, and he knew that it looked different to the Catholic churches he knew—no stained glass, no steeple, but just as many people filtering through the doors. He knew the men wore funny little hats even indoors, and everyone dressed nicely just like for Steve’s own church services. And he knew that where his Christmas mass—later on, at midnight—would be in Latin, this service would be in ancient Hebrew. He was surprised it wasn’t another of Wanda’s languages. Perhaps it was one of Natasha’s.

Darcy slipped her arm into Steve’s crooked elbow. Her white gloves stood out against the dark of his coat. “Thank you for coming, Steve. Even though it’s not the same, you shouldn’t be alone on a day that’s special to you.”

“I’m going to midnight Mass later. You’re welcome to join me in return, if you wish.”

Darcy wrinkled her nose. “I get to work earlier than any of you. I can’t stay up past midnight anymore.”

They carefully picked their way around a patch of ice on the sidewalk. The women insisted on walking to the synagogue on the corner of 6^th and I streets despite the air so cold Steve could see his breath and the fact that Natasha had a sleek red roadster. Steve bundled into his two sweaters, coat, warmest hat, and a heavy scarf wrapped around most of his face, and in thick gloves he felt almost warm enough on their walk. It helped that he had gone to the women’s omega dormitory for dinner, after all, and they had made a hot meal that stuck to his ribs.

“Wanda does most of the cooking,” Darcy explained as Steve stood in the corner of their little shared kitchen, trying not to get in the way. “So we eat a lot of Sokovian food. I’m a terrible cook, personally, to the despair of my mother and all of the omegan etiquette classes I’ve taken over the years. If you want a co*cktail, I’m your girl, but if it’s made of more than booze with a garnish, I’m lost.”

They ate chicken stewed in a red sauce that was smoky and spicy, something Wanda called ‘paprikash,’ which Steve had never had before. They served it with funny little dumplings Jane called ‘nokedli’ and boiled purple cabbage and beets that had stained Natasha’s fingertips red. It was as nice a dinner as Thanksgiving, to Steve, and his best Christmas meal since his ma.

Shyly, he revealed that he brought them a dessert, to thank them for feeding him supper and for their company: an apple pie made using his ration-stamp sugar, fruit, and shortening for the crust. They all kissed Steve on the cheek, even Jane, and they drank little cups of brandy with their slices of pie.

The brandy, too, probably helped Steve feel a bit warmer on their walk from the dormitory to the synagogue. That and the sound of Wanda’s laughter as Natasha told some story up ahead of where Steve walked with Darcy and Jane; he couldn’t quite hear over the crackle of their footsteps, with his bad ear. But it was good to hear Wanda laugh. She was normally so serious.

Darcy walked as slowly as Steve, since she was in heels and kept skidding on the slippery concrete. Jane kept pace, reading a book as she walked. More than once, Darcy had to throw her arm out and steer Jane around an icy patch or stop her from stepping off the curb and into the street.

The synagogue was larger than Steve might have guessed and had pretty red tiled domes on the roof, one on each corner of the building and a larger one in the center. There was no stained glass, but the window overlooking the street had a big star of David inset with the same pale stone that made the outside of the building. Steve helped Darcy in her heels up the stairs to the front door.

“Oh!” Darcy said. She dug into her handbag. “Put this on before we go inside.”

It was a knitted skullcap.

“Did you make this?” Steve asked. He was oddly touched.

“It didn’t take long,” Darcy said. “It’s only a circle. Here, I’ll put it on you. It goes right—there.” She patted the top of Steve’s head and then his cheek. “Now you can enter.”

Steve followed the women through the front door and was surprised at how much it felt like his Catholic church—people greeting one another warmly, checking in with each of the women and curiously asking who their friend was. Steve was surprised to find another familiar face in the crowd.

“Steve!” Scott said, edging his way around an elderly group of betas gathered close together near one set of pews. He shook Steve’s hand and brushed the scent gland on his wrist over the one on Steve’s wrist, a gesture of pack acceptance and friendship by which Steve was quite touched. “What are you doing here, pal?”

“He’s with us,” Darcy said, sidling up beside Steve again after having stepped away to kiss one of the elderly betas on the cheek. “And who are you, handsome?”

Scott grinned and stuck out his hand again. “I’m Scott Lang, miss, I room with Steve at the boarding house.”

“Well, shabbat shalom, Scott. The name’s Darcy Lewis, of the Philadelphia Lewises.” Darcy grinned back. “Steve works in supplies and logistics with all of us gals.”

“Gut Shabbos, Darcy Lewis of the Philadelphia Lewises.” Scott relinquished Darcy’s hand. “You’ll have to join me for some wine at oneg. I’ll take care of Steve here until then.”

Darcy’s smile gentled at that. “That sounds good. Thank you, Scott.”

Scott steered Steve towards the half of the congregation that was populated by men—omega, beta, and Alpha men alike, which was very different from Steve’s church, which separated people by designation and not gender—and found them two seats towards the back, presumably so no one would notice Steve’s ignorance.

“I hope you didn’t get Shanghaied from any of your own plans for tonight,” Scott said. “That Darcy seems like a force to be reckoned with.”

“She’s a spitfire,” Steve agreed. “But I can hold my own. They just didn’t want me to be alone.”

Scott nodded. He looked older, more tired around the eyes, as he did. “It’s hard to be alone.”

“How’s your daughter?” Steve asked.

“More grown-up every time we speak,” said Scott. “She sends me letters every day and I’ve spoken to her on the phone twice. I’ll have to show you the picture she drew me of a bunch of giant ants having a tea party.”

“Giant ants?” Steve laughed quietly. “Quite an imagination.”

“You have no idea,” Scott said, sounding proud. “Oh, we’re starting.”

There was more in common with his own church services than Steve expected. There was communal singing with lyrics from their books, but which Scott, and the men around them, had clearly memorized. Steve did his best to follow Scott’s movements when he bent forward in deference and when he straightened up again. Scott, too, wore the little skullcap, but he didn’t have the same white-and-blue shawl as some of the elderly men nearby. Steve tried to determine whether the shawls belonged only to Alphas, the way vestments of priesthood could only belong to Alphas in the Catholic church, but there were little stooped omega men wearing the shawls, too.

The service included enough English that Steve realized he knew the story of their sermon and could follow along in his head even when he couldn’t understand the rabbi’s words. When he was very young, before he even knew he loved math, Steve had memorized the Bible so that he could recite passages for Father O’Flaherty and earn a piece of licorice a week. The other children had to work so hard to memorize their passages, but to Steve, they came like water from a faucet. He still remembered this one: Jacob's request for burial in Canaan, his blessing of Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob's blessing of his sons, Jacob's death and burial, and Joseph's death. Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, so that the span of Jacob’s life came to one hundred and forty-seven years.

Steve would be lucky to live forty-seven years, let alone nearly a hundred and fifty. Steve was still grateful he’d made it to twenty-four.

After the reading and more singing, everyone stood and began to whisper a litany of names. Steve glanced at Scott.

“A prayer for those suffering,” Scott whispered in Steve’s good ear. “Usually it’s from illness, but…”

Steve looked down at his feet and felt his chest burn with shame. He wasn’t German; wasn’t a Nazi. Was actively fighting to stop them. But still, he would never understand what every person in this temple was going through as they wondered whether their families in Europe were alive or had been slaughtered just for being born.

After a pause, Steve whispered, “Pietro Maximoff.”

A second prayer for his well-being surely couldn’t hurt. He didn’t know the name of Natasha’s mother or sister, but he thought of them, too, somewhere in the winter wilderness of Russia.

After the names had quieted—Steve noticed that Wanda was the last person to sit down, over on the women’s side of the room—Scott clapped Steve’s shoulder and shook him a little.

After it was all over, Scott stayed close to Steve and the women and flirted shamelessly with Darcy, who was always happy to flirt back with anyone, as they ate torn chunks of challah bread and drank sweet wine that made Steve’s molars hurt. Steve and Scott parted ways from the women at the door as the women made to walk back to their dormitory and Scott and Steve waited for a bus back to the street where their boarding house sat.

Just before midnight, Steve bundled back up in his sweaters and coat and hat and gloves and he walked up the street to his own church for midnight mass. Although he was alone, he didn’t feel it.

Chapter 6: Chapter Six

Chapter Text

New Year’s Eve found Steve in bed with a chest cold and a hot water bottle, praying to avoid bronchitis, pneumonia—or worse. He kept the bathtub in his room filled with boiling-hot water to steam up the small space and leaned over the water with a towel draped over his head as often as his achy knees and shaky legs could stand to be out of bed. He had to get well, and he had to get well soon.

The radio jubilantly reported that Hirohito had ordered the Japanese troops to withdraw from the bloody battles of Guadalcanal! Steve smiled weakly.

Long after the sun went down outside the windows, Steve was roused from his doze by a knock at the door.

Before he could get out of bed, the knob turned, and there was Scott with Darcy and Wanda on his heels.

“Hey, pal,” said Scott. “Heard you were still poorly.”

“We brought you medicine and a get-well card from the gals,” Darcy said, holding up a sack from the drugstore.

“And I made you chicken soup,” Wanda added. “It will make you strong again.”

“I wasn’t strong in the first place,” Steve grumped to hide that he was pleased.

“Hush,” Wanda said, heading across the little rented room to the stove. Darcy clucked her way onto the edge of Steve’s bed so she could rest the cool back of her hand against his forehead and his red cheeks. Scott stood back and smiled at the domestic little scene.

“Well, I did my part,” Scott said. “I let these two mother hens into the place. I’m going to head out though, we’re all gathering downstairs later to listen to the radio show until midnight and I’m gonna need a nap to make it that long. I hope you feel better soon, buddy.”

“Thank you,” Steve said, twisting his mouth into the approximation of a smile at Scott. He hadn’t had a friend check in on him during an illness… ever, come to think of it. It was always just Steve and his ma, and then it was just Steve alone in the apartment, hoping that if he died someone would find him sooner rather than later.

The stove lit with a little gasp and then Wanda was heating a pot of chicken soup while Darcy insisted that Steve unbutton his pajamas so that she could rub some Vicks onto his spindly chest. He blushed and stammered and tried to push her hands away, embarrassed, but Darcy was insistent and besides, they were both omegas. Compared to Darcy’s own chest, Steve’s was nothing to write home about, after all.

Camphor, menthol, turpentine, eucalyptus, cedarwood, and nutmeg filled the room so strongly that even Steve’s stuffed nose could smell it.

“Whoo!” Darcy waved her greasy hands in front of her. “I’m glad I’ll be able to have a bath before the New Year’s party down at the officers’ club. Can’t scent a thing besides this goop!”

“Sorry,” Steve croaked. He was focused on breathing and trying to keep his eyes from watering in the tingle of the sharp scent.

“You will not even appreciate my soup,” Wanda chided, coming over with a steaming bowl. “It smells delicious.”

“I’m sure it does,” Steve assured her. “Thank you, Wanda. You really shouldn’t have.”

“It was my mother’s recipe,” Wanda said. “She always made me soup when I was poorly. Better than medicine from a doctor, she said.”

Steve smiled and didn’t disagree aloud with that, since Wanda so rarely smiled when she talked about her family. He didn’t want to disrupt a good memory, because—from what Natasha had told him didn’t make the news dispatches, Wanda’s family would be in short supply of happy memories when they reunited. If they ever did.

Darcy and Wanda both perched on the edge of Steve’s bed while he ate the soup, which he couldn’t quite taste but appreciated its heat and the way it soothed his aching throat. Then they both patted his flushed face and let themselves out, leaving his door open just a crack so he could hear the radio playing downstairs.

Steve fell asleep to the sound of Abbott & Costello, breathing slightly easier.

January passed in a slog of gray. Every day, Steve met with Darcy, Agent Carter, Natasha, Howard, and Colonel Phillips to receive ultra-secret telegraph messages from the Commandos on their trek through the Swiss Alps to find the mysterious, and deadly, Asset.

THINK WE ARE GETTING CLOSE STOP ONLY CASTLES AND CHALETS OUT THIS FAR STOP SICK OF SNOW STOP came through on January 10, the day Steve finally returned to Stark Mansion after his bout of hacking coughs that did, indeed, turn into phlegmy bronchitis. He could still scarcely speak loudly enough to be heard over the whirring and thunking of JARVIS on the other side of the labyrinthine basem*nt.

“I guess that’s a positive message,” Agent Carter said. “They’re all still alive and focused on the mission. I do worry that the locals will feel them out before they can complete the objective.”

“Shoulda stuck with Army boys,” Colonel Phillips groused. “They’ve been trained well. Don’t know about the Frenchie or the Limey—begging your pardon, ma’am.”

“Falsworth is a highly decorated British officer,” Agent Carter said all too pleasantly. “And I trust Natasha’s reference for Monsieur Dernier.”

Steve nodded his agreement. They tended not to ask his opinions during these tete-a-tetes, even though Agent Carter and Natasha, at least, claimed that he was the leader of their objective. Only the five of them, Jane, and Wanda knew about this mission to find the Asset; even Tony was left in the dark for his own protection. That, and because he had retired for more coffee and pie on Thanksgiving rather than stay to read the final deciphered code, Steve thought. Not that Phillips had been there at all.

Sometimes, Steve wished that he really were in charge of the commandos and their trek across the Alps.

It might be fun to have everyone listen to him.

REINDEER CHEESE EIGHTEEN SEASHELL DRUMSTICK STOP ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL HAMLET BUT THIS ONE WE ARRIVED IN TOO LATE TO BE OF HELP STOP NOT SURE IF IT WAS THE ASSET WHO ROLLED THROUGH HERE BUT SOMEONE AXIS SURE DID STOP TWENTY-FIVE HOUSES EMPTY ONLY ONE BODY FOUND NOT SURE WHAT HAPPENED HERE BUT IT WASN’T GOOD STOP CONTINUING ON THRU THE NIGHT STOP FUNNY WEEKEND ORANGUTANS HOTDOGS COTTON

“I don’t like it,” said Natasha, holding the index card like a live grenade. “Switzerland is meant to be neutral. The Axis attacking there should be international news, not… silence. I haven’t heard anything about it even through my channels.”

“Maybe it wasn’t strictly the Axis,” Steve said darkly. “We still haven’t deduced what kind of splinter group is sending messages from Location KJS. We’re only assuming the Asset is under Axis control because that’s who we’ve been fighting. But isn’t it possible that KJS created the Asset for purposes all their own?”

Natasha’s eyes were haunted when she looked up to meet Steve’s gaze. “I hope not. I really, truly hope not.” She swallowed. The empty spaces on the sides of her neck where her scent glands used to be bobbed with the movement. “I know of a few leads quite deep underground who might know more. You won’t see me for a while.” She smiled grimly and gripped Steve’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

“Good luck to you, too,” Steve said. He tried to smile. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

COUSIN QUIET AMPERSAND REFLEX HANDKERCHIEF STOP ANOTHER VILLAGE ALMOST EMPTY BUT THIS ONE HAS SOME STRAGGLERS AND JONES AND DERNIER GOT TO BE USEFUL FOR ONCE STOP INNKEEPER MENTIONED STRANGE NOISES AND RUMBLING BENEATH THE CITY CENTER LIKE SOME KIND OF FACTORY AND PEOPLE DISAPPEARING STOP CHECKED IT OUT IN TWO TEAMS AND FOUND SOME STRANGE STUFF STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP FACILITY SEEMED TO BE ABANDONED BUT THEY LEFT BEHIND A LOT OF BODIES STOP PAUSED MISSION TO GIVE PROPER BURIAL AS BEST WE COULD STOP DERNIER TOOK PHOTOS OF THE FACILITY AND WILL PASS ALONG TO BLACK WIDOW STOP WORM WRANGLE PATINA ELEPHANT FRUITFLY

It was Agent Carter now standing beside Steve as Darcy handed over the newest message, and Agent Carter who listened and said, “I don’t like it.”

“I assume Black Widow is Natasha?” asked Steve.

“I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a Black Widow agent, nor can I confirm or deny Natasha’s presence in the European theater,” said Agent Carter. “But Monsieur Dernier’s evidence will find its way to good hands, and then into our own. ‘Please advise.’ I wish they had given us more detail than ‘strange stuff.’”

Steve’s eyebrows creased and he frowned. “Do you suppose it could be the facility where the Axis—or whomever—created the Asset?”

“Anything is possible,” said Agent Carter grimly. “We’ve all heard by now,” she lowered her voice after catching a glimpse of Wanda across the crowded floor, “We’ve all heard by now what sorts of strange facilities the Axis is operating across Europe that leave mass graves behind.”

Steve looked down at the index card again. Paused mission to give proper burial as best we could. “I should hope that we would have word through official channels if there were labor camps in Switzerland, even in the remote Alpine region. Does neutrality mean nothing?”

“Unfortunately,” said Agent Carter, “in the actual practice of war… yes, neutrality means next to nothing. After all, Switzerland must still rely on trade with its neighbors for supplies of its own. And its neighbors are not exactly on our side.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “And perhaps the Swiss themselves aren’t, either. I still think it’s possible—”

“Yes, Natasha told me before she undertook her own mission,” Agent Carter said. “You think it’s possible that the Asset and, now, this facility, belong not to an Axis offshoot but some other fearsome enemy.”

Steve bit his lips together. Put like that, it sounded silly. Conspiracist. Like something out of a pulpy omegan spy novel. “Something like that.”

“The only good thing about a worldwide war is that you know exactly who the baddies are,” said Agent Carter. “The Axis is quite enough of a force with which to reckon. We don’t need to chase shadows in the dark when the darkness is quite content to move through the light.”

BLOCKS THANKFUL GLUE HORSESHOE GUMBALL STOP RAN INTO SOME GERRIES TODAY BUT BEAT THEM DOWN STOP CONTINUING ON THROUGH THE NIGHT TO GET AWAY FROM THE MESS STOP WILL REACH NEXT RENDEZVOUS BY MORNING STOP COLD AND TIRED BUT ALL SURVIVING STOP SURPRISE LINKS CARMINE CHARTREUSE HADDOCK

MAGENTA BLUEBERRY STICKY NINETEEN BASEBALL STOP GERRIES WERE BEING TAILED BY ITALIAN PALS AND THEY WERE NONE TOO HAPPY WITH US STOP SOME MINOR INJURIES BUT WE PULLED OUTTA THERE STOP FEELS LIKE WE ARE GETTING INTO THE THICK OF IT NOW STOP REINDEER CARD HAIRPINS THIRTY SIX

DONKEY SOLUTION GRANDMOTHER FORTY ICEBERG STOP JOINED TODAY BY A LITTLE SPIDER STOP

“Natasha’s reached them,” Steve murmured to Darcy, who nodded. She handed him his cup of tea and Steve held it close to his face for the warmth of the steam. “She’ll get that evidence from Dernier, then, of the strange facility near—where was it?”

“Bussigny-sur-Oron,” Darcy said, in a way that Steve could tell was completely incorrect. “I remember because it’s been the worst name yet.”

Steve had to snort a little laugh at that. “It certainly is. I wonder if Natasha will return soon or if she has more work on the continent.”

“I don’t think she planned to come right back,” Darcy said. “She mentioned something offhand about Budapest.”

“A dangerous part of the world right about now,” said Steve.

Darcy looked glum and nodded. “Where isn’t, over there?”

BALLOONS STOWAWAY VOICE INNOVATION COCOA STOP NEARLY TO RENDEZVOUS POINT STOP EXPECT TO REACH TARGET WITHIN WINDOW OF TEN DAYS STOP NO LONGER ENTERING VILLAGES DUE TO INCREASED AXIS ACTIVITY STOP UNSURE WHO TO TRUST SO TRUSTING NO ONE BUT EACH OTHER STOP LITTLE SPIDER WENT UP THE WATERSPOUT AND LEFT US YESTERDAY STOP DROP COPPER BASICS STATEMENT ROOTS

Within ten days. Steve held the index card so tightly that he crumpled its edges.

He might miss the day of the actual incursion, then, because he was most certainly in pre-Heat. His head ached. His stomach ached. His ankles and the glands on the sides of his neck ached. He wanted to stick it out and be able to come in until the last possible moment, but… it just wasn’t safe to tempt fate that way. Although almost everyone here at the Mansion was an omega, there were unmated Alphas and betas here, too, and the route between the boardinghouse and the Mansion was full of strangers. Steve had to consider his own safety even as he considered the safety of the known world.

He wished he didn’t. He wanted to be there when the commandos stormed Location KJS, whatever it was. When they fought to capture the Asset. If they died—

If they died, it would be because Steve sent them there and then got to stay behind in Washington, relatively safe and ensconced in a literal mansion.

He should be fighting and dying alongside them.

But instead, he would be at home in his nesting closet. Again. All alone.

Again.

Steve panted into the pile of worn clothing cushioning his closet floor. His insides burned: if one side or the other managed to weaponize Heat and unleash it on the Alpha troops of their enemy, Steve thought, the war would be over tomorrow. Every cramp wracked him so tightly he felt like he might vomit. The burning fire in his gut made the rest of him break out in gooseflesh, cold even buried under nesting blankets. He was so thirsty. He’d already drained the glass that Scott kindly left outside the nesting closet door, and the sink felt like it was as far away as Brooklyn. Steve grunted and jacked off another twinging org*sm. Just enough that he would be satisfied for a few minutes’ walk across the room to the sink. Just long enough to get some water.

Steve refused to think of all the omegas with Heat partners—strong Alphas, even kind betas, even deviant omegas with other omegas—who were taken care of during their Heats. Whose partners made sure they were taken care of in every way. Steve wouldn’t have to get up and wobble across the cold floor if he were a good enough omega. He would have someone to fetch him water and even hold the glass if he wanted, instead of his own trembling, sticky fingers. He would have someone else to fluff the blankets and make sure that Steve’s bony knees and elbows weren’t bruising against the hardwood. Someone else to brush his hair out of his eyes and promise that it would be over soon, and it would be because they would be f*cking him, giving him what his stupid hormonal body craved. They would hold him close and keep him warm with their skin.

Steve blinked away tears.

He couldn’t lose any more moisture.

And it was a stupid thing to cry about.

Steve had plenty of good things, good people, in his life. A full life. A whole life. He didn’t need a Heat partner. He was just fine without one. Miserable, yes. But only for five days every three months. That was—negligible. He could bear that. He’d been bearing it alone since he was twelve; he would bear it alone—

Forever.

Steve bit his lips together hard.

It felt so much worse when he remembered that this would be his life forever.

“Come on, Steve,” he mumbled to himself. “Get up. Water. You’re just dehydrated.”

Crossing the room felt like a victory. Stubborn and declarative. He didn’t need anyone.

He was just fine alone.

A week later, Steve returned to Stark Mansion in a gray drizzle. It felt as though the sun hadn’t been high since 1943 had begun weeks and weeks ago; not cold enough to snow, what little had come down had long since turned into the familiar gray slush of city streets, and Steve grumbled as he swiped his magnetic key over the hidden lock to the mansion. He had slush in his shoes, and it was turning the newspaper he stuffed in the toes into icy cold mush.

“Good morning, Steve.” Even Darcy looked a little less sparkly than her normal self when she greeted him at his office door with a cup of tea. “How are you feeling?”

“I’d feel better if I had dry socks,” Steve said, sitting at his seldom-used desk. He unlaced his shoe and moved to fish out the wad of wet newspaper so that his socks had a prayer of drying and maybe, maybe, he could avoid a round of pneumonia.

“I have the last week’s communications from the Commandos for you,” Darcy said. “They’re still trekking the Alps, or at least they were yesterday when I left for the night. One skirmish with some Gerries last week, but all of our boys pulled through. They also met up with a Norwegian resistance fighter in some village I can’t pronounce. Calls himself Thor, apparently, but that must be a codename. He was quite some help in the fight, they said, so he’s tagging along with them until his next rendezvous.”

Steve frowned. “Are they sure he’s really Norwegian resistance?”

“Well, they’re sure he’s Norwegian,” Darcy said. “And that he killed Nazis, not them. Sounds like a swell fella to me.”

“Hmm.” Steve made an equivocating noise through his nose.

“And he mentioned a… a Winterwaffe.”

Winter Weapon. Surely that was the Asset!

Steve’s head shot up. “Could he be a spy?”

Darcy shrugged. She handed Steve the index cards and he flipped through them until the word THOR jumped off the white paper.

RANCH CASH BABY TEA WOOL STOP SKIRMISH WITH THE GERRIES OUTSIDE LAUTERBRUNNEN ALL SURVIVED OUR SIDE ALL LOST THEIRS TRIPLE PLAY STOP PICKED UP NORWEGIAN RESISTANCE PAL IN VILLAGE WHO TOOK OUT FOUR GS FOR US STOP CALLS HIMSELF THOR AND HE’S TAGGING ALONG TO NEXT VILLAGE STOP NICE FELLA CAN DRINK LIKE A FISH STOP MENTIONED A NAZI SPLINTER GROUP IN THESE MOUNTAINS HE’S HEARD ARE SEEKING SOME NORDIC MYTH AND USING DER WINTERWAFFE TO CLEAR THE PATH NORTH FROM GERMANY STOP WE ALL PLAYED DUMB OF COURSE WAS EASIER FOR SOME THAN OTHERS STOP CHAPERONE ANGEL GATE PLUM BISCUIT

“A Nazi splinter group,” Steve said. “Just as we suspected. Location KJS. Der Winterwaffe. I don’t like that rumors of the Asset or its location are making the rounds in the theater. Our boys won’t be the only ones in so-called neutral territory searching for it if this keeps up.”

“Could be that the Asset and this Winterwaffe are different things,” Darcy pointed out. She sounded glum about the prospect. “But either way, at least we’ve got a few weeks’ head start on anyone else looking for the Asset, right?”

Steve frowned harder. “I suppose, although it depends on from whence they started their quest.”

“That’s true of anything,” Darcy said. She smiled tiredly at Steve. “We’ll be ready for you in Room Six when you’ve read through the last week’s dispatches and want to get started on today’s cribs. I’ll leave you to it.”

It wasn’t Darcy’s fault that Steve had been out on Heat leave for a week, or that the Norwegian resistance—allegedly—had knowledge of the Asset that may outstrip that of Steve’s team. It wasn’t Darcy’s fault that Steve’s socks were cold and wet, either, and it wasn’t her fault that Steve was in a foul mood.

“Thank you, Darcy,” Steve called out the door to his office as it closed behind her. There was a short knock of shave-and-a-haircut on the other side to let him know that she’d heard, and then Steve was alone in his office with the last week of dispatches from the Front.

Steve sipped at his cooling tea and closed his eyes. He needed to get back into the right headspace for solving problems bigger than his own loneliness, which ultimately didn’t matter to the world. These codes, this war, they mattered, and Steve could change them. He opened his eyes with a return to his usual steely resolve.

Halfway through the dispatches and two pages of notations on possible crib words later, the door to Steve’s office flew open.

Darcy looked positively wild as she brandished an index card to Steve.

“They’ve got him. The Asset. They found—our boys have got it. They’re going to rendezvous with the pilot in Green—Grand—Grindelwald tonight!”

Chapter 7: Chapter Seven

Chapter Text

The following four days as they waited for the commandos and their captured Asset to make it out of Europe and into American airspace were fraught. The team at Stark Mansion still intercepted Axis messages, still deciphered them, but the work felt slower. More tedious. Steve needed to see evidence that his wild theories about the Asset were real.

Two days into the interminable wait, Natasha arrived back at the Mansion looking like she’d never left. She hugged Steve tightly and murmured, “Congratulations,” in his ear.

She delivered to Agent Carter several canisters of film that catalogued horrors across the Continent.

Perhaps there would be fewer horrors now that the Asset was moving into their own hands.

The morning that the commandos were due to arrive dawned bright, blue, and cold. Steve wrapped himself in two sweaters when he dressed, and he stuffed his feet into three pairs of wool socks. He could see his breath crystallizing on his scarf in tiny droplets, and the icy breeze stung his eyes and made them water.

But he wasn’t going to miss this.

A buzzing hum was the first sign that the Asset was on its approach: the Starks had enough land that their old carriage road could double as a landing strip, so the commandos and their WASP escort were going to fly the Asset directly to Stark Mansion. It was just as well, since the mission was officially outside of the military’s purview and they couldn’t exactly bring a Nazi war criminal through a holidaymakers’ airport.

The B-24 Liberator was larger than Steve had imagined from seeing photographs. He’d never seen an airplane in real life before, and this one was a humdinger. There was even an omega in lingerie painted on the nose, MAHOGANY MEG emblazoned beside them. The blue-and-white American star inside a circle made Steve’s heart beat faster, suddenly full of national pride.

This was an American victory, and it was all possible because of him. Steve was glad the icy wind and loud rotors of the plane could be blamed for the tear tracks on his cheeks.

The commandos and one WASP pilot jumped down from the plane and rushed to the back compartment—where one might load a bomb, Steve thought. Had they locked the Asset into the fuselage? Would a human being even survive flight that way?

But it was not a human being that they hauled from the bomb bay. It was a machine.

Steve had seen some strange things passing by the Starks’ laboratories, or maybe playrooms, these last few months, but he had never seen anything quite like what the commandos were lowering from the plane’s bomb hatch. They sweated and yelled, grunting under the weight of the thing, and all of them had on heavy gloves. While it was winter in Washington D.C. and had certainly been colder in the Alps where they found—whatever this was, Steve was fairly certain it shouldn’t have spidering white ice crystals all over it the way that it did.

The other WASP jumped down from the co*ckpit and jogged towards Steve, Howard, Agent Carter, and Colonel Phillips. She slowed to a walk a few paces back and snapped her hand into a crisp, picture-perfect salute for the Colonel.

“Carol Danvers, Women’s Airforce Service Pilot,” she introduced herself. “It was an honor to transport your soldiers from Lehigh, sir. Ma’am.”

Steve didn’t merit a ‘sir.’ But then, neither did Howard, he consoled himself.

“What is that thing those boys are unloading?” Phillips asked, gesturing with his cigarette. “We were meant to be receiving—an additional passenger.”

Carol Danvers looked uncomfortable. “I can’t say, sir. Not that I don’t want to say, sir, just that I have no earthly idea. It’s mighty cold; almost froze the steel around it and made the fuselage rattle something terrible. That’s all I know.”

Phillips harrumphed and took a long drag on the cigarette. He waited until Carol Danvers seemed to sense she was dismissed and turned to jog back to the commandos, still struggling with the massive—thing.

“Well,” said Phillips under his breath to Agent Carter. “This looks to have been one colossal and very expensive failure, Carter. Unless that’s a war machine. Looks more like a refrigerator.”

“By god!” Howard yelled. He looked like he’d been hit over the head. “I know what that is! I thought it was the realm of science fiction, but hot damn! Phillips, you’re not wrong. That is a refrigerator of sorts. But our Asset—he’s inside it. Cryogenic freezing. I didn’t think it was possible.”

“Crying what freezing?” asked Phillips. His jaw ticked.

“Cryogenic freezing,” said Howard. “It’s a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, or so I thought. Low-temperature freezing of the human body to keep it from—well, from aging. Or dying. I always thought the doctors who peddled it to rich schmucks like Tony and me were quacks just trying to get our money with the promise of life after death, but maybe I was wrong.”

“So the Asset is frozen?” Steve asked. “Inside that tube? To keep him alive? What will happen if he’s—er—thawed out?”

“Well, if we’re not careful about it, he’ll turn out like last night’s hamburger steak,” said Howard. “Boys! Stop all that howling and listen real closely!” He whistled with two fingers in his mouth and took off running towards the commandos and the cryonic tube.

It took quite a to-do, but eventually the commandos and Howard managed to bring the whole enormous cryonic tube into Stark Mansion. They didn’t turn at the same door that would bring them to Room Six; instead, the whole crowd followed Howard as he led them down a different staircase to a darker, more foreboding sub-basem*nt. From the humming of the ceiling, Steve could tell that they were beneath Room Six. Overhead, chairs squeaked and feet tapped, and no one was any the wiser than a ruthless Nazi war criminal was frozen beneath their desks.

Howard hustled around getting bits and bobs and lengths of heavy-duty black cords from his lab. Steve stood near Natasha and Wanda, trying not to get in the way. Inside the cryonic tube, there was only stillness. Silence. Steve kept stealing glances at it, hoping to catch a glimpse of the thing—the man—the thing that he had been chasing for so many months now, but all he could see through its viewing window was a crackle of white frost.

“Alright!” declared Howard. “Let’s see if this crazy tech is worth a damn.” He held a black cord as thick as a python in both hands.

The enormous cord plugged into the generator and a hum took over the sub-basem*nt. It was loud enough to make up for the silence of JARVIS: Steve felt it vibrating through the soles of his feet and up through his whole body, making it hard for him to breathe. He patted his pocket to make sure he had his asthma cigarettes, just in case.

“I can’t guarantee this will work,” Howard yelled over the hum. “He’s been thawing out for days now, he might not have survived it!”

“It was mighty cold in the Alps!” Corporal Dugan yelled back, hat in his hands. “No way anyone warmed up in that freeze, with all due respect, sir!”

“Cryogenic freezing is almost negative eighty degrees Centigrade!” Howard shook his head. “Anything warmer than that and this fella will’ve start to thaw out. You do that wrong, and all you get is—brain soup!”

“Yeah, Dum-Dum,” said one of the other Commandos, Wilson, Steve thought. The man smirked at Dugan and crossed his arms over his chest. “Everyone knows cryogenic freezing is almost negative a hundred-and-twelve degrees!”

Dugan narrowed his eyes. “You did not.”

“Sure, I did,” said Wilson. He turned to Steve. “You knew that, too, didn’t you, Captain Rogers?”

“Oh, I’m not—I didn’t—I’m not a—” Steve stammered around the address. Wilson winked showily at him and with a minute movement jerked his head towards Dugan and his narrowed eyes. “I mean, yes, of course, I knew that!”

“See?” Wilson turned back to Dugan with a full grin on his mouth. “Common knowledge, Dum-Dum!”

“Alright, boys,” drawled Agent Carter. “That’s enough rambunctiousness for the moment, I should think. We’re in the process of thawing out an extremely dangerous war criminal, after all, and who knows how he will react to his new situation once he regains his faculties.”

Phillips looked from Carter to the strangely alien pod, humming away as Howard tinkered with its buttons and levels, Wanda at his side to translate the German instructions.

“I’ll take care of our guest,” Phillips said dryly. He showed his gun. “If he tries to blink without our permission, he gets one right between the eyes.”

“That would be an enormous waste of a resource,” Carter said. “We need to know who was deploying him, where his next mission was scheduled to be, who’s set up base in Switzerland—”

“How he’s taking out whole troops by himself,” added Natasha.

Carter nodded. “He may have been the Axis’ Asset, but as of an hour ago, when he arrived, this man is our asset. Even though he has done horrible things, we can’t just kill him, Phillips.”

“Alright, alright, geez,” said Phillips. He holstered his gun. “I can wait until after you’ve gotten all of your answers out of him before putting the mad dog down.”

Steve looked at his feet. Through the frosted glass pane in the metal coffin, he could just barely make out the shape of the Asset. Truth be told, it didn’t look human. But Steve still didn’t want to be privy to a man being killed. Wilson might jokingly call him ‘captain,’ and the commandos might technically answer to him, but Steve was not a military man. His heart was, literally, not strong enough for that.

“How long is this thing gonna take to come to temperature, Stark?” asked Phillips.

“Another hour, if our German is accurate,” said Howard. “But again, no promises that he will have survived the journey. It’s entirely likely that his heart and brain have been so damaged by the uncontrolled thaw that he’ll be a vegetable even if he did live through the travel.”

“All that hiking in the snow for nothing,” said Dugan, shaking his head.

“Not for nothing, old chap,” argued Falsworth. “There was beautiful scenery.”

“And beautiful people,” added Jones. “Some of those inns had some damned beautiful food, too.”

“Yeah, it was a cushy gig!” said Morita. “Trekking in snowshoes, taking in the sights, stopping to eat rabbit stew and sleep on a feather bed every coupla nights… compared to the mud and the stench on the Front? I’ll track down any frozen Axis weapons they got!”

“An hour, huh?” Phillips rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms. “In that case, little lady, why don’t you bring out a round of coffees? Be a good girl.”

Darcy looked from Phillips to Steve, who tried to show his empathy with the smallest jerk of his head. He didn’t want to get on Phillips’ bad side, not with an attitude towards omegas like that.

Darcy huffed and went off to find the coffeepot. Steve found himself looking to Dum-Dum Timothy Dugan, the only omega of the commandos, who was busy glaring daggers at Colonel Phillips like the man had spit on Dugan’s mother’s grave. Agent Carter seemed to notice this and she took the colonel’s arm to bring him to the far side of the sub-basem*nt so they could converse quietly between themselves, Phillips looking over every so often to throw dismissive looks at the cryogenic pod.

“So,” Wilson said, filling the awkward silence that had formed—other than the vibrating hum of the cryonic tube. “You’re the crackerjack who figured out what the Gerries were hiding out there in the Alps, huh, Rogers?”

“Uh, yes, sir. I mean, yes,” Steve said, flustered. “I didn’t figure out the Asset was a human, though, that was all Natash—er, Miss Romanov’s intelligence.”

“Elle a des oreilles partout,” said Jacques Dernier, looking over at Natasha like she hung the moon. Steve wondered just what she was like out in the field with a bunch of Alphas and betas juiced up on aggression hormones and the perils of war. He knew that she had been shot at least once and survived it. What else could Natasha Romanov do?

Dernier didn’t look at Natasha like he cared, or even really noticed, that all of her scent glands had been cut away. Steve felt a pang of something like jealousy: no one had ever looked at him like that, and he had at least a bit of his own scent. He wasn’t totally—

No. Natasha was a friend, a good one, and good to him. Whatever happened to her, Steve couldn’t begrudge anyone else a chance at happiness.

“So how’d you do it?” Wilson asked Steve. “You a spy, too?”

“Not hardly,” said Steve, laughing nervously. “I’m just… good at puzzles. And I have a good team. It took all of us working together to find the location of the Asset, anyone who says otherwise is just gassing you up.”

Wilson co*cked an eyebrow and tilted his head. “I think someone’s being modest, from what little I’ve heard, Cap.”

“Cap?”

“Captain,” Wilson said. “We took to calling you our captain while we were over there. Didn’t know your name, so we didn’t have anything else to call you. ‘Orders from the Captain,’ whenever a new morse came in. Has a nice ring to it, I reckon.”

“I’m not a captain,” Steve said, and he felt his ears glowing hot. “I’m just a—a civilian who wanted to help the war effort however I can.”

“Hey, Cap, don’t talk down about our fearless leader!” said Morita, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “We passed the time telling stories about you, y’know.”

“Taller than a brick building, that’s our captain,” said Jones.

“Punches harder’n a rampaging bull,” added Dugan.

“Runs faster than Jesse Owens,” laughed Wilson. “A regular super-soldier.”

Steve’s stomach hurt.

He was none of those things.

“I’m not even a regular soldier,” Steve mumbled. “Really, I would rather—”

“Nah, you’re just the smartest man in the world,” interrupted Howard. Steve had never quite been grateful for one of the Stark brothers before, but he was glad to have loquacious Howard take the commandos’ attention away from teasing small, weak, sickly Steve. How pathetic he must seem to them, these real men—strong and healthy and fresh from the Front.

“No sh*t?” asked Dugan, then winced, looking at Natasha and Wanda. “Sorry, ladies.”

Only Wanda looked at all scandalized.

“No fooling,” concurred Howard. “Steve Rogers here is a cer-ti-fied genius. Graduated from college when he was what, Rogers, eleven years old?”

“Ten.” Steve ran his hands through his hair just for something to do.

“Holy moly!” whistled Jones. “How’d you manage that?”

“What this man doesn’t know about mathematics hasn’t been invented yet,” said Howard. “He’s a regular computing machine.”

“That’s me,” Steve said. “Beep.”

The commandos all laughed at that. Wilson and Morita even slapped Steve’s shoulders again.

Darcy returned with a tray of coffee cups, a full and steaming pot, and another tray of hard little cookies that Steve recognized from a box that had been on Jane’s desk for months. Still, everyone except Steve took a cup of coffee, and even Steve took a stale cookie to nibble.

And they waited, staring at the frosted windowpane on the metal tube.

There was no sign there was anyone living beneath it.

Steve, and the rest of them, jumped when a high, thin beeping began to sound from the pod. Howard checked his watch and smiled a bit grimly.

“It’s time.”

Agent Carter urged Steve, Natasha, and Wanda to stand back, far away from the pod; Phillips stayed back, too, Steve noticed, as though he considered himself too important to risk being hurt when the door opened and a monster fought its way out.

There was a pneumatic hiss—

And the lid of the tube swung open.

Silence.

The Asset was nothing like Steve had imagined. This thing—

Hard to believe it could be a human man, perhaps it was a cyborg like in the films?—

It had earned its reputation as a wraith fairly.

Where its face should have been was a glistening black gas mask, the metal unlike anything Steve had ever seen. Was it vibranium, that strange steel-black that allowed no reflection even though it looked smooth as glass? The eye-holes had been smoked black, too, and Steve wondered whether The Asset could see. Or, if it were no longer a human man, whether it needed to see. Long, greasy hair fell in waves from the back of the monstrous mask and Steve couldn’t help wondering how long it had been since anyone bothered to bathe this thing. The smell was rank enough that he covered his nose and mouth with his bent elbow. The remains of dried blood, that unmistakable copper-and-meat smell, was even thicker on The Asset than the sharp scent of old sweat and reeking Alpha.

“Is he dead?” asked Agent Carter.

“We’ll find out,” said Howard grimly. “There’s one more step. Little Wanda, Rogers, you may want to cover your eyes.”

Wanda obeyed, but Steve did not. It didn’t feel fair that he was the only man in the room told to look away, and besides—this was his operation. These were his men.

And he was curious.

Howard approached the tube again and pushed his goggles down over his eyes. He reached towards the Asset and there was a collective draw of breath.

Steve’s brow furrowed as he watched. There was—a wire, a wire connecting the Asset’s clavicle to a panel inside the tube. It poked through the tactical jacket in a bright red streak against all the black. What was it there for?

Howard unbuckled the first few straps of the tactical vest and opened it just enough to check the Asset’s unmoving chest, and Steve realized: it was connected to the thing’s heart.

Howard nodded. Grasped onto a lever on the control panel of the tube.

Steve immediately wished that he had closed his eyes after all. The terrible jerk of the Asset as electricity diverted from the tube and directly into his chest made Steve’s nausea bubble up the back of his throat.

Everyone had heard that people danced in the electric chair.

Steve had never hoped to see it.

Alpha distress hit Steve’s nose with such force that he physically stepped backwards. The sour smell was so strong that it was like the scent below it had curdled, and Steve could barely make out the distinct personal notes that would be unique to whoever this man who was the Asset had been.

But below the astringent burning that made Steve want, alternately, to flee and to run closer and offer instinctual comfort with his own scent glands, there was a human smell. An Alpha scent. It was buried, but Steve’s nose was still able to pick out juicy fruit and something like a bonfire, wet stone and some heady sweet scent like Coney Island cotton candy. The scent was muted aside from the distress, too, like the Asset had been given blockers even though most of the world had rationed them for soldiers.

Well. He was a soldier, of sorts, Steve supposed. A winter soldier unshrinking from crisis and walking out of bloody battles like he was alive.

Howard Stark approached the tube and fitted a stethoscope into his ears. He pressed it to the eerily still chest of the Asset.

“He may be braindead,” Howard pronounced, “But this fellow is alive, alright.”

When he removed the stethoscope, a long string of clear ooze followed the bell, keeping Howard connected to the Asset for a hanging moment. Steve hadn’t noticed it at first because of the reek and the horror of the mask, but the Asset glistened all over with the stuff and it leaked from the open tube with a slowness that seemed almost deliberate. A slow drip of tears.

“What’s that all over him, Stark?” asked Phillips. He didn’t cover his face, but Steve didn’t figure he could smell anything except his own cigar anyhow.

“Goo!” Howard enthused. “Science is full of goo, Colonel. If I had to guess, this one is a phosphate-buffered saline, maybe some sucrose… I’m not a biologist, but the few creepy-crawlies that Tony and I have played with were put away with the stuff. Of course, we didn’t need nearly so much of it.” He swiped the bell of his stethoscope with one finger, gathering some goo to give a deep sniff. “It’s the sucrose that gives it this viscosity. Fella’s been candied.”

“Never mind the sugar ration,” said Dugan. “Is he sleeping?”

“Could be faking it,” said Wilson. Steve only just noticed that all of the commandos had their weapons drawn and pointed at the Asset in his tube.

Steve had never been around a loaded gun before.

“Well, let’s take advantage of the time we’ve got before he wakes up angry,” said Agent Carter. “I think we may have our answer as to how he—er, applied such force to his victims. That arm is…”

“A beauty,” said Howard Stark. “Speaking professionally only, of course. As an engineer.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got just the thing to take a look at it, too! Tony and I have been tinkering with—I’ll be just a few minutes, it’s out in the workshop. If he wakes up, just scream. Kidding, kidding. I’m not kidding.”

Howard rushed off, back towards the main room of the basem*nt—and probably one of his laboratories beyond that. Steve had walked past the brothers’ labs, but never been inside. They seemed very… loud.

It was not loud here, everyone staring at the dead still figure of the Asset. The commandos’ guns were all drawn, their trigger fingers poised and ready.

There was an almighty clatter at the back of the sub-basem*nt and Steve jumped.

“What is that?” Steve asked. The thing Howard Stark was wheeling forward looked like a massive metal casket, and the wire connecting it into the wall had to be more than an inch thick, like the massive connectors for the bombe.

“We’ve been experimenting with biomedical engineering,” Howard said casually, as though it were nothing. “A few years ago, a Columbia physics professor developed a method for measuring the movements of atomic nuclei. He had us come to the lab to test various methodologies for its use, and we realized that it could be used to take images of the water content of various parts of the human body. We just needed to create an imaging device large enough.

“So, behold! The Vita-Ray Tissue Resonance Imager!” Howard beamed. “We can pop our Nazi fiend here inside and voila, we’ll get something like an x-ray of his internal organs. I’m most interested in that arm… We should find out whether there’s any kind of explosive or tracking elements inside the arm by doing this, without needing to take it off of him blind.”

“And his brain,” added Agent Carter. “If the Nazis were able to create an arm that responds to his thoughts like a flesh arm, then there has to be some kind of work done to him neurologically.”

“We can learn from it,” said Howard. “Imagine how many of our troops could benefit from smart prosthesis after they come home from the Front. And imagine how much the Axis will hate it if we use their own breakthroughs to make life better for the Allies!”

Steve, who had been the subject of many hospital treatments in his life, looked from the unconscious Alpha in its shiny black gas mask to the Vita-Ray machine. “Will it hurt him?”

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” Howard reassured him. “You’re welcome to jump inside and test it out, if you don’t believe me.”

Steve made a face. “That’s alright. I just… I didn’t sign on to torture anyone.”

“This is war, little one,” said Colonel Phillips. “Sometimes we all must do things we didn’t think we ever would.”

Steve frowned but didn’t say anything.

“Ah!” said Phillips. “And here’s our good doctor.”

Steve turned to see a small man rushing into the chamber, sweat drops shining on his stubby forehead. His lank blond hair was combed over the top of his balding, round head in streaks. He didn’t look to be much taller than Steve, but his scent was undeniably Alpha: almost strong enough to make Steve’s eyes water, the man smelled like ozone and iron and dark, kirsch-like cherry.

“I am sorry I am late,” he said in a thick, clipped German accent. “I had to complete other business. Is this the subject?”

“Who is this?” Agent Carter asked, her face a deep frown as she turned to Phillips. “I didn’t sign on to allow outsiders onto this aspect of the project.”

“This is Zola, one of the scientists brought over like that Einstein out West.” Phillips waved a hand towards Zola. “We were meant to get someone else, a Jew beta called Erskine, but he didn’t make it out of the Ukraine. Someone killed the poor S.O.B. Zola got here, what, six months ago?”

“Yes, six months ago,” agreed Zola. Something about his voice made Steve uncomfortable. Its plummy edge skirted too close to an Alpha’s Voice without dipping into the hypnotic register, exactly. “I have been woefully underused as a medic on the military base tending to simple injuries since then. But this looks to be of real interest.”

His small, watery, blue eyes roved over the unconscious Alpha like he was going to eat him.

“That arm is fascinating,” Zola said. “A marvel, one might say.”

“That arm killed dozens of our brave troops,” said Phillips. “So one might call it a horror instead of a marvel.”

“It can be both,” said Zola. “There is nothing so horrifying as a miracle, so they say.”

Steve looked uncomfortably from Zola to Agent Carter and Howard. Howard was both busy fiddling with their Vita-Ray machine, and Agent Carter did not look back at Steve. Apparently, he was the only one disturbed by that turn of phrase.

Something about Zola made Steve shiver in the base of his spine.

Perhaps he was being unfair, and he was judging the man by his thick German accent.

Steve resolved to do better.

While the rest of the commandos kept their guns trained on the Asset, Wilson and Morita began to remove its heavy, reinforced gear. Buckle by buckle they removed its, his, tactical vest. Beneath it the Asset’s skin was imprinted rough pink with the shapes of the heavy ceramic plates in the vest and the straps that kept it tight. And his skin was visibly grimy, grayish with soot and smeared with black lines where sweat had run down through it, marking it like a film star’s running mascara. Starbursts of gory dried-blood brown marked his torso all over, as though he’d been shot over and over and somehow healed without even scars.

Maybe he had.

Maybe he wasn’t human, after all.

“Whoo,” muttered Wilson. “Big guy stinks.”

“He does,” agreed Agent Carter, her handkerchief over her nose and mouth. “Let’s hose him down before continuing with the procedure.”

The heavy steel-toed boots came off next, his soles black beneath them. Wanda squeaked when Morita undid the Asset’s trousers and he and Wilson wrestled them off his dead-weight legs. More blood streaked his pale thighs and calves.

Steve went red and was glad that they didn’t make any move to take off the Asset’s underwear.

He’d never seen a naked Alpha outside of an art museum.

They left his mask—that horrible black gas mask with its smoked-out eyes—for last. Howard ran a strange device all over it to check for the signatures of any embedded bombs or electronics, and he found none. Without fanfare, Wilson undid the clasps that held the mask to the Asset’s head.

He set the Asset’s head back down on the slab, long hair splayed out like seaweed.

And he lifted the mask away from the Asset’s face.

Chapter 8: Chapter Eight

Chapter Text

Steve wasn’t sure what he expected.

Empty eye sockets and a cut-out tongue.

A pulsating brain encased in glass.

A grotesque red skull, perhaps.

Instead, the Asset was—a man. A young man with dark eyelashes that fanned out against the bruise-purple skin below his eyes. A young man with uneven stubble on his cheeks and chin like someone took no care in their task of shaving him. A young man with the sharp cheekbones of the starved and pink lips chapped from the cold.

Of course from the cold, Steve thought.

“Nazi bastard,” Phillips mumbled around his cigarette.

“Yes, alright,” said Agent Carter, still behind her handkerchief. “Someone get some soapy water and get off the worst of that smell.”

The worst of the smell was the scent of his Alpha distress, and that wouldn’t come off with a bucket and some lye. Wilson and Morita went off with Agent Carter to reel in a hose instead, and they sprayed the Asset down from head to toe from a distance just in case the water shocked him awake.

It didn’t.

He looked even younger when he was clean-ish, wet and bedraggled and still stone-cold unconscious.

Morita wrestled him into a prisoner’s uniform. His left arm didn’t fit into the opening for a standard sleeve, and it took a pair of manicure scissors and Dernier’s teeth to remove the fabric in a ragged circle. The gray and white stripes made the Asset’s shoulders look even broader. The scarring around his metal arm made Steve’s stomach uneasy: the lines of pink tissue were rough and raised, angry-looking, and of particular note were the four deep gouges that led from the Asset’s clavicle to the seat of the prosthesis in his shoulder.

They looked as though someone had tried—one-handed—to tear the thing off of him.

It made Steve wonder why just the one arm. Why not both, if it were for strength? Why not both, if it were to control him?

Whoever had made the Asset left him with enough reminders that he was, once, a wholly human man. And enough reminders that he no longer was.

Steve wondered just who those reminders were meant to cow.

It took Howard, Phillips, and four of the Commandos to arrange the unconscious Asset in the Vita-Ray machine. Metal bands opened like pincers and held his arms, legs, and neck in place, and then one by one syringes depressed to inject the man with—

“What is that?” Steve asked.

“Gadolinium dye,” Howard said. He was wearing heavy goggles. “It will boost the contrast between dark and light in the resulting image from the machine. Different parts of this chap’s body will absorb the dye differently and we’ll get a better idea of how he’s so strong and fast. If he really is that strong or fast.”

“And his brain?” asked Zola with great interest. “Will we get an image of the Asset’s brain?”

“Yes, sir,” said Howard. “The dye will penetrate brain tissues as well. We’ll practically be able to read the fella’s mind.”

Steve frowned. He had been the subject of a great many medical procedures in his life, but he had always been awake and able to consent to them. Or, if he hadn’t, then his mother had been there to consent for him.

“Have you tested this machine on anyone before?” Steve asked.

“Not this model,” Howard admitted. “But the previous iterations, sure. We usually test things out on Tony since I’m a bit of a prime male specimen, if I do say so myself.”

Steve frowned harder. “And it really won’t hurt him?”

“He’s a Nazi!” Howard shrugged. “Does it really matter?”

It does, Steve wanted to say. It matters that we’re better than whoever turned a human being into—that thing. We aren’t really winning the war if we have to become the enemy to do it. We aren’t fighting for truth and freedom and the side of the righteous if we have to turn our backs on our every ideal.

He wanted to say all of that.

But he was just an omega, and war was not his place. The commandos might jokingly call him their captain, but if he wanted to stay on this project—and he did—then he needed to swallow his words and be what Phillips and Carter needed him to be. Small. Quiet. Pliable.

Steve felt uncomfortably equal to the man on the slab.

They were both just assets in someone else’s grand scheme.

The commandos, Zola, and Howard maneuvered the Asset upright and into the Vita-Ray machine. Straps buckled around his arms at the biceps and forearms, his ribs, his waist, just below his chin, his thighs near the groin, his knees, and his ankles. If he woke up now, he would be just as unable to move as he’d been when still frozen.

Steve winced as Howard depressed the button that caused dozens of needles to pierce the Asset’s skin and inject him with the gadolinium dye. Then with a hiss, the Vita-Ray tube closed around him like a beetle’s shell. The only part of the Asset that was visible was his sleeping face through a small window at the top of the tube. The tube shuddered once and shifted from upright to horizontal, and Howard connected a thick set of wires to some a box backed with cylindrical tube and fronted with a curved pane of glass.

Steve recognized the box from drawings in the Times and from passing by the big department store windows in the city—a television set. But he’d never seen a model with a screen this large. Not even in the window at Macy’s.

“Hold onto your handles,” Howard said, and the room filled with a loud, discordant hum. He turned a dial, and then another. Phillips lit another cigar. The commandos kept their guns at the ready.

Howard pulled a lever, and the Vita-Ray machine began to vibrate and make terrible thumping sounds. If the Asset weren’t so thoroughly restrained, Steve would have thought he was trying to break out.

“And we’re a go,” Howard said. He turned a dial on the television set, and it glowed bright black-and-white that made Steve squint after the steady dimness of the sub-basem*nt.

He watched in awe as in slow, terrific detail, the outline of a man—bones and veins and glowing white metal arm—began to fill the screen. When Howard adjusted the dials or pressed buttons on his control panel for the Vita-Ray, the screen zeroed in on different parts of the Asset’s body. It was like looking at one of Da Vinci’s anatomical sketches a thousand years in the future, Steve thought. It was more than seeing the Asset naked, it was seeing the Asset unmade.

“Can we focus in on that arm, Howard?” asked Agent Carter.

The dial turned, and there was the arm.

“It isn’t an exoskeleton.” Howard sounded hoarse with surprise. Perhaps with disgust. Or awe. “It’s fully robotic.”

“Robotic?” asked Dugan. “Like from a pulp novel?”

“Pretty much.” Howard leaned closer to the television screen and adjusted the dial so that the picture closed in on the upper arm. “Look here, no human tissue left inside. It’s entirely metal. Jeez, fellas, how heavy was he to lift? These wires alone must weigh more than a natural arm.”

“Well, he ain’t a welterweight,” said Wilson.

“And there isn’t an ounce of fat on him,” added Agent Carter.

“There must be—ah, yes, look at this.” Howard adjusted the dial as he spoke. “The metal bracing goes all the way to his spine. From the looks of him, they peeled back his skin and attached the braces through the musculature before putting the skin back on for—well, I’m not sure why. But this man’s whole left side has been rebuilt to counterbalance the weight of that robotic arm. If he does have nerve endings, he’s probably in a lot of constant pain.”

Steve tilted his head and looked away from the screen and back to the man. He knew what it was like to be in constant pain. How much of that horrible distress scent came from the Asset’s body simply reacting to being alive with that weapon welded onto him?

“How does he move it?” Steve asked, and everyone looked at him. He blinked. “The arm. If it’s not—if he doesn’t have his own arm inside its shell.”

“Beats me,” said Howard. “I didn’t think the science would be possible for—pfft, a hundred years, even if Tony and I dedicated all of our energies toward it. I can show you what they did, but I can’t tell you how they knew to do it. These, here,” he pointed to a long string of white light on the television screen, “Those aren’t wires. Those gray lines, those are wires, but these white lines, they’re nerves. They must have filled the arm with an isotropic solution to keep them functional.”

“But that means that… that his arm wasn’t lost,” Steve said. “It was removed.”

It was removed, and the nerves preserved. Perhaps it was even removed in pieces around the nerves, exposing them string by string, bundle by bundle. Steve wasn’t a biologist and had no great proficiency in anatomy, but it stood to simple reason that if this man were a battlefield casualty whose arm had been lost to a grenade or a landmine, the nerves would have been gone with the flesh and bone. Howard adjusted the television dials and Steve followed the lines of white nerve all the way from shoulder to fingertips.

The arm was not a gift, he thought. It was a warning.

“So it connects into his brain like a flesh arm?” asked Agent Carter. She was still holding her handkerchief close to her face. “With wires?”

“I believe that is my area of expertise,” said Dr. Zola. “Mr. Stark, if you could please show us this man’s cranium.”

Howard turned the dials and there it was: skull, dark eyeballs, bright-white teeth—including two that shone gray like the metal of his arm and looked hollow. Glowing in shades of monochrome, the Asset’s coiled brain.

Steve gasped. He couldn’t help it. Beside him, Natasha stiffened; on his other side, Wanda covered her mouth with both hands.

The Asset’s brain crawled with gray wires and squares of that same solid metal. Steve didn’t need to know neuroscience to understand that something very, very drastic had been done to make this man the Nazis’ Asset.

The murmuring around him confirmed that he wasn’t the only person taken aback. Steve wondered if anyone else felt nauseous.

Dr. Zola looked, if anything, ravenous. He pored over the image on the screen of that deconstructed, mangled brain like it was the appetizer menu at the Starks’ preferred club. One pudgy finger trailed along the lines of white nerves to find where they joined with thicker wires.

“Are you able to understand anything in that mess?” Colonel Phillips asked eventually.

“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Zola with no small amount of smugness. “Very fascinating, is this so-called Asset.”

“Do you care to enlighten the class?” Howard asked, arms folded across his chest.

Zola fixed him with an unreadable expression but nodded.

“Look here,” directed Dr. Zola, and he pointed to a fuzzy, white area in the image of the Asset’s head. “There has been alteration of the memory centers of the brain as well as the scent receptors. His motor cortex has been nearly entirely reconstructed, see this area here? And his hypothalamus, this right here, controls his hormones and pheromones. I cannot tell you what this metal insert is meant to do there, but it is evident the Asset still produces appropriate pheromonal reactions. To quite a high degree, I should say, given the handkerchief covering Miss Carter’s nose.

“The olfactory bulb, hypothalamus, and hippocampus are all delicate pieces of human machinery. They have many purposes beyond merely translating and transmitting scent and storing memory… they are also part of the limbic system, the system by which we learn through fear and conditioning. These areas of the Asset’s brain are lit up, as you might say, like New York City. I would wager that he would not be so easily distracted by the scents of frightened soldiers. Perhaps he is even incapable of questioning orders. There have been fascinating studies expanding on Pavlov’s work with dogs in the early 20^th century, and this Asset may have been the subject of such an experiment. The modifications to his brain look to be very delicate. Genius work.”

Steve frowned. Zola’s tone when describing the torture done to this man—because he was certainly a man, Steve could see that now—dipped entirely too close into a kind of lusty admiration for Steve’s taste.

“Genius maybe, but wholly unethical, even for the Nazis,” said Agent Carter in a tone that suggested she finally agreed with Steve’s thoughts.

“Mmm.” Zola made a noncommittal noise. “Science is science, no matter who is doing it, Agent Carter. We know nothing of who this subject was before the experimentation. Perhaps he was dumb or mute or a vegetable. Perhaps he was… undesirable for other purposes. Whatever experimentation was done to him made him a perfect soldier. We could learn from what has been done to him and create for ourselves—”

“No,” Agent Carter interrupted him firmly. “We will be doing nothing of the kind. What was done to this man, whatever it was, whoever he was, was barbaric and turned him into nothing short of a barbarian. What I am interested in learning from this Asset is who has been turning him loose on the battlefield, how, and why the messages are encoded in only certain communications.” She turned to Steve. “Since you have been leading this little project so far, Rogers, I think you would be the best candidate for speaking to the Asset as well.”

“Me?” Steve asked at the same time that Colonel Phillips sputtered, “Like hell!”

“With, huh, all due respect, Agent Carter,” said Phillips—making it perfectly clear that he did not see any respect was due whatsoever—“That thing in there is my prisoner of war.”

“With all due respect, Colonel,” said Agent Carter, “We wouldn’t know that the Asset existed were it not for Dr. Rogers’ unique talent for deciphering indecipherable codes. Besides,” she added, “He’s an omega. The Asset is an Alpha. We’ll have more luck sending Steven in with him than you or one of your soldiers. He won’t interpret Steve as a sign of aggression.”

“That thing killed nearly a hundred of our troops,” said Phillips, his voice low and dangerous and a half-step away from a warning growl. “Maybe we should be sending it back some aggression.”

“You may understand battle, Colonel, but I understand the fine art of interrogation and subterfuge,” argued Agent Carter. “This is not a vertical operation. It’s lateral. Dr. Rogers has as much right to the Asset as you or I, and he is uniquely placed to be able to obtain necessary information that may save many more troops than the Asset has killed.”

Steve let them argue back and forth without really listening. While Peggy might say that Operation Thumbtack was functionally lateral, he was the lowest in standing by any degree of measurement—status, length of service, or field experience—and he would do whatever they decided.

Steve stared at the fuzzy image of the Asset’s brain while the voices tuned out around him. Slowly, in flickers like a nickelodeon cranked by an inexpert hand, the mysterious blobs of highlight and shadow shifted. With a bit of trepidation, Steve looked away from the machine and to the man himself.

The Asset’s eyes shifted slightly beneath closed lids spidered by purple veins. His chest raised and fell in deep breaths. The rest of him was absolutely still, including the fearsome metal arm. In spite of himself, Steve’s heart went out to whoever the Asset had begun his life as. It just didn’t seem possible that anyone, even an ardent Nazi, could have wanted to become this thing on the slab.

Steve watched the Asset breathing as the voices around them grew louder. More insistent. The steady pace of the Asset’s chest expanding and contracting was more interesting, anyhow.

And then, when Colonel Phillips’ and Agent Carter’s voices had reached fever pitch, the Asset’s chest stopped moving entirely. Steve blinked. He looked at the Asset’s face and saw that, too, his eyes had ceased to flicker in dreams beneath his eyelids.

“He’s awake,” Steve said, and was ignored. He cleared his throat. “The Asset is awake!”

Every gun in the room trained on the too-still man again.

The yelling stopped.

The Asset did not move.

“How’d you know, Dr. Rogers?” asked Agent Carter at the same time that Phillips said, “Think you’re mistaken there, little one.”

Dr. Zola consulted the images of the Asset’s brain on Howard’s machine screen. “He is correct. The subject is indeed awake. Evidently he maintains enough higher brain function to feign sleep. Very curious.”

“Commandos,” barked Phillips, “Get ready to escort our guest here to Howard’s very generous accommodations. Stark! You sure your containment unit can handle something like this thing’s arm?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that arm before,” said Howard. “So I can’t make any promises, no. But it’s designed to withstand anything short of a direct bomb explosion.”

Wilson and Jones approached the Asset moving as one, with measured steps and eagle eyes. They each held a set of shackles made from that same strange metal as the Asset’s arm in one hand—“Found them with the machine and him, in that chamber in the castle”—and had their guns pointed at the Asset with their other hands.

With a snick that echoed through all of space, Wilson closed the manacle around the metal wrist.

The Asset did not stir.

The manacles closed around his human wrist. Both ankles. The Asset seemed to allow it, lying flat on the slab with his eyes closed. Steve could feel the tension of the Asset’s muscles; he could almost see the wheels turning in the Asset’s head as he listened to the clipped voices in the room. The scent of distressed Alpha washing off the huge man made Steve’s eyes water, and he patted his pocket to check for his asthma cigarettes. He would reek when he got home. No amount of bathing would rid his skin of the oily, hot-vinegar smell of the Asset’s pain and fear and fury. It would stick to everyone in the room for days.

“How do we move him?” asked Morita. “I don’t think it’s the smartest move to get that close, even with the shackles. I reckon that arm could shred the cuffs like paper.”

“He’s awake, isn’t he?” barked Phillips. “Make him walk. Or crawl. I don’t really care which. Anyone got enough German to give orders to this thing to march?”

Jones stepped forward. “I do. Vorantreiben, bitte.”

No change in the prone body on the slab.

Jones shrugged.

“I can try,” offered Zola delicately. He cleared his throat and spoke. “Soldat.”

The Asset’s eyes shot open. Everyone in the room stepped backwards as one. Oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Steve had no weapon, unlike the commandos or Phillips or Carter—even Howard probably had something pointy on him. He felt raw and exposed in the Asset’s wakeful presence.

But the Asset’s eyes did not dart around the room to count combatants. He didn’t blink against the harshness of the light. He didn’t even look frightened, nor did he seem to take in his alien surroundings at all.

His eyes were open, Steve thought, but he looked more alive when they were closed.

“Well,” barked Phillips. “Go on, Zola. You got the bastard to do something at least.”

“Soldat,” Zola repeated. “Stehen. Vorantreiben.”

The manacles clanked as the Asset sat up—impressively without needing to brace on either metal or flesh hand, Steve noted—and swung his legs around to sit on the edge of the slab. He didn’t move as though he noticed his legs were manacled together.

With a single smooth movement, the Asset was on his feet. It took Steve a moment to realize that the loud clicking sound was not the Asset’s legs straightening. It was the sound of every gun safety in the room being flicked off.

The Asset took a step forward. Then another. Wilson and Dernier quickly moved to grasp the shackles’ chains so they could lead the Asset like a dog towards the prisoner’s chamber that Howard had set up in the mansion’s lowest level.

(“It’s really a bomb shelter,” Howard had explained. “Can’t say too much and can’t say who’s told us, but Tony and I were invited to work on a special bomb out in the desert that—well, let’s just say that even the scientific curiosity of it couldn’t assuage our sour stomachs. We got back here and felt it’d be prudent to reinforce some walls, dig out the foundations a bit deeper. Creepy stuff.”)

The Asset’s dead eyes never strayed from their direct-forward gaze. He didn’t blink.

Steve followed the pack down to the prisoner’s quarters below the sub-basem*nt, time measured by the drags of the chain against the stone steps and flooring. Although they were already in a windowless basem*nt—Steve had spent more time in a windowless basem*nt in the last year than he had spent able to see daylight—the lower levels felt darker and more inhospitable than the relatively well-lit, bustling floor of Room Six. Even the closed-off area of Howard’s lab felt more suited for a person to spend their time and retain their good health.

Then again, the sickly rank scent coming off the Asset made Steve unsure he was in good health as it stood. There had to be some side effects of the experimental procedures done to his brain. Some side effects to being kept frozen and thawed out like a slab of old meat. Some reason that the Nazis kept him in a gas mask even when locked in an airless tube. For all that this Zola was a doctor, there had been no general check on the Asset’s health when he came out of the tube. Just more experiments.

Steve had been treated by enough uncaring doctors in his life that he couldn’t help feeling badly for the Asset. Or perhaps he felt badly for the man who the Asset had once been. He deserved to have someone figure out why he smelled sick beneath all of the dried blood, sweat, and other detritus that covered up his Alpha musk.

But even though Agent Carter liked to say that Steve was the man in charge of this project, he was just an omega cryptanalyst. It wasn’t his place.

Finally the long, silent, somber parade stopped. There was a glass cube set into the center of the sub-basem*nt, a good ten feet above the dirt floor and away from any of the walls. There was a strange, small cylinder leading up into the cube; its roof was a circle in the floor so smoothly fit that there was almost no sign of a disruption.

“Is that an elevator?” Steve asked Howard.

Everyone, save the Asset, looked at Steve. He blushed: even though he’d spoken quietly, it was the first anyone had said in quite a while.

“It is,” Howard said, stroking his mustache to cover the nerves they were all feeling. “The control panel is up in the observation booth. It’s not one of those do-it-yourself operations. Couldn’t risk the Asset being able to get in and out as he pleased, could we? So although I’m generally loathe to use old technology when there’s something new and shiny about, we went back to the tens and twenties for this old thing.”

Steve nodded. He had seen elevators in some of the hospitals in the city. Might have even ridden in one in a hospital bed once or twice, but he’d never been conscious for the experience.

“Smart,” he said, and his voice cracked. He coughed, going redder. “Smart.”

Howard and Agent Carter took their stations in the observation booth, and Howard pushed a few buttons. The small, strange elevator slid open.

Morita and Wilson removed the Asset’s manacles and pushed the Asset inside. He didn’t react to the shove. Didn’t even blink. He stood passively as the elevator slid shut again, enclosing the man in another tube.

Steve wondered if he thought that he was being put back into the ice where he could sleep.

The elevator might be old-fashioned, but it made hardly a sound as it ascended to the prisoner’s elevated glass pod. It opened and the Asset just stood there. Unblinking. Both hands, the flesh and the monstrous metal, hung docile at his sides.

“Soldat,” said Agent Carter through a microphone that made Steve jump, “Vorantreiben.”

The Asset walked forward and out of the shell of the lift. His gait read murder in every step, and Steve felt the fine hairs at the base of his neck shiver in the presence of an Alpha predator.

The Asset stopped when he reached the front glass of the prisoner’s pod. Still near-silent, the lift lowered from the pod and left behind only the tiniest crack in the floor—nothing the Asset would be able to pry up. The glass was too thick for him to smash even with that wreck of an arm.

He reminded Steve of the photographs he had seen of grizzly bears in the small cages of the traveling circus. All that muscle, all that drive to survive, packed into a little box. Just waiting for someone to slip up and set them free to find blood.

And Steve was expected to enter that box and offer up his faint omega scent and unmarked throat and soft belly.

He swallowed, staring up at the Asset.

There wasn’t a spare inch anywhere on the man. He was a perfect specimen of an Alpha. All muscle and sinew. If Steve hadn’t smelled the rank sickness and distress on him, if he’d been clean and had his hair combed—

Steve shook himself.

Where had those thoughts come from?

“Dr. Rogers,” Agent Carter said through the microphone, and Steve jumped again. “Steve, let’s observe him overnight and see what his temperament is like as he—er, thaws out, so to speak. Before we put you in there with him.”

Steve nodded gratefully. “That sounds like a smart idea.”

“I still don’t think sending a ‘meg—‘scuse me, an omega, in there is going to do much of anything except give us a wet smear to clean up,” argued Phillips. “No offense to you, little one.”

Steve smiled thinly. “None taken.”

Chapter 9: Chapter Nine

Chapter Text

“You alright, pal?” Scott asked over breakfast as Steve poked at his oatmeal. “You look like you didn’t sleep a wink.”

“I’m alright,” Steve said. “Just… ready for it to be springtime, I guess. All this gray is getting to me. All of the monotony.”

Scott hummed around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “I hear that. I miss California. Even San Francisco isn’t this gray every day.”

Steve tried to smile and it felt strange on his mouth. He gave up on finishing his oatmeal and left his full bowl on the kitchen draining board. He gave an apologetic smile to the elderly omega who co-ran the boarding house, then hustled to wrap up in his coat, scarf, spats, and gloves and head out into the drizzling rain.

The walk uphill to Stark Mansion seemed to take longer than usual and drain Steve’s lungs even more. He stopped halfway to smoke an asthma cigarette behind a convenient shrubbery. It made the cold air feel even colder in his mouth.

Steve waved his magnetic key over the locks leading to Room Six and trudged down to the bustling space. He felt like a dead man walking: heart in his throat, stomach still roiling badly. He stopped in the omegas’ restroom to gag over the toilet for a few minutes, but he hadn’t eaten enough in the last day for anything to come up.

He holed up in his office and smoked another asthma cigarette. His fingers shook holding the match.

Why were they sending him in to speak to a Nazi prisoner of war?

He was—just Steve Rogers.

This was going to be a horrible disaster. They would gain no intel, and Steve would lose a limb—at best. All of the gory ghost stories Natasha had told him about the Asset swirled darkly through his head with the terrible facts Steve had seen firsthand the day before. He pulled a man’s head from his body with his bare hands. His arm was removed piece by piece and replaced by metal. He left no one alive on the battlefields he haunted. His brain was bisected and put back together full of tripwires. He was a victim of something horrible. He was a villain who needed to be stopped.

A hand gently touched the back of Steve’s shoulder and he jumped.

“Sorry,” Darcy apologized. “You look awful. Are you alright?”

“They want me to speak to the Asset today,” Steve said.

Darcy perched on the edge of Steve’s desk and crossed her legs at the ankle. “I know. I was there, serving coffee like a good girl.” Her red mouth pursed. “Are you anxious?”

Steve hesitated. There was every chance that Darcy could go tell Agent Carter, and then she would send in Natasha or worse, Phillips, to speak with the Asset.

And more than anxious, Steve was curious. He wanted to know how something like that could happen to a man, and he wanted—

He wanted proof that he was right. That his theories had really led to this capture, and that this capture could turn the tide of the war. He wanted proof that it was a splinter group or an unseen enemy, that he wasn’t just seeing bogeymen around every corner.

He wanted to understand.

“A little bit,” he said. “But I can handle myself. To be truthful, I was more anxious being around so many loaded pistols yesterday than I am to talk to the Asset.”

“I’ve been around guns,” Darcy said. “Sporting clays at the club were one of my hobbies as a wild youth. I had my own shotgun called Lightning.” She patted Steve on the shoulder. “You’ll do just fine, Steve. If anyone here can get answers out of that thing, it’s you. Just talk about mathematics to him for hours, and he’ll sing like a canary.”

Steve laughed at that. “I just might, although I’m not keen to torture anyone.”

Darcy leaned closer after checking over her shoulder. “Phillips sure seems to be.”

“I know,” Steve said quietly. “That’s why I’m determined to stick it out and do the questioning myself. I didn’t sign on here to work for just another color of fasc—well. I didn’t sign on with the intention of lowering my integrity or my ethics, even if there is a war on.”

Darcy smiled. “You’re a good man, Steve Rogers. You’d be a terrible soldier, but you’re a good man.”

At half past nine, Agent Carter knocked on the door to Steve’s office, Wanda in tow behind her. Wanda would be on hand in the observation booth to translate German into English and vice-versa, since Steve’s German was still rudimentary and his accent frankly atrocious.

The three of them walked across the whole of Room Six, past Tony clanking around beneath JARVIS and Natasha erasing formulas where Jane pointed out on the massive blackboards. They descended the first staircase, crossed the corridor, and descended deeper.

Steve half-expected to hear thudding thunder as they approached the pod as the Asset took that metal arm to the glass in an attempt to break free.

But there was only silence.

The Asset stood exactly where they had left him the day before, staring blankly ahead.

Gosh, Steve thought. He was enormous.

“Ready for this, Steven?” asked Agent Carter. He could tell that she was putting on a good front of calm, but her smile was tighter at the corners than usual. She brushed off Steve’s shoulders with both hands like a mother getting ready to send her son to school.

Steve nodded. For once, he was grateful that his scent was too faint for most people to register, especially not a beta like Agent Carter. He could lie so much more easily without being betrayed by his biology.

“I’m ready,” he said. “Are the commandos still here? To observe, as well?”

“No,” said Agent Carter. “They’re already bound back for the Continent to rejoin their regiments. Phillips assigned a few of his Privates to guard duty. We installed them last night as we were leaving. They report no movement overnight.” Her eyes left Steve’s face and looked up at the prisoner pod. “No movement at all, they said.”

Steve could believe it. “Do you suppose he can only move if ordered? There was an awful lot of tampering with his brains.”

“I suppose it’s your job to find out, isn’t it?” Agent Carter smiled grimly. “If you’ll go wait in the lift, I’ll pop up and let you in. I told Howard it’s a bit untenable to have no self-controls, in case you need to get out of the pod more immediately than I can reach the controls, so he’s going to rig you up a magnetic lock of some sort. He got all excited about it, you know how he gets. But for today, if you’d please?”

She turned and started to walk up into the observation booth. Wanda turned to follow her, then stopped and threw her arms around Steve in a quick, shaky hug.

“Good luck,” she whispered.

Steve tried to smile at her. “Thank you, Wanda.”

Steve took as deep a breath as he could and straightened his shoulders as much as he was able.

He entered the strange lift and wondered if it was going to be his casket.

Slowly, it began to rise.

Steve had expected the overwhelming sour stench of Alpha distress to fill the pod, as it had filled the room when the Asset was first brought in by the Howlies, but without the mingled smells of blood and fresh sweat and the drowning current of anguish covering up everything else, Steve was able to more clearly pick out the individual notes of the Asset’s Alpha scent.

The soft fruit he had noticed the day before reminded Steve of green apples, fresh and not quite sweet. The low note of burning autumn leaves was smoky and rich, and the hint of wet stones reminded Steve of going to the shore. The unmistakable sweetness of cotton candy, pure sugar, was faintest, almost absent beneath the sour stickiness of distress that was still present in the Asset and, Steve had to admit, likely would be so long as he was a prisoner of war.

But all of his scent was faded—almost as faint as Steve’s own weak scent. The Asset, save missing a human arm, looked like the picture of strapping Alpha health, though, so Steve suspected that he had been pumped full of military-grade suppressants. It would have been a help on the battlefield, to be less susceptible to the scents of the enemy. To be less able to smell their terror as he ripped their heads from their bodies with that terrible metal hand.

Of course, the longer he was here… the longer he would be without those suppressants.

Steve tried to calm his racing heart for his own good—his palpitations would start again if this kept up, and he might trigger an asthma attack—and for the good of the Asset. And the mission. The smell of an omega in distress would only further agitate the Asset, but the scent of a calm, serene omega could incite corresponding emotions in a nearby Alpha. Keeping the Asset calm was the best way to get information.

And, probably, to stay alive.

Inch by inch, Steve was lifted into the pod. Head first, then shoulders, chest, and the rest of him.

The Asset did not move. Didn’t even blink.

“Hello,” Steve said, projecting the most calm, professional aspect he knew. This was a man who had killed dozens of Alpha soldiers by himself as they fired at him from all sides. He would not be intimidated by a small, infertile omega no matter what Steve did, and Steve did not want to give him the opportunity to use that size and strength against him. He wasn’t scared, though. Not exactly. After seeing the scans of damage to the Asset’s brain, Steve felt—sorry, for whoever the Asset had once been.

But he was no longer that man. And odds are that even when he was a normal human Alpha, he had been a Nazi. He might have volunteered for the experiments that turned him into the Asset. That was one of the things Steve needed to learn.

The Asset still did not blink. He stood at rigid attention, staring out through the front panel of the pod with a blank expression on his face and no sign of life behind his ice-gray eyes.

His prisoner’s uniform of gray and white stripes made his broad chest look even broader. The left arm was as still as the rest of the Asset, folded down to hold his right wrist behind his back as he stood waiting for instructions to battle or to rest. Steve felt sure in his gut that arm was indeed capable of incredible violence. Shining rivets ran up and down the arm like warning stripes.

Steve kept his distance across the pod.

“Hello,” he tried again. Still no reaction. “My name is Steve Rogers. Can you tell me your name?”

The Asset gave no indication that he had heard Steve speak. Steve had the passing thought that perhaps he didn’t, couldn’t, but dismissed it. Steve’s bad ear would have disqualified him from military service even if he’d been born an Alpha; the Asset, able to take out a whole platoon by himself, would have to be able to hear the Allies coming.

“Sprechen zie Englische?” Steve tried. “Ich heisse Steve Rogers. Wie heissen Sie?”

Still nothing. Not even a blink. Steve wondered how long the Asset could keep those thousand-yard staring eyes open, staring out into the darkness outside the pod.

“Steve,” said Agent Carter on the overhead speaker into the pod—still, the Asset gave no sign of notice—“He’s a Nazi murderer. You don’t need to bother with pleasantries.”

Steve swallowed and nodded. Right. “Who gives you your orders, Asset?”

Steve stared at the statue of a man still staring straight ahead, and he moved closer.

“Watch out, Steve,” came Agent Carter’s voice. “Stay near the exit hatch. We won’t be able to get to you quickly enough if he attacks.”

“I know,” Steve said. The Asset did not seem to notice the disembodied voice speaking out of the ceiling any more than he noticed Steve. His scent did not change, no sign of ramping stress. The metal arm remained still as ice. “Do you have something you prefer to be called than ‘Asset’?”

No response. He smiled thinly. “I guess ‘Asset’ it is, then, for now. Asset, who gives you your orders? What division is Schloss Strücker housing?”

Still no sign the Asset had even heard him.

Frustration blossomed in Steve’s stomach. He was so close to getting the resolution he had been seeking for months, answers that would help save lives across the Atlantic and help the Allies to end the war, but he wasn’t omega enough to make this solitary Alpha pay him the slightest bit of attention.

If Steve were different, better, if his scent could entice the Alpha in the Asset, maybe he would turn his head. Maybe he would speak.

“Which division is being housed in Schloss Strücker?” Steve took another two steps closer to the Asset. If he attacked, Steve would just try to hold him off using old Brooklyn street-smarts for as long as he could until Agent Carter and her Private guards could make it into the pod. He kept both eyes trained hard on the metal arm.

“Hey. Hey!” Steve raised his voice. “Are you listening to me?”

No response. Steve frowned. He wasn’t made for this job, to be an interrogator. He didn’t know how to crack open a person the way he could crack open a code. And—

He remembered the horrible mask the Asset had been wearing. The inside apparatus looked like a muzzle built for a human, and the eyeholes had been smoked black to make the Asset appear eyeless. Something nagging in Steve’s chest told him that the Asset likely did not have the information they were seeking. He was, quite literally, a tool.

“Hey,” Steve gentled his voice. “If you cooperate with me, we could work out a deal for you. If you turn over your superiors, things will go much more smoothly for you. Right now, you’re looking at a death sentence, but perhaps we could take that off the table if you have solid intelligence for us. Wouldn’t that be preferable?” He paused. “I think an American prison will probably be better to you than wherever you’ve been lately. We won’t do any fiddling around with your brain, for one thing.”

The Asset did not move, and Steve pushed down his disappointment and tried to emanate as much of a sense and scent of calm, nonthreatening serenity as he could. His underarms and the small of his back felt sweaty with the effort of pretending that he wasn’t frustrated and embarrassed and anxious.

“Steve, you’re not getting anywhere,” said Agent Carter. “Let’s pull you out and try again tomorrow. He can’t just stand there forever, and soon enough he’ll want to talk just for something to do.”

“Alright,” Steve said. He looked the Asset up and down, from the mess of tangled dark hair to the soles of his bare feet. He was missing two toes on one of them, the skin blackened like frostbite. His nails were filthy. He backed up to the exit hatch, still watching the unmoving Asset.

“Door opening in ten,” said Agent Carter.

“Roger that,” said Steve.

He frowned and looked at the Asset’s profile. It was soft and human without his mask. “What does ‘Sehnsucht, Verrostet, Siebzehn’ mean to you?”

The Asset blinked.

It might just have been that he finally needed to blink.

Steve asked again: “What does ‘Longing, Rusted, Seventeen’ mean to you?”

The Asset said nothing.

But the sour distress in his scent skyrocketed.

“Alright,” Steve said, quickly but gently. “It’s alright. You can tell me tomorrow.”

There was a pneumatic hiss and the exit hatch opened just behind him. Steve stepped into the Starks’ strange lift. Steve kept his eyes on the Asset until he’d lowered too far to see him.

The next day passed much the same way, except for the faint sheen of sweat all over the Asset’s face and neck and the slightly green cast to his pale face. He still stood stock-still and silent as Steve ventured further into the prisoner pod, talking in a low and calm voice as he stepped another three feet forward.

Steve exited the pod and joined Agent Carter and Natasha in the control booth. “Has he eaten anything?”

Natasha shook her head. “Not for lack of opportunity. We did send up a paper bag with some breakfast this morning and supper last night. He didn’t even touch them.”

“Did he sleep?”

“He’s just been standing right there,” said Agent Carter. Her brow furrowed as the three of them surveyed their unmoving prisoner. “If he doesn’t start to eat in the next day or so, we’ll have to send in Dr. Zola to examine him, but—”

“I would rather keep Zola as far from him as we can,” Steve interrupted her. “His level of interest in the modifications done by the Germans was a little…”

“Yes,” agreed Natasha. “Quite.”

“I also think it would be prudent to keep the team on this project as small as feasible,” Agent Carter said. “We still don’t know the origin of the Anlage code. The Asset’s reaction…”

Steve rubbed his forehead. “Thank you for reminding me. I’ll speak with Wanda this afternoon and see whether we can try another language plaintext.”

“I can bring her the message,” Natasha said. “You’ve a reticent Asset to chat with, Steve.”

Steve exhaled. “Yes. I’m afraid I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to interrogation.”

Agent Carter hummed. She looked away from Steve and up at the Asset in his glass cage. Steve could see the Asset’s figure reflected in Agent Carter’s dark eyes.

“For now, don’t worry about interrogating him,” said Agent Carter. “Just worry about getting him to speak at all. Let us determine what interrogation techniques will be most successful after we get a sense of his… motivations. His desires. Is he a die-hard Nazi, or will he be willing to turn on his handlers in exchange for a softer deal than the firing squad? Does he even understand what you’re saying in English? We still don’t know. I’m not expecting answers today, Steve. Just some kind of response.” She looks back at Steve. “And for heaven’s sake, get the man to drink some water before we need to put an intravenous feed into his human arm. I don’t want anyone getting that close to him.”

Steve nodded and swallowed. “I’ll just keep at it, then.”

Agent Carter smiled thinly. “As the posters say.”

“As the posters say,” agreed Steve.

Steve’s days took on a new rhythm: rather than spending his mornings with the comforting rhythm of JARVIS’ rolling gears and the excitement of mathematical formulas and cipher mapping in Room Six, Steve descended down to the sub-basem*nt to make conversation with the brick wall that was the Asset.

On his third day of captivity by the SSR, the Asset finally began to drink water. Small, metered sips, like he knew exactly how much he needed to stay alive and would take not a drop more.

“Thank you,” Steve said, once the Asset had drained the little paper cup. He smiled at the Asset and tried to make his voice sweet, honeyed. Omega-like. “You did such a good job. Will you eat a little something?”

The Asset did not.

The next day, however, when Steve entered the sub-basem*nt, the Asset was seated on the edge of his cot rather than standing in the center of the floor. Perhaps it was just that his legs were getting weak after four days without food.

“By all rights, he should have fallen down days ago,” said Agent Carter. “Perhaps he was altered even more than Howard’s scans showed. Enhanced strength, we attributed to the arm, but the stories of him from the battlefield suggest enhanced speed, and the fact that he’s still conscious suggests enhanced stamina… I’m wondering whether we shouldn’t get Dr. Zola down here to draw some blood.”

Steve looked up through the glass at the Asset. He sat perfectly still, perfectly straight, like a model of a human man.

“Can’t we hold off on that?” Steve asked. “I want him to trust me. I don’t think that jabbing him with needles will help with that.”

Agent Carter nodded, looking tired. “Fair enough. Are you ready to go up and see our German friend?”

Steve nodded. His stomach no longer twisted with nerves at the prospect of entering the Asset’s prison chamber. He may be growing complacent, but the Asset had never done anything to suggest aggression—not since he’d arrived.

Privately, Steve didn’t think he was capable of aggression, or much of anything else, without being ordered to perform the act.

Still, he got into the glass elevator and Agent Carter sent him up into the pod. The Asset’s scent was growing stronger now as he spent more time inside, more time off suppressants, more time—not being tortured, Steve thought. There were more distinct round notes to the scent now, fruity and musky and sweet. Steve caught himself scenting the air a bit, nostrils flared, and he flushed.

Thankfully, the Asset didn’t acknowledge his blunder. He wondered if Agent Carter would when he left the pod.

How humiliating.

Still, Steve had entered the pod today with a plan. He wanted the Asset to trust him, and he figured the best way to do that was to treat him like a human being. He supposed there was nothing quite so human as the instinct to scent. It wasn’t polite, but it was real.

“Hello,” Steve said pleasantly. “How are you today?” He didn’t expect an answer and he didn’t receive one. “I’m doing alright, myself. Looking forward to lunchtime. Have you eaten anything yet? Let’s see what we have.” Steve picked up the paper bag containing the Asset’s uneaten breakfast. “An apple… some toast… a packet of margarine, very nice…” Steve set each item down on the edge of the Asset’s cot. He was almost within arm’s reach of the mechanical limb now. “Aren’t you hungry, pal? Don’t you think you’d feel better if you had something to eat?”

The Asset didn’t move, but his stomach gave a very human rumble to announce its emptiness.

Steve frowned. “I sure wish you’d eat. Are—are you able to eat solid food?” His own stomach clenched, remembering so many of the times he was too sick and dehydrated to keep anything down besides porridge and soup. “I’ll have them send up some oatmeal for you, how about that? Would that help you feel more like eating?”

The Asset didn’t respond. His stomach yowled again.

Steve sighed. “I want to help you out, buddy, I really do. You don’t have to be so hungry. And you shouldn’t waste that apple, don’t you know there’s a war on?”

Steve crouched down across from the Asset to better meet his blank eye-line. “I need to ask you some questions again, pal. But you’re allowed to eat even if you don’t answer.” He paused. “Soldat. Du kannst essen. Okay? Du kannst essen, even if you don’t have answers for me today.”

The Asset remained still, and Steve frowned.

“What division is housed in Schloss Strücker?”

Stomach-rumbling.

“Who gave you your orders?”

Silence.

“Who gave you your arm?”

The Asset’s fear-scent ramped up at that, vinegar overtaking the apple aroma. He still didn’t move, but Steve could see the way his chest expanded and contracted with deeper, more anxious breaths. He seemed to be actively trying to stay so still now, where before, Steve wondered whether he was just a machine that hadn’t been activated properly.

The stillness was learned.

The fear scent was automatic. All of the tampering in the world with his brain couldn’t have turned it off.

Steve moved just a little bit closer and tried again: “Asset, what division is housed in Schloss Strücker?”

The Asset’s breaths only come faster. A faint wheeze escaped his throat, and his coloring went from sickly green to gray.

Steve backed off. “Alright, it’s alright. I’m sorry, pal. Just calm down, you don’t have enough calories in you to get so worked up.” Steve tucked his arms around himself just to keep from giving into his omega instincts to calm the distressed Alpha with his scent, with his touch.

The Asset could be putting on an act just to get Steve close enough to hurt him or to use him as leverage or—or worse.

It would be quite an act, though, Steve thought as he watched the Asset’s breathing slow and his color settle back in his wan cheeks.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Steve said finally. “Please eat something between now and then. Du kannst essen. I promise.”

He signaled for Agent Carter to send the lift up to the pod, and Steve was almost completely out of the pod—only the top of his head left inside—when he heard a crunch.

The Asset was eating the apple.

Chapter 10: Chapter Ten

Chapter Text

Steve had hoped that once the Asset began to eat, he might begin to trust the Americans—to trust Steve. And that trust would translate to talking.

Unfortunately, for another six weeks, every morning Steve entered the pod to statue-still silence, and he left it to the quiet crunching of the Asset eating whatever breakfast had been delivered to him before Steve arrived. He never ate before Steve had inspected the food.

Some part of Steve took pride in that. It was a primordial urge, caring for this lost Alpha, and it was the result of a lifetime of having no one to look out for and no one to look out for him. Steve couldn’t deny that he felt protective of the battered, half-robotic creature who gazed out ahead of itself with blank eyes.

Steve found that he’d grown comfortable with his silent companion. He would inspect the Asset’s delivery of toast, margarine, and an apple, and he talked through the process every time as though it were novel. He moved close enough to the Asset that he could smell as the man’s suppressants wore through his system and dissipated: he was, as far as Steve could tell, fully unmedicated now, his scent strong and full.

After two weeks, Steve had asked whether he might bring his newspaper into the pod to read to the Asset, just to have something to say that he didn’t have to invent out of wholecloth as they waited out the Asset’s silence. Agent Carter staunchly refused on the basis that it would give the Asset a sense of what was happening in the war, but she assented to Steve reading to the Asset from a book. He brought in The Hobbit and read from that.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

In a way, the Asset, too, lived in a hole in the ground. Far beneath the rest of Washington, D.C., beneath the hum and buzz of Room Six and the rest of Stark Mansion. Thousands of miles away from the war.

Steve read until he had finished the novel, and then he brought in volumes of Sherlock Holmes. He read those, too, for a month.

Today he intended to try a new tack.

Steve kept up the calm, friendly tone in his voice as he fiddled with the dials on the little wireless radio that Tony and Howard had created. They promised him that it would get a signal even deep underground where they were keeping the prisoner—and since the wireless radios worked in the main room of the Mansion basem*nt, Steve believed them. Still, it took a few minutes of fiddling with the antennae and the dials before it stopped making a terrible noise like metal teeth gnashing and came up with anything resembling actual sound.

“The newest and brightest star of the Quiz Kids, little Joel Kupperman, outside of his amazing ability as a mathematician, is a normal and happy young boy!” enthused the radio announcer in his plummy voice as soon as Steve found a broadcast. “The sixty-three pound second grade Alpha has a brain that works just like an ack-ack gun, says the program’s head researcher Joe Kelly—”

“I don’t think we need to listen to this,” Steve said over the chatter, looking up at the Asset before changing the station on the radio. It took several clicks before he found a broadcast, this time playing a philharmonic orchestra’s finest sampling.

What Steve really wanted to listen to was either news from the front or baseball scores, but Agent Carter had been clear with him that he wasn’t allowed to leak information from ‘outside’ to the Asset. They wanted his intel to be pure when he started talking, so any news from Europe was verboten, and as for baseball scores—

Well. This was work, and Steve could wait.

The Asset didn’t seem to notice the introduction of a new sound to his pod, anyhow. He sat stock-straight on the edge of the cot, staring straight ahead through the glass of the pod as though he could see through the darkness to where Agent Carter and Natasha sat in the observation booth.

“This is nice,” Steve said. “Shostakovich’s ‘Symphony Number 7.’ We’re still in the allegretto, so there’s quite a lot of the music left for us to listen to. I wish that I could play music, but, well, we never could afford any kind of instrument and I’ve got a bum ear, you see. What about you? Do you like music?” Steve didn’t really expect any kind of answer, and the Asset didn’t give any. “I understand the theory of music, of course. It’s just rather simple mathematics. I probably could play piano by pattern if I sat down and really gave it a go, but somehow that seems unromantic. If I were to play music, I’d want to play it with a real musician’s soul.”

He looked intently at the motionless Asset. Steve felt stupid, like he was talking to a brick wall. He gritted his teeth, kept an ironclad control over his scent so that it stayed sweet and calm, and barreled on. “Have you ever heard jazz music? Now that’s something, if you haven’t. I’m not a dancer, but I do get my toes to tapping when I hear jazz music. The syncopation of the rhythm makes my mind start to spin and I get some good ideas when I have a nice record on the turntable.”

The Asset blinked. Steve had given up on being encouraged by his blinking—it never seemed to amount to anything—but he tried to stay on this train of thought all the same. “Maybe I’ll look up when a good jazz broadcast will play on the radio and bring this little wireless back down for you, if you like jazz. I know that it’s been banned in Germany, hasn’t it? Do you like a little jazz as an act of rebellion? I won’t tell your former handlers if you do, you can tell me. It’s just a bit of music.

“I’m a swing man myself. I do like that—what’s it called, the new tune, the ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’ They say it’s sold over a million copies. Ain’t that somethin’? But you know, that song takes some artistic license. There aren’t even 29 tracks at Penn Station.”

The Asset blinked again.

“Yeah, Penn Station only has 21 tracks! Now most people listening to the tune won’t know that and those who do probably don’t give a damn, but I do wonder why they chose to write in a ‘nine’ when ‘twenty-one’ rhymes just the same. Don’t you wonder about that?”

The Asset didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.

Steve kept talking over the Allegretto of the Shostakovich symphony, music inspired by the invasion of Russia. Maybe the Asset had been there. Had been part of that siege that left so many men dead in the snow.

It felt pointless to try to chatter niceties to a man who probably didn’t know English from a Hobbit-hole in the wall.

Still, Steve was instructed to just keep talking until the Asset replied, so he did. He walked through the repertoire of his entire record collection, explaining his choices and the best songs on each album that he owned. He explained what he knew of the history of the symphony on the radio and tried asking, to a series of blinks in response, whether the Asset had been present for the atrocities of the Russian front. He demonstrated his tin ear by singing a bit of the “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” until Natasha came over the speakers into the pod and begged him to please for the love of god and country, stop singing, Steve.

Steve tapped his thumb against the side of his leg as he wracked his brain for anything more to say.

“Wish I knew a little about you, pal,” he finally settled on. “So that our conversations could be a bit less one-sided. You don’t have to tell me your name, but at least tell me something about yourself. What you like on the radio or who your favorite star is at the pictures. Or what you like to eat. You know, it is safe to eat the food that we send in here for you, it’s not poisoned. We’re not gonna torture you, other than with my singing, and I already told Natasha I’d stop. It’s not right to waste food. Don’t you know we’re rationing?”

“Steve, that’s enough for today,” Agent Carter sounded exhausted and dispassionate. “He’s clearly still not in a mind to answer.”

“Alright,” said Steve. And then, just to try, he asked: “What does ‘Longing, Rusted, Seventeen’ mean to you?”

The Asset didn’t answer, but sour distress overtook his scent like a switch had been flipped.

And he turned his head to look right at Steve.

“Okay,” Steve said, holding up both hands, the little wireless radio abandoned on his lap. “Okay, alright. Hello. What does ‘Longing, Rusted, Seventeen’ mean?”

The Asset blinked. Swallowed. The metal arm did something strange, its plates all shivering as it opened, shifted, and reformed as a larger limb. His metal hand flexed.

“Be careful, Steve,” said Agent Carter through the intercom.

Steve nodded. He kept both of his hands in full view for the Asset and tried his best not to move, sitting as still as when he was a child in the church pews beside his mother.

“What about that phrase makes you so angry?” Steve tried. “Are you angry? Or does it make you—afraid?”

The Asset blinked.

“Are you afraid of that phrase?”

The Asset blinked again.

“What does it mean?”

The Asset’s arm shivered and shifted again, deflating back to its usual size. The Asset’s head dropped, like he was too tired to keep it held high as he had been for days, and something in his folded-down stance softened Steve.

“I know you don’t like it,” Steve said, gently. “But I need to know why.”

But the Asset seemed to be done responding for the day. He was still as a statue again, staring down at his knees.

“Alright,” Steve said. “Tomorrow, then. Thank you for telling me that you don’t like those words.”

The fear scent dissipated from the air in the pod, the Asset’s pheromones sweetening again, evening out to stasis.

“Make sure you eat,” Steve said quietly as he waited for the lift out of the pod. “Esse, bitte.”

He didn’t hear crunching as the lift lowered him from the pod. When he looked back up through the glass floor, the Asset was still sitting exactly as Steve left him: his eyes were closed, as if in thought. As if catching his breath.

As if he were human.

Natasha sidled up to Steve’s desk. She’d had a slight limp ever since her return from Europe, but it was almost gone now, and she treaded silent as a ballerina again.

“Whew, you stink,” she greeted him. “I’d forgotten how much unsuppressed Alphas can reek.”

“Hello to you, too, Natasha.” Steve knew that he was drenched in the Asset’s scent. There was no air circulation in the pod, after all, and the man was enormous. He slid a sheaf of papers into a brown folder. “Can I help you with something?”

“Us gals are going to the pictures after work,” she said. “You’re coming, too.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You’ve been getting a furrow between your brows,” Natasha said, and she touched the tense ‘v’ between Steve’s eyebrows with the tip of one cool finger. “You need to think about something ridiculous for an hour. Besides, it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Steve wanted to protest, but he was touched.

The aroma of the movie theater—popcorn and sweat, shoe leather and sugar, the mingled scents of hundreds of people growing joyful or frightened or fearful all together—hit Steve like a wrecking ball, and he realized that he hadn’t seen a picture show since arriving in Washington. They were one of his few indulgences back in Brooklyn, had been ever since he was a child. In the crowd of the audience, he wasn’t a strange too-smart, sickly boy, or an underemployed omega who would never bear babies. He was just another heart being swept up in the glamor on-screen. A few times, even, his mother had gone to the pictures with him, when her schedule allowed it, and Steve fondly remembered the afternoon they had been able to afford a popcorn and peanuts to share for a showing of The Cocoanuts with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’s “Stripes and Stars” at the front. They had walked along the pier afterward to take the air, and Steve felt better than he had in weeks.

He'd been on summer vacation from Princeton then, twelve years old. The next year he would nearly die from pneumonia and would lose his scholarship, and another two years after that, his mother would die from working herself to the bone in the TB ward to try to pay for him to finish his doctorate.

But the memory of that golden afternoon and hearing his mother’s laughter as Chico Marx asked Groucho, “Why a duck?” made Steve feel warm even now.

“Hey, there’s a smile!” Darcy said, looking at him. “It’s been weeks since we’ve seen one of those!”

Steve shook his head. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pill.”

“It’s not as though we don’t understand it,” Darcy assured him. “But it’s nice to see that you remember how.”

Steve shook his head again and paid for his ticket. Only a single bill, but that was alright: Steve wasn’t sure he would be able to stay awake for two movies, anyhow. He followed behind as Darcy linked elbows with Natasha and Jane and led the way into the richly appointed lobby.

Steve waited behind for Wanda, who tucked the movie ticket into her front pocket like it was precious.

“I have never seen a picture before,” she explained. “They were expensive in Sokovia, and mostly came from the Russian or the German… hmm… propaganda. My parents were smart and did not allow us to go.”

Steve looked up at the marquee. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF-MAN!

“This one might be awfully scary for your first one,” he admitted. “If you’re not enjoying yourself, I’m sure the gals and I will be willing to leave with you.”

“I like the idea of a shenanigans,” Wanda said, her eyes bright. “Silly-scary, yes? There is no real Frankenstein’s monster or the Wolf-Man.”

A flash of the scans of the Asset’s brain appeared in Steve’s head.

“No, of course not,” he agreed. “Let’s hurry inside so we can get popcorn before the show. You deserve the whole experience.”

Steve bought two paper bags of popcorn and a small box of peanuts, still hot and freshly salted. He grinned when Wanda handed her ticket over to the uniformed usherette with so much pride that her spine straightened up tall. They found Natasha, Jane, and Darcy saving two seats right in the middle of the theater, coats thrown over the empty chairs, and Steve smiled easily again as they slid into them. He was on the end of their group, closest to the aisle, with Natasha all the way on the other end.

He had a sneaking suspicion that their positions were tactical somehow, and he felt a little honored that she trusted him to protect their flank.

Every seat around them filled, Friday night at the Odeon, and there was a small skirmish up in the front row between two groups of letterman-jacket-wearing Alphas from evidently rival high schools. Their adolescent hormones were almost as strong and unpleasant as the Asset’s distress reek as they tried to claim the theater as their own territory, showing off their pinned omegas and preening in front of their ad-hoc packs.

Steve caught Natasha’s eye and they both shook their heads.

Two tall Alpha ushers with their heavy flashlights came in and settled the crowd, and then the theater owner announced the show.

“And now, continuing on their adventures from The Wolf-Man and The Ghost of Frankenstein, the most fearsome freaks in modern movie history return!” he said, spreading his arms wide.

Everyone in the crowd cheered. Steve let Wanda squeeze his hand tightly.

The lights dimmed, and Wanda clung on tighter. Then the triumphant brass revelry started up from the speakers, louder than life, and the screen flickered alive.

A NEW PICTORIAL KIND OF JOURNALISM! blared the white text before their newsreel.

Then the music turned somber and ominous—of course, thought Steve. The only news these days was bad news.

AMERICA’S FOOD CRISIS, warned the on-screen text, and Steve couldn’t help wondering if the Asset did ever eat today. Did he finish his oatmeal? Was he almost ready to return to more solid foods?

Had he eaten his apple?

The screen faded from text into a sweeping image of a furrowed field dotted in hay bales in front of a majestic mountainscape. Steve was a city boy: he’d never seen such a thing in his life. Not the mountains, not the fields. He knew that this was America, but it wasn’t the America that he’d ever known. It felt as foreign as the trenches and hamlets of Europe or the beaches of the South Pacific.

Wanda leaned forward in her seat, staring with wide eyes that reflected the light from the screen. Steve smiled to himself and ate a little popcorn.

The narrator’s voice was plummy and officious. “To the peoples of all the world, the North American continent has ever been the symbol of a land of plenty. Here, great nations of the United States, Canada, and Mexico have shared boundless plains rich for flocks and farms, for timberlands and orchards. In the United States for two decades past, agriculture’s problems have not been that of scarcity, but those of overabundance and overproduction.”

“Who cares?” yelled one of the rambunctious Alphas in the front row. Popcorn hit the movie screen. “Play the movie already!”

Wanda shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looking between the Alpha and the screen. Her thin fingers clutched her bag of popcorn.

The land of plenty indeed.

Steve leaned forward in his seat and pitched his voice just loudly enough to be heard. “Hey, why don’t you show some respect?”

“Today, the people of the United States are finding out that as America accepts its role in global war, they in their turn must accept new restrictions, new limitations, and a swift leveling off of the average family’s standard of living,” continued the newsreel narrator’s silken voice.

The images on the screen made Steve feel uncomfortable in his gut: the idea of what constituted scarcity for the moviegoing public looked like more than he’d had in his pantry for most of his life back in Brooklyn.

“Let’s go!” yelled the Alpha. The scent of smoke and charcoal embers caught Steve’s nose as the young man grew more aggressive. “Get on with it! Just start the cartoon!”

Wanda shifted again, this time from the angry pitch of the Alpha’s scent. Darcy, and even Jane beside her, began to instinctively cower away from the smell.

Steve didn’t. He still wore the scent of the Asset’s distress on his clothing, and compared to that—

“Hey,” Steve said, a little more loudly. “Why don’tcha shut up?”

The Alpha stood. For all that he smelled like a boxing match, he wasn’t so far gone as to posture in public. He still stared Steve down from his full height.

Steve stared right back, and even though Wanda reached out to grab his wrist in her bony fingers, Steve slowly stood, too. Not showing his neck, not raising his hands in submission. He just stood and met the young Alpha glare-for-glare.

The Asset’s scent on Steve’s collar hung around him like a veil.

An usherette in their velvet uniform came up with a flashlight and shone it in Steve’s face first, then the Alpha’s.

“Sir, I’m going to need to ask you to leave,” they said timidly to the Alpha. The little circle of light blinded Steve again. “Do you need assistance? Are you hurt?”

Steve shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“I’ll have to ask you to be seated, then,” said the usherette.

Steve slowly sat back down as the usherette escorted the Alpha, now sending up an embarrassed distress scent of his own, from the theater. Wanda’s eyes were huge when she looked to Steve.

“That was foolhardy,” she scolded in a whisper. She paused. “But very brave.”

Steve opened his bag of popcorn with shaking hands. “That’s me.”

“By accepting a new restricted life, by giving up a large share of their food and creature comforts, the people of the United States have recognized that they are indeed warriors of the civilian front and that to every citizen the war has acquired deep and personal meaning,” concluded the narrator grandly. “And to America’s people is coming the realization that their country is part of a community of nations, and they themselves citizens of the world, consciously sharing, intelligently giving and receiving in the work of reconstruction. Time Marches On.”

Steve clapped politely with the rest of the audience. The reel changed with a comforting click, and the brightly colored Paramount logo seemed garish after the monotony of the news reel. Triumphant trumpets announced the star of the cartoon short even before the first line:

“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… Superman!”

Steve clutched his popcorn bag. Tony had called the Asset that, weeks ago, before Thanksgiving. The übermensch.

Maybe someone operated on Clark Kent, too, and put wires in his brain to make him fly.

“Faster than a streak of lightning! More powerful than the pounding surf! Mightier than a roaring hurricane! This amazing stranger from the planet Krypton, the Man of Steel! Superman: possessing remarkable physical strength, Superman fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice!”

That sounded an awful lot like the commandos’ imaginary Captain. Taller than a brick building! punches harder than a rampaging bull! Runs faster than Jesse Owens!

Steve couldn’t help but to snort. There was about as much in common between Steve Rogers and Superman as between chalk and cheese. Steve believed in truth and justice, to be sure, but he was no stranger from the planet Krypton.

He was just a kid from Brooklyn.

The music changed to rhythmic clarinets and oboes denoting something exotic and far-off, drums of the mystic Elsewhere, and Wanda leaned forward in her seat as the cartoon began to show little figures of strangers dancing in a reverie to a shrouded figure atop a temple.

She gasped when the shrouded figure removed his robes inside the temple to reveal a dark green German uniform and matching accent. Her hand tightened around Steve’s wrist, her thumb finding his scent gland there without thinking, and Steve smiled a little at the show of trust.

Her hand tightened further at the on-screen Nazi’s bark of, “Mach schnell!”

“Boo!” jeered some of the teenagers in the crowd as the cartoon Nazis ran to the top of their false temple, where they shot down Lois Lane’s plane, sending it crashing down to the jungle floor. “Stinkin’ Gerries!”

Lois Lane fled through the jungle with her dead lieutenant’s “important papers,” dressed in a brown uniform that put Steve in mind of Agent Carter. How had she landed a position in America? Had she served overseas with Falsworth, or was he the reason she joined the fight? She never spoke of her private life with Steve—not that she needed to do so, he just knew her the least of anyone he saw regularly around Room Six.

It was easy to imagine her managing the jungle, even in her heels, if it meant keeping important documents out of the wrong hands, though.

“You must tell me vat you did vith those papers, or I vill be forced to blacken your memory mit fire!” roared the green-uniformed Nazi captain.

Steve’s stomach hurt. Was this what Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips expected him to do to the Asset? To blacken his memory with fire, whatever that meant?

The whole audience hooted and clapped for Lois Lane’s brave, “So what?” in the face of her torment, and Steve tried to rejoin the crowd, leave the Asset back at the mansion. To enjoy the movie and a night out with friends.

Wanda smiled at him over her popcorn, and Steve smiled back.

The whole crowd gasped when Lois Lane’s pyre was lit by the hapless natives, unknowing in their allyship to the Nazi charlatan pretending to be their god. More boos filled the theater when he crowed that he had found her hidden papers, that her Yankee pride was for nothing.

“Don’t worry,” Steve whispered to Wanda. “Superman will save the day. He always does.”

At least in the cartoons, one man could keep the Nazis from winning the war.

Sure enough, at the sight of Lois Lane’s downed plane, Superman sprang into action, pretending to need a parachute and jumping down from the sky to survey the damage. He flew to the rescue, first of the dame and then of the documents—while Superman took out the baddies with his fists, Lois saved the American convoy by taking back the papers and broadcasting a code to the fleet.

The true hero of the short wasn’t Clark Kent at all.

It was the codebreaking omega Lois Lane.

Steve, Wanda, Jane, and Darcy all sat a little taller in their seats. Even Natasha’s placid face seemed pleased.

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, and we’ll all be free!” sang an operatic tenor to close out the short.

Everyone applauded again, and one of the other rowdy young Alphas down at the front shouted, “God bless America!”

The reel clicked softly as it changed over again, and Darcy reached over to squeeze first Wanda’s knee, then Steve’s.

The music became chaos as the triumphant Universal logo transformed into bubbling beakers and round-bottomed flasks. Stoppered test tubes of an ominously dark liquid sat in the background and made Steve’s brain flash to thoughts of the mad scientist who created the Asset.

A crow shrieked under the full moon shining down on the cemetery of Llanwelly. The whole crowd shivered at the name ‘TALBOT’ engraved atop of the mausoleum the hapless graverobbers have decided to open. They had all been following stories of the wolf-man for years; how could people inside the movies not know about him? No one could be so ignorant of a villain in their midst.

Wanda jumped when the undead, clawed hand of the wolf-man began to rise from its opened coffin. Her popcorn spilled over Steve’s lap, and Steve had to stifle a nervous laugh. He let her bury her face in his arm during the unfortunate man’s transformation from man to wolf and his gruesome murder of a police bobby.

Steve had always enjoyed the horror films from Universal for their silliness, their escape from reality.

But this was a poor, injured man who did not want to be a monster.

And yet… he undeniably was.

The deep pain on his face as he confessed his crime to the oily Dr. Mannering didn’t change his evil deeds. But it made Steve’s stomach hurt all the same: the man was not responsible for the wolf’s nature. And the wolf was not evil, it was only doing what nature programmed a wolf to do to survive.

“Oh, are you blind?” begged Talbot. “Won’t you believe me? Help me!”

The only help offered was a straightjacket. This time, it was Steve who shivered and Wanda who patted his knee.

“He tore off his straightjacket in the night… tore it to shreds with his teeth,” said the befuddled Mannering. The Asset wouldn’t need to do such a thing, with that arm.

“I kill people… Now I want to die, too,” begged Talbot.

Perhaps the Asset was refusing food, not merely not eating food. Perhaps there was more of a man inside the Asset than they had recognized so far.

“I cannot help you,” said the old woman. “But I will guard you.”

The fictional town of Vasaria made Wanda’s eyes well up with tears. The old-world architecture and the cobblestone streets, the old woman in her headscarf and medallions. The tavern girl in her looped braids and dirndl. It was all so far away from Washington, D.C.

Talbot’s abject torture whenever the moon was full and his monstrous nature took over didn’t carry the same thrill that it normally did. Steve looked less forward to seeing the wolf with each transformation: he wanted someone to help the man. Even as the wolf-man, Talbot looked at the angry mob with only fear in his eyes. If scent traveled through the silver screen, Steve was sure that his distress would carry the same sour reek as the Asset.

When Talbot discovered the horrific sight of Frankenstein’s monster frozen solid in a block of ice, Steve had to shut his eyes. He could still see that noxious goo of Howard’s all over the Asset. He waited for the terrible sight of a shock of electricity to bring the creature back to life, but it didn’t come.

“My father was a great scientist,” mourned Baroness Frankenstein, “But all he created was unhappiness.”

Both Howard and Zola had salivated over the scientific intricacy of the Asset. His mangled brain, his monstrous arm. The technology that kept him frozen solid and yet alive. Someone out there, in the battlefields of Europe, was one hell of a scientist. And he had created something terrible.

“Justice will be preserved! I shall decide what is done here… Haven’t we tried before to get rid of the monster by force? We must be more clever this time. Let’s use our brains for once.”

Mannering’s terrible heel-turn to madness, his need to wrest control over life and death—and the bodies of the Wolf-Man and Frankenstein’s creature—only reminded Steve of the gleam in that Dr. Zola’s eyes when he examined the Asset’s brain.

In the end, the Wolf-Man and the Creature destroyed one another even as they were destroyed by the fear of the townsfolk of Vasaria. Their base natures couldn’t do anything but succumb to violence, even though the creature only fought out of fear and the Wolf-Man hated his bloodthirst. It took the bombing of the dam and the destruction of the whole town to take the beasts down.

There was no helping Talbot, in the end.

The lights rose in the theater and everyone around Steve began to stand, to stretch, and to chatter. Steve smiled at Wanda tugging on Darcy’s sleeve and speaking a mile a minute.

“Hello? Steve?”

Steve blinked. Now Wanda, Darcy, Jane, and Natasha were all staring at him.

“What? I – oh!” He was blocking the row. “I’m sorry. Lost in thought.”

He filed out to the lobby and pocketed the rest of his bag of peanuts to eat later. Waste not, want not. He patted his pockets as he put on his coat, making sure that he still had his asthma cigarettes and his wallet with change for the bus back to the boarding house. He hoped that Scott hadn’t waited for him for supper.

He wondered if the Asset had eaten anything for supper.

“I like the pictures,” Wanda said decisively once she reached him. “The story reminds me of ones like my mother told me, like the stories that I wrote in silly books for children back home. I felt bad for the poor Wolf-Man. He did not want to be a monster.”

“But he was one anyway,” said Jane. “That’s what makes it a tragedy.”

“I don’t think it was supposed to be a tragedy,” said Darcy. “I think we’re all supposed to be glad that the Wolf-Man and the Creature are gone. It’s what they wanted, but it was also what had to happen for everyone else to be safe.”

“I don’t think they are gone,” said Natasha. “I don’t think it’s so simple to kill a monster. If the Wolf-Man survived being buried and the Creature survived being frozen, I don’t think a simple river is going to take them down.”

They all looked at Steve.

“I don’t know what I think.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “But I agree with Jane, the movie made me sad more than it did happy.”

“Oh, Steve!” Wanda reached for his wrist again and rubbed the scent gland there with her own. “Do not be sad! They are not real, the characters.”

Darcy began to laugh, and even Natasha cracked a visible smile. Steve grinned at Wanda.

“I know,” he assured her. “I just have a lot on my mind. I think I liked the Superman cartoon better than the movie.”

Darcy’s eyes shone beneath all of her mascara. “Me, too. That Lois Lane is a cracker.”

Chapter 11: Chapter Eleven

Chapter Text

Steve had hoped that he was turning a corner with the Asset, but it seemed as time passed that his blinking was a fluke. The Asset moved around the pod, now, sometimes standing in its various empty corners and sometimes sitting on the cot. He often seemed to be testing the limits of how close he could get to Steve before Steve would back away—but when he did, the Asset never followed. He appeared to respect Steve’s need for distance, as though he understood the concept of boundaries. As though he had a sense of propriety.

“He’s probably waiting for you to let him get close enough to use you as a hostage,” said Agent Carter grimly. “Or to try to get in the lift once it’s called so he can escape.”

Steve looked down at his feet, then back up at the glass pod. The Asset’s flat eyes stared down at Steve through the glass.

He spent quite a lot of time staring at Steve.

It made Steve’s stomach do strange things, to have the unbroken weight of the Asset’s gaze on him. Silent. Unreadable. Blue-gray as the Sound in March.

Steve wasn’t sure that he agreed with Agent Carter that the Asset tested their distance out of some larger nefarious plot. For one thing, he wasn’t sure that the Asset was capable of that level of thinking—planning. Strategy. Independent desire at all.

And for another, Agent Carter had not been up into the pod and couldn’t smell that the Asset was an Alpha entirely weaned of his suppressants, while Steve was an omega who’d never bothered to take any. For most people, his scent was too faint for it to be of much use whether he suppressed his scent; however, Steve suspected that the Asset could smell him loud and clear, no matter where he was in the pod. He remembered Zola pointing out the olfactory bulb of the Asset’s brain and how his scent receptors had been modified. Zola said that he suspected it was to make the Asset less susceptible to scent on the battlefield, but… everything else about the Asset was enhanced to be bigger, stronger, faster, more intense. Why shouldn’t his scent receptors operate the same way?

The Asset’s scent mellowed over the weeks they spent together, slowly losing most of its sticky sour notes. He smelled—

If Steve were honest, he smelled tantalizing.

He tried to put this fact down to having not spent much time with Alphas in his life, so of course being in close quarters with one day after day would poke at the usually-ignored soft, omega parts of himself. But Steve knew that it couldn’t just be about proximity. The Asset smelled attractive to him, and it made his stomach hurt.

He was a weapon more than he was a human being.

He was a lost soul who had suffered horribly, whose brain didn’t even function correctly anymore.

He was a Nazi. He was the enemy.

He was der Winterwaffe, an abomination feared across the battlefields of Europe.

He was Steve’s prisoner of war.

There were a million reasons to stuff his dumb, animal attraction to the Asset down deep where no one could find it, not even himself, and no reasons to allow himself to scent the air each day as he entered the pod. But apparently instinct ran deeper than intellect. Every day, Steve took a small sip of the air as soon as his head emerged into the pod in the open lift. It told him things about the Asset that the Asset himself could not, or would not, say.

Usually his scent was rich and full, but flat—void of deeper emotions.

But on some days—the days on which he edged closer to Steve than the previous—he smelled curious. Inviting. Almost friendly.

On other days, when he sat crouched in the corner of the pod and would not move, not even to blink, flashing Steve back to the impossibly slow first weeks after his arrival in Washington, the Asset smelled… forlorn. Like he was mourning someone, something. Like he understood that he was being held here and would never again be free.

He never smelled angry.

By the time spring truly rolled around and Steve’s morning walk from the boardinghouse to Stark Mansion every day had become a riot of pink cherry blossoms and passing endless omegas with round, bred-up bellies, Steve had allowed the Asset to get within arm’s reach of him. They never touched, and the Asset had yet to speak, or even make a noise. Steve had come to accept that the man probably couldn’t talk.

Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips did not agree.

“He’s a stubborn Gerry bastard,” said Phillips around his cigar. He puffed out more smoke and chewed on the end of the cigar with angry, gnashing teeth for a long minute. “I think your usefulness has run its course, little one. Carter, it’s time to send in one of my men.”

“No,” snapped Agent Carter. “First off, Steve is the project head, and all decisions should come through him. And second, he doesn’t want to send in one of your Alphas. That will only end in bloodshed.”

“If it’s that animal’s blood, I’m all for it.” Phillips stumped out some ash. “But fine. Then let’s send in a better—another ‘meg, that secretary dame who smells like caramel brew-lee. One whiff of her will get any self-respecting Alpha talking.”

Steve’s gut burned with shame. Anger, too, but shame was the stickiest tar coating his insides. Most people weren’t so blunt as to point out to his face that he was a failure of an omega. They said it to his mother, back when she was alive, or cloaked it in metaphor. Or they just ignored his presence altogether.

This one was going on the books to haunt Steve for a long time to come.

“Miss Lewis is a telegraph booker and is necessary where she is,” said Agent Carter. “I won’t have us miss an ambush just because she wasn’t there to take down the code. Dr. Rogers can handle things with the Asset. He just needs a bit of a harder approach.”

She met Steve’s eyes and raised her eyebrows as if to say, well?

Phillips harrumphed.

Steve coughed.

“Er, yes,” Steve said. “I was planning to try—that is to say, the Asset’s likely healed enough now to recognize some commands. Like when Zola—”

“Zola! Let’s send him in, he can knock around the son of a bitch’s brain and tell us whether he’s soft-headed or hard-headed.”

“No,” Steve snapped. He sucked in a breath that made him cough again, then shook his head. “No. Zola isn’t read into the full operation and it would take too long and expend too many resources on someone who—who doesn’t have the necessary clearance. I know how to get through to the Asset. There’s a set of padding words, that’s the nonsense text at the beginning and end of every message,” he explained for Phillips’ benefit, “That repeat on several messages that mention the Asset or der Winterwaffe. Since they scarcely have ever repeated a single word in the past, let alone a string, it stands to reason that they mean something to the Asset or his former… handlers.”

“More code jabber,” said Phillips, unimpressed. He chomped on the end of the cigar. Steve’s lungs wheezed and his stomach felt sour from all the acrid smoke in the air. Phillips’ scent didn’t help, all tobacco, wet metal, and sharp oranges. “Just once I want some news that isn’t about scrambled gobbledygook.”

“Then let me keep working,” Steve said more firmly than he ordinarily might have. Something in his hindbrain said not to let anyone else near the Asset, and he was going to listen. “I will get all of the information that we’re looking for… if the Asset is capable of giving it.”

Phillips looked down his bulbous nose at Steve. “You had better, little one. Or more of our boys are going to die over there. Just because we got this Asset doesn’t mean the Gerries ain’t making more.”

Back at his desk, Steve practiced the German words under his breath over and over to get the pronunciations just right.

“Sehnsucht, longing… verrostet, rusted… siebzehn, seventeen… tagesanbruch, daybreak…” He exhaled and wondered whether he needed to smoke another asthma cigarette after inhaling so much of Phillips’ cigar cloud earlier. His throat still burned. “Verbrennungsofen, furnace. Neun, nine. Gutartig, benign. Heimkehr, homecoming… eins, one… güterwagen, freightcar.”

“What’s that now?” Natasha asked, making Steve jump. His lungs protested the shock with another wheeze.

Natasha looked apologetic. “Sorry.”

Steve waved her apology away. “Nonsense. And these words are just that—nonsense. But they repeat every so often on the codes that mentioned the Asset, back when we got those, so…”

“So.” Natasha rested against the side of Steve’s desk. “You’re going to see if they mean anything to him.”

Steve looked down at his hands. “I know they do. They scare him.” His hands were small and white, soft-padded. If the Asset fought against him, he was helpless. It seemed strange to think that anything he could do would scare the Asset. He sniffed and looked back up at Natasha. “But I need to find out why.”

She nodded. One of her hands moved to tuck a lock of red hair behind her ear and in doing so, she fleetingly touched the square scar where she had been nullified, her scent glands removed.

“I’ve heard rumors,” she said carefully, “Of forms of torture that create… doors in the mind. That can be opened or closed. Locked. Supposedly they are accessed by triggers—like Zola’s Dr. Pavlov used on his dogs. The ringing of a bell makes dogs salivate even after their stomachs have been removed or… a phrase might bring someone back from behind those closed doors in the mind.” She smiled lightly. “I knew a man, a scientist, very kind, who was studying such a phenomenon. ‘The sun’s going down’ changed him so completely he was like a different person. Perhaps these words are the same for your Asset.”

“What happened to him when you said, ‘the sun’s going down’?” Steve asked.

Natasha’s smile widened but grew sadder. “He locked a big part of himself away. Couldn’t remember what he’d done, spoke differently, walked differently.”

“Tore the heads off soldiers?”

“No,” Natasha admitted. “He was more liable to hurt himself.”

That was a possibility that Steve hadn’t yet considered. The words might be a self-destruct code.

He might destroy the project by trying to solve it.

“You know more about the Asset than anyone,” Natasha said, laying her hand on Steve’s shoulder. “If you think that you can get answers from him by reading the padding words, no one has any standing to tell you that you’re wrong. We’re following your lead, Steve. You’re in charge.”

Steve pressed his lips together. “I’m the Captain.”

Natasha laughed aloud at that. “I did hear some rumors out in the Alps about a Captain able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“And you didn’t disabuse them of the notion?” Steve could hardly climb a flight of stairs in a single attempt.

“Why should I? As far as I’m concerned, it’s the truth.”

The Asset blinked at Steve when he stepped into the glass pod. It smelled thickly of unwashed Alpha, all musk and sweat. Steve swallowed as the scent hit him in the face. Despite being full and lush, the Asset’s scent still held notes of unwellness. Discomfort or pain. Hunger. Some unidentifiable, deep-held wrongness. Steve’s inner omega wanted to fix it. To soothe it.

But that wasn’t his job. He wasn’t here to be an omega. If that were what the project needed, Steve would have been the very last person put in charge.

“Good morning,” Steve said to the Asset around his drymouth. He tried to sound as unaffected and pleasant as usual. “Guten morgen. How are you today?”

The Asset just blinked. His eyelids were the only part of him that moved.

“Read the words, Dr. Rogers,” said Agent Carter from overhead. “We’ve had weeks of useless pleasantries.”

Steve bit his lips. What if he read the words and sparked a rampage that he couldn’t escape, locked in a glass box with a known killer? This was stupid. This was reckless.

He ignored Agent Carter’s demand long enough to inspect all of the items of food that had been sent up to the Asset since yesterday evening. The Asset would only eat them if Steve had declared them safe for consumption, and he wasn’t going to starve the man just for staying silent. Especially when there was no proof that he even retained the ability for speech. Or for understanding English.

“Steven,” crackled Agent Carter.

It was time.

Steve tried to hold the Asset’s gaze but it skittered away.

“I’m going to read you some coded words,” Steve explained fruitlessly. “And if you recognize what they mean, I need you to tell me. You are safe here. I’m not going to hurt you. And I sure could use your help, Asset.”

If he were a better omega, he would sweeten his scent—slick and seductive—and make the Alpha inside the Asset trip over his own feet to help him.

But he was just Steve.

Steve held the code slip in both hands and read off in accented German, “Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak—” He cut off with a cough at the potency of the Asset’s sour distress scent. “Daybreak,” Steve continued, “Furnace.”

The Asset lumbered to his feet and his shoulders flew back, posturing tall, even as he tucked his head down in a gesture of submission and his scent spelled pure terror. The metal arm shivered and expanded into a massive, misshapen thing.

“Careful, Steve,” said Agent Carter overhead.

Steve swallowed. He had never been faced down by a posturing Alpha. Most omegas—most lucky omegas—never were.

The Asset’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat with desperate pants as he breathed hard, like he was trying to wind himself up to speak.

“Furnace,” Steve repeated.

The Asset took a step towards Steve, and Steve took an instinctive step backwards.

Under his matted hair, the Asset’s ice-gray eyes were wild with panic. His mouth moved over silent pleas.

“Nine,” Steve read. “Benign.”

The Asset took another step, almost stumbling. It was as though something held his feet to the floor and he was fighting against immense pressure to move with each step he took towards Steve. The metal arm kept shivering, its plates refitting into configuration.

Steve hesitated. The Asset was close enough now that with a swing of that arm, he could rip off Steve’s head. It wouldn’t even be difficult.

But he didn’t smell angry.

His eyes weren’t blank.

He just seemed afraid.

“Homecoming,” Steve read, after a long minute of the Asset swaying on his bare feet close enough to Steve that Steve could smell the unwashed rank of him beneath the flare of terror. He was sure that he smelled afraid, himself, the instinctual response to an Alpha posturing. Steve was such a small omega.

The Asset fell to his knees. His throat and neck kept working like he wanted to be screaming without end, but he couldn’t make a sound.

Steve swallowed and glanced up at the ceiling, although that wouldn’t enable him to see Agent Carter. She couldn’t tell him what to do now.

The Asset’s hands, human and mechanical alike, reached out and grasped onto Steve’s arms. The heat of his callused flesh palm felt like a brand.

Steve jumped and tried to get away—

And the Asset let him. His hands fell limply to the floor with a dull smack. His head hung as if in defeat. His spine was a solid line of tension, bracing himself for something.

And Steve knew: it was the final two words on the slip.

Whatever they meant, the Asset expected them to hurt.

And yet, he had not hurt Steve. He didn’t seem to have any inclination to hurt Steve. He accepted that Steve was going to speak these words that terrified him so, and he would simply let Steve say them. He would let Steve hurt him. Even though Steve was a frail, sickly omega, someone who could never fight back. Even though Steve was the enemy.

The Asset’s human hand splayed out flat on the floor, filthy fingernails white as he struggled to hang onto the smooth surface.

The fear-smell of him was so high that Steve felt dizzy. His hindbrain screamed at him to offer comfort to the pained Alpha, to soothe with his own scent, meager as it might be. To offer his soft belly and the sweet glands of his neck. To try to fix whatever was wrong.

But Steve was the one who was wrong.

He licked his dry lips and folded the code slip.

He put it into his pocket.

“It’s okay,” he rasped around the lump in his throat. “Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to finish reading that list, whatever it is. Whatever it means. You can—you don’t have to stay on the floor.”

The omega part of him ached to reach out and smooth back the Asset’s lank hair. To gently comb out its tangles and push it away from the Asset’s face so he could see.

Steve clenched his hands into fists instead. His forearm felt burned where the heat of the Asset’s flesh hand had grabbed him, however briefly. Steve’s chest burned, too, from that single touch. The Asset’s hand was human. The Asset was human. He was just a man, a man who had been experimented on and transformed into this thing, and they still didn’t know by whom or why or how. But they did know, now, that he could still feel fear. And pain. And Steve had caused those things.

He didn’t want to be like whoever had turned a man into the Asset.

He didn’t want to cause him fear and pain.

Steve wanted, needed, to be better than that.

“Steve,” said Agent Carter overhead, “Finish reading the code. Maybe it will inspire our guest to speak about—”

“No,” said Steve. “I’m not going to torture information out of him. I would rather earn his trust.” He looked down at the coiled Asset, still on his knees on the floor. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promised. “You have my word.” He cleared his throat. “We can talk again tomorrow.”

Steve crossed the pod to the exit hatch and called for the lift. He stepped inside.

The Asset watched him descend from the pod, his eyes no longer fiery with panic—but no longer blank pools of ice, either.

They were awash in emotion.

Tentative.

Grateful.

Steve felt abruptly sick to his stomach when he exited the lift. Agent Carter was waiting for him, her arms crossed over her chest, but Steve waved her away. He turned around just in time to lose his breakfast all over the stone floor beneath the suspended glass pod. Perhaps it was the sudden shock of going from the overwhelming scent of a distressed Alpha to the blank, sterile smell of the basem*nt; maybe it was guilt over being complicit in the torture of a prisoner of war; maybe it was the ravages of pre-Heat. No matter the reason, Steve doubled over and was sick.

When he had finished, and he was able to look up, the Asset was still kneeling on the glass floor of the pod just above him, staring down at Steve with those intelligent eyes.

Chapter 12: Chapter Twelve

Chapter Text

The day dawned bright and warm. Too warm. Steve moved to push his sweat-soaked blankets away, and even that small movement made his breath catch worryingly in his chest from exertion. He heaved himself up to sitting with a long, low groan and grasped for his Asthmador cigarettes on the nightstand. It took a few tries to get one alight with shaking hands.

The acrid smoke didn’t help ease the tension in Steve’s chest. He smoked the Asthmador down to his fingers, ashing it in a water glass that was close enough that he scarcely needed to move. Everything hurt. His stomach roiled, the sharp flavor of the Schiffman’s making him nauseous.

He crushed the last centimeter of the asthma cigarette in the bottom of the water glass and pushed his shaking hands through his hair. His chest still felt too tight.

His skin felt too tight.

“Jesus H,” Steve mumbled to himself. “What’ve I got now?”

He wanted to lie back down in bed, but the mattress was too sodden with sweat and the sheets were hot and scratchy. He should take a bath, but the idea of having to boil water and carry heavy pails across the room to fill the tub made the nausea worse. Steve straightened his legs, trying to get a stretch in his tense thighs, but all he got for the trouble was a Charlie horse in his calf.

He grimaced and jerked, trying to relax the muscle.

The sharp movement made his stomach slosh.

He grabbed the water glass with the crushed asthma cigarette in it and spat out a mouthful of orange bile. Maybe he had vomited after his interrogation of the Asset because he was truly sick, and not because he was sensitive or—

A cramp wracked its way through Steve’s belly and he curled over on himself, groaning.

No.

He wasn’t ill. He was fully in Heat.

It came on faster and stronger than usual—and it was never gentle—but this was Heat, all right, the horrible sweating and too-tight skin and the rebellion of his stomach as his uterus wreaked havoc on his entire abdomen. He panted as the cramp finally began to subside.

Too bright. He needed to get to the nesting closet.

The door across his little rented room seemed a million miles away.

“Okay,” Steve said to himself quietly. “All right. Up and at ‘em, Stevie. You can do this.”

He uncurled his body vertebra by vertebra and slowly crept to the edge of his narrow bed. His feet touched the floor and it felt like it was made of sandpaper on the soles of his feet.

This wasn’t right. He was a day early. He was never early. He might not have Heats that would be worth a damn, but they were always regular as clockwork.

Steve pushed himself to his feet and tottered, calf twinging. He grunted at the way his stomach warned him against moving too quickly and began to unbutton his pajama shirt. It took three tries to get the second button.

He pushed out of his pants and underwear and left them on the floor where he stepped out of them. The door of the nesting closet beckoned, and Steve wrapped his arms around his soft, too-skinny middle and made his way there in slow, shuffling steps.

Blessed darkness greeted him when he opened the door.

He had soft quilts made once upon a time by his mother woven into a nest inside, along with all of his unwashed laundry and a few ragged old pieces of clothing washed so thin and soft that they were only suitable for this.

Steve dropped to his knees in the dark and crawled forward through the soft material. His instincts pushed at him to spread his thighs open and present, face down and ass up, but Steve hated taking that position. It only reminded him that he was so very alone.

All the same, he rolled over onto his front and pushed his face into the soft nesting material. It felt good on his overheated face. He hadn’t noticed just how hard his little dick had gotten—too distracted by how nauseous he was, how much the cramps hurt—but it felt good, too, to rut into the nesting clothes. They were soft enough not to chafe and alien enough not to feel like his own hand, even if they smelled like his own—

There was a scent in the nest. Green apples and fallen leaves burning, wet stones and Coney Island cotton candy and some indefinable thing that was man and Alpha and alive. Steve groaned again and began pushing aside the blankets and clothes that lined the nest and smelled only of himself until he could find the source of that Alpha-scent.

Another roll of cramping pain washed over him. His blue shirt, the one the Asset had touched. Had grabbed, grasped onto Steve’s arms and held onto him like a man drowning. That brief touch had been enough to saturate the blue shirt in the Asset’s scent so thick that Steve could almost see it, a glowing handprint of pheromones on the sleeve like they were something as tangible and real as ink. The right sleeve—the Asset’s metal left hand—left nothing behind, but—

Steve pressed his face into the left sleeve of his blue shirt and moaned under his breath as he got a direct hit of the scent of the Asset. Of the Alpha man behind the Asset, whoever he was. Whoever he had been. The rich scent made Steve’s head swim, suddenly lightheaded with relief and want at the same time, desperate for more of the Alpha’s pheromones—he wanted them from the source, wanted the Alpha to grip onto him again, wanted to push his face into the Alpha’s soft places and drink up that green apple scent like water.

Steve curled up around the blue shirt as another wave of cramping made tears prick in his eyes. He took another drag of the Asset’s scent and whimpered, the last cramps subsiding as finally slick began to flow. Steve had never slicked much—he kept a jar of Vaseline in his nest for the onslaught of Heat to help ease the way for anything larger than a single one of his own fingers—but he’d also never had an Alpha’s help. Not even their scent. He wasn’t slick enough to be properly wet, a proper omega, but he could feel the viscous slick dripping from his puss* down over his pink lips and it felt like some kind of victory.

How much would he get wet if the Asset were actually here?

He shouldn’t think of him like that. He was Steve’s prisoner. He would never choose Steve, if he had a choice; he was addled, unhinged, even—

Steve mouthed at the left sleeve of his blue shirt, chasing the taste of Alpha pheromones. If the Asset were here—

Steve closed his eyes. Fingers found his puss* and traced curiously, dredging themselves in the slick that seeped out of him so that the slide was velvet-smooth as those fingertips teased Steve’s entrance, already slack from Heat pheromones.

“Omega,” murmured the Asset. His voice was deep and rugged and rusty like it was a secret only Steve could know. “Open up for me, omega.”

A single fingertip breached Steve, and he instinctively clenched his muscles, trying to pull it deeper inside himself. The Asset’s scent was heavy in his nose as the finger slid in up to the second knuckle and found one of Steve’s slick glands.

Normally this hurt, even in Heat. Especially in Heat.

“Shhh,” the Asset soothed. “I have you, omega. Just relax.”

The finger was achingly gentle as it manipulated Steve’s swollen slick gland. It didn’t take nearly as long as it usually did for the tense tissue to relax and release more slick, more of Steve’s light scent into the nest. Steve bit at the material of his blue shirt to stifle his shout of surprise—it wasn’t often that he was able to get his internal glands to relax enough to release at all, let alone without a stabbing pain that rivalled the worst cramps.

“That’s it, omega,” said the Asset. “You’re so good for me, aren’t you? You were just waiting for the right Alpha to understand you, huh? Relax, we have one more slick gland before you’re wet enough for a knot. Be good for me, omega.”

Steve kept his eyes squeezed shut and the material of the blue shirt held tight between his teeth as the finger inside him found the opposite slick gland and began the same careful massage. If he were a better omega, he’d’ve already taken a knot and broken the slick glands open for good, and he wouldn’t need to do this; it was embarrassing, a sign of failure, humiliating—

“Shhh,” the Asset hushed. “You’re the perfect omega for me. Just relax. You’ll get a knot soon. We’re alone, there’s no need to be embarrassed. It’s just us.”

The second gland released and more slick flooded out of Steve, some of the tension and pain in his body already gone. It was easy for the finger inside him to slide deeper now, finding the soft sponge of his g-spot with a little prod that made Steve yelp.

It was only the third Heat of his life that had managed to be smooth enough, wet enough, for him to do this. To get a sense of the real relief his body was seeking—something inside, deep and insistent, something like a knot.

“Good omega,” the Asset praised. “Just let it feel good now.”

Steve whimpered into the sleeve of the blue shirt as one finger, then two, teased at the sweet spot he’d so rarely gotten to experience and the first org*sm of his Heat came on with a long, slow tingle that started in his fingers and toes before spreading all through the rest of him like a hazy, insistent crush, stealing his breath for long moments until he came to with a gasp and a surprised cough. His hand was wet up to his wrist in slick.

Like a normal omega.

Like a good omega.

“You are a good omega,” the Asset insisted. “So perfect, just for me.”

“Just for you,” Steve mumbled. He buried his face harder against the crumpled blue shirt, the Asset’s scent nearly gone now—covered with Steve’s own scent from his pleasure-filled drool—and let the humiliation burn across his overheated face.

He didn’t belong to the Asset. The Asset was not his Alpha. The Asset barely remembered he was an Alpha, and once he did—

Steve buried his burning face in the nest, alone.

Steve held his arms close to his unsettled stomach and wished that he had brought a light sweater; he couldn’t afford to spend this spring as sick as he had every other of his life. He had important work to do. People counted on him. The future of the whole damned world counted on him.

He passed two pregnant omegas walking prams down the sidewalk. His gut cramped weakly at the babies’ cooing warbles, the last vestige of heat still trying to make him go seek out some Alpha—any Alpha—to put a pup in him, too. But that would never happen for Steve.

It’d be nice if his body broke that code and understood the message. Then he wouldn’t need to suffer pointless heats anymore that took him away from his work and only served to remind him of what a failure of an omega he was.

Steve tipped his hat at the pregnant omegas and spared a smile for their babies.

It wasn’t their fault.

Once they were a few paces down the sidewalk, he turned his collar up against the slight chill in the breeze and hastened his steps towards Stark Mansion. He turned the corner to the correct block and began the uphill slog up the thickly tree-lined path. Today with his weak limbs he had to stop several times and wipe at his brow.

Now, at least, he was glad that he hadn’t worn the sweater.

By the time he reached the hidden servants’ door to the Mansion, Steve’s pocket watch told him he was nearly twenty-five minutes late for the start of the day and if he didn’t hurry, they might send someone else in to make contact with the Asset.

Steve didn’t know how the Asset had been treated in his absence: whether they had fed him on the correct schedule and let him fiddle with the old radio that Steve left for him. Whether anyone had read to him from the small stack of Steve’s books. Whether he had eaten without Steve inspecting his food and declaring it safe.

Whether Agent Carter and Phillips had sent in someone to finish reading that list of code words.

He pushed himself to walk a little faster.

“Dr. Rogers!”

“Still not a doctor, ma’am,” Steve sighed at Agent Carter’s call. He accepted the cup of tea that she held out to him and he was pleased that she had enough decorum not to wrinkle her nose at his post-heat scent or the sweat stains ringing his collar from the long trudge up the hill. They began a brisk pace down the long, long hallway towards the Asset’s pod. “How was everything while I was out?”

“We haven’t managed any new breakthroughs on the origin of the Anlage code padding,” Agent Carter said. “Although Wanda is back at it this morning.”

They turned a sharp corner and began the descent down to the prisoners’ dungeon. “And the Asset?”

“He didn’t speak a word,” Agent Carter confirmed. “About two days into your leave, he did become quite agitated, and it’s only gotten worse. He’s pacing the pod like he’s looking for an escape hatch. And he’s posturing again.”

“Posturing?” Steve stopped with his foot between two stairs. Alphas only postured under extreme threat, usually a threat to their omega. “I’m surprised. Who was he posturing for?”

“Dr. Zola requested to be allowed into the pod, but given the pacing, I thought it better that he remain outside and just speak to the Asset through the overhead. As soon as he heard Zola’s voice, the Asset’s shoulders went back and—he growled, Steve.”

Steve let that news wash over him. The first sound the Asset had made, and it was a growl. “Is Arnim alright?”

“He’s fine.” Agent Carter waved a dismissive hand. “He tried to speak to the Asset over the growling, to calm him down, but it just seemed to agitate him further. I finally pulled him off the assignment and we’ve left the Asset to… his demons, I suppose. Whatever’s in his head that’s making him posture for no one. Pace like that.” Agent Carter caught Steve’s wrist as they reached the floor. “It’s awful, Steve. Have you ever been to a zoo? Seen the large cats or the wolves? He’s like that, a white wolf stuck in a small cage. Just back and forth all day and all night.”

He is stuck in a small cage. “I’ll be careful,” Steve promised.

In the pod at the end of the hall, Steve can see what Agent Carter meant: the Asset stalked in quick, sharp steps from one end of the small room to the other, pivoted on his heel, and stalked back again, his shoulders pushed back and chin forward with a snarl on his face. His lank hair was a greasy knot on the top of his head like he pushed the fingers of his flesh hand through it over and over again. The metal arm flexed and expanded with each lope across the length of the floor, and Steve knew that as soon as he opened the hatch and rose into the room, its whirring and clicking would be more pronounced than ever. The rivets caught the light from above and reflected it back in round bullet-heads.

Posturing, he looked every inch of the six-plus feet they’d recorded into his file.

Steve understood anew why the Asset was the Nazis’ secret weapon, the wraith of the battlefield. That stalking made him feel like prey.

The Asset’s blank eyes washed over Steve as he made a pivot at the end of his pod.

The Asset stilled.

“Good luck, Steve,” Agent Carter said. She pushed Steve into the entry cubicle for the pod, closed the hatch, and pressed the button for him to ascend into the pod.

Steve hadn’t feared the Asset in a long time now. Weeks.

He had become complacent.

The moment the hatch opened and Steve stepped into the pod, a gentle, placating smile on his face and his hands open and relaxed at his sides so that the Asset could see that Steve came in peace—

The Asset was on Steve.

Steve exhaled in shock as his back hit the thick glass of the pod. The back of his head bounced off the glass, too. He couldn’t move: 240 pounds of superhuman Alpha crowded him against the wall, Steve’s wrists trapped in the vise of a demi-magical, bionic, vibranium hand and a human hand that was just as unyielding. A thigh nearly as wide as Steve’s torso shoved between Steve’s skinny legs and kept him from pushing off the wall with his feet—a move that would have worked against most bullies on the backstreets of Brooklyn—but Steve found himself on his the very tips of his toes and scrabbling.

“Steve!” Agent Carter’s panicked voice echoed all around the pod through the overhead. “Rogers, are you alright? We can send in a STRIKE team member—”

“Don’t!” Steve managed to bark back, even though his heart was hammering so hard in his chest that he might black out with the palpitations.

Aside from the conk as his head hit the wall, the Asset wasn’t actually hurting him. The grip around his wrists was steely, but he could have broken Steve’s bones in an instant if he’d wanted to escape or incapacitate his captor.

The Asset’s face was only an inch away from Steve’s face.

The gray eyes boring into his weren’t blank anymore.

Black pupils wide with life skittered all over Steve’s face, looking from his eyes to his cheekbones and chin down to his neck to his lips and back again, a circuit as endless as the Asset’s pacing back and forth across his pod had been and just as panicked and restless. His hot, harsh breath puffed over Steve’s mouth.

“Hello,” Steve ventured, feigning calm. “I’m sorry I was gone for a few days. I didn’t mean to leave you that way.”

The Asset didn’t say a word.

Not that Steve really expected that.

But he also didn’t expect for the Asset’s head to drop forward, into the crook between Steve’s neck and shoulder, and then—

The Asset whuffed him.

Steve stared across the pod into the distance of the dark surroundings of the pod in livewire shock.

No Alpha had ever whuffed him before.

The Asset’s breath was hot, somehow gentle and greedy all at once, as he pulled at Steve’s scent with both his mouth and nose, huffing in the scent of Steve’s post-heat hormones and the taste of his skin and sweat like a drug.

Steve’s heart still pounded in his chest but he couldn’t get any air into his lungs as the Asset’s lips touched the thin skin over Steve’s scent gland more gently than Steve would have thought possible.

Steve swallowed hard. An Alpha touching his lips to an omega’s scent gland told him everything he could need to know—biologically speaking—about the omega: their health, their fertility, even their mood. Steve tried to calm his rabbiting heart and exude calm, but everything else, well. He couldn’t do anything about being so sickly. About being unable to carry a pup.

But that shouldn’t matter anyway.

The Asset was not his Alpha.

The Asset, as far as everyone else in the building was concerned, was barely a human being.

Whatever he learned about Steve from that gentle, curious touch of his lips against Steve’s scent gland—that would stay his secret, unless he started talking. And if he did, it might well not be to Steve.

Something like crushing disappointment tore through Steve like a lightning strike, and he shoved it down deep in his chest where all of his other emotions about being such a scrawny, unlovable thing went to live. He hoped that it was fast enough that the feral Alpha pressed to his chest didn’t sense it.

The Asset lifted his head. His gray-black eyes stared into Steve’s again, and Steve could see without a doubt that the Asset was a human being. There was a man inside his head, somewhere, still, no matter what the Nazis had done to make him their weapon. He was a man, and an Alpha, and somewhere inside his head he was thinking about whatever Steve’s glands just taught him.

Steve swallowed again. “Hello,” he tried again.

The Asset co*cked his head. Moved his lips.

Steve held his breath.

The Asset remained silent. But he didn’t let go of Steve, didn’t let him down from where he was still holding him practically aloft against the thick glass wall. Instead he ducked his head again, and Steve prepared himself for another whuff—

And instead the Asset scruffed his jaw against Steve’s scent glands. First the right, then the left. He scrubbed his unshaven jaw in neat, precise lines over Steve’s neck and shoulders.

He was scent-marking him.

Steve was too stunned to even notice the Rogers, I’m sending in STRIKE echoing from the overhead speakers. He landed on his feet like a feather hitting the ground as the Asset let him down and kept scruffing, scenting, over Steve’s chest, both hands still pressed to the wall in that tight, careful grip.

And then Steve’s hands were free.

The Asset used both of his hands—man and metal—to roughly pull Steve’s shirt from where it was tucked into his trousers, and Steve flushed bright red in the glaring white light of the pod. He was too skinny, too small-hipped, frighteningly pale. His ribs showed from so many winters of too little food and too much illness.

The Asset didn’t seem to notice, shoving his face against the concave of Steve’s belly and whuffing hard. He made a humming, unreadable little sound.

He made a sound.

Steve’s fingers flexed against the glass pod wall as the Asset scent-marked over his belly and the glands on the wings of his hipbones. One hand tentatively left the cold glass and reached for the Asset, just to push that greasy hair back from his forehead, where it fell against Steve’s skin and tickled.

The Asset, on his knees, looked up at Steve with his lips still pressed just beneath Steve’s navel and Steve’s hand in his hair.

His lips moved. Adam’s apple bobbed. A tiny noise like tinder crackling slipped out of his throat.

And then all hell broke loose.

Before Steve could blink, he was thrown back into the glass wall again, his head hitting the same mark with a much harder thunk. His wrist throbbed. And he was being smothered behind that reeking 240 pounds of enraged Alpha, posturing chest puffed and chin lowered right in front of Steve, both hands herding Steve behind him as he growled.

Something primordial in Steve clenched at the sound of that growl.

“Stand down!” ordered one of the STRIKE betas from somewhere close, inside the pod, right where they should not be and where Steve couldn’t see around the Asset’s bulk. “Let Dr. Rogers go!”

“I’m fine!” Steve yelled into the Asset’s back. He tried to turn his head so that he could gulp in air and say something more intelligible, but the growling just got louder. It was buzzing all through the Asset’s back and into Steve’s chest.

Despite the throb in his wrist, Steve held out his hand from behind the Asset. “I’m fine!” he repeated. “Leave the pod, please. He’s not going to stand down if you’re in here!”

“Agent Carter instructed me to pull you out, Dr. Rogers,” said the STRIKE beta. Sounded like Private Rollins; Steve had seen him patrolling this floor before.

The click of a gun’s safety being switched was loud in the glass box.

“Do not shoot!” Steve yelled. “The Asset is not going to harm me, and if you harm him I will—” the threat hung empty in the tense air.

What could Steve do?

The Asset hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t given any intel. He may be no source at all.

But Steve would be damned if he let anything happen to this man.

“It’s a tranquilizer dart,” said Rollins. “Tell this thing that if he doesn’t let you go, I’m going to take him down. In five…”

“Please,” Steve said into the Asset’s buzzing back. “Just relax. You’re safe here. I’m safe here. Just relax. You’re not with the Nazis anymore, no one is going to hurt you here.” He raised his voice to yell over the growling at Rollins again. “Just leave! He isn’t going to stand down and let me go until you’ve left the pod. Get outta here!”

“Agent Carter said—”

“Agent Carter can come in and get me herself, then!” Steve snapped. “Just get out!”

There was a long, brittle minute in which all Steve could hear was growling, and then the floor of the pod shifted slightly as the hatch closed with Rollins—he hoped—on the other side.

The Asset’s growls lowered until they were a rumble that Steve felt more than heard. Still crushed against the back wall of the pod, face full of unwashed Alpha muscle and roughspun cotton, Steve’s wrist ached like it would need a brace. He knew sprains well. But already the air in the pod felt better. Clearer. Less charged.

He tentatively patted the Asset’s side. “I’m fine. It’s fine. You’re alright, pal. You can let me go.”

The giant Alpha snapped again, teeth clicking in the empty space. Steve kept patting the Asset’s side, murmuring gratitude and gentle noises that everything was fine, everyone was fine. His wrist throbbed. The patting became sweeps of his hand, stroking over the Asset’s side with his whole palm.

The Asset’s body was pure muscle under Steve’s hand. He could feel his ribs, sharp and jutting, and the heavy hammering of his heart. There was not an ounce of fat or softness in him. He was built for pure power.

Eventually, the Asset’s heartbeat slowed to a more relaxed pace. He inched forward to give Steve just enough space to wiggle out from between the Asset’s big body and the hard glass of the pod, and Steve did—but he didn’t get far.

The Asset’s big hands caught him around the waist. They were firm, but again, despite the Asset’s size and speed and that metal arm, he touched Steve with the delicacy of an egg. The Asset’s eyes looked bluer, less stormy gray, as he stared Steve square in the face.

“I’m fine, pal,” Steve said again. “You’re fine. We’re all fine.”

The Asset exhaled, breath touching Steve’s lips. And he started to pat over Steve as though looking for injuries.

When he touched Steve’s aching wrist, Steve couldn’t quite swallow his soft yelp.

The Asset’s face went fierce and then—then tender, his brows drawn together and his lips pursed. He held Steve’s wrist flat in his metal palm and touched it gently with two fingers of his flesh hand, trying to find the injury without causing Steve pain.

“Hey,” Steve said, his voice cracking. The Asset’s flesh fingers gently prodded at Steve’s scent gland, fingertips warm as he circled the softly raised circle just beside the bright blue of Steve’s veins beneath his thinnest, palest skin. “It’s okay, pal. I’m okay. It’ll heal right up.”

The Asset’s eyes flickered up to meet Steve’s. He looked—

Human.

Shy and sorry and fierce and gentle.

His mouth moved in a tiny gesture.

Steve held his breath, waiting to see if the Asset would finally speak, but there was only silence. His eyes dropped away from Steve’s gaze, and the fingertips circling over Steve’s wrist pulled away. The Asset seemed to shrink into himself, humanity pulling back away from his vulnerable skin, and in its place the blank-faced automaton returned.

“That’s alright,” Steve encouraged gently. “Everything is just fine. You’ve had a big day. You should eat.”

The Asset sat back down on his cot and stared blankly ahead, at or perhaps through the glass wall of the pod. Steve’s heart still pounded quickly, off-rhythm as always, in his chest. He carefully cradled his aching wrist in his other hand and moved to the nearly invisible circle where the lift would rise to whisk him away and back to the real world.

The lift descended. Steve watched the Asset until he couldn’t anymore.

Agent Carter and Natasha were waiting for him on the ground.

“Steve, are you alright?” Natasha asked. “Oof, you stink of Alpha. I’m so sorry.”

“Steven, that was—that was—unacceptable,” said Agent Carter in uncharacteristically flustered fits. “His—its—that creature’s behavior was unacceptable, of course, but you—the STRIKE team is here for your protection—”

“I was fine until your Private came in,” Steve argued. “The Asset didn’t hurt me.” His wrist twinged. “He was just… curious. His suppressants have worn off. I just had my Heat. I should have expected this to happen sometime. You did want to send in an omega to appeal to his baser instincts. You can’t get angry when it works.” He exhaled. “I’m tired and I’m hungry and, as Natasha said, I reek of Alpha. I am going home for the day. I’m fine, I’m just—done with this day.”

Steve walked the long path from the sub-basem*nt up to Room Six. He felt Natasha’s all-knowing eyes on his back the entire way, but he didn’t deign speak to her until he had reached his office.

“I’m really fine,” he said carefully to the hat rack.

“I believe you,” said Natasha. “You don’t smell distressed. You’re right; it wasn’t an attack.”

“No,” Steve agreed. She wouldn’t be able to smell him even if he did feel distress. His scent was too weak for another omega to pick up on it. “He just… who knows how long it’s been since he was near an omega without being suppressed half to hell.” He finally looked over at Natasha and smiled, carefully putting the fantasies of his Heat out of mind. “It wasn’t anything personal.”

Natasha’s calm eyes cut through Steve like a knife. He could feel her prodding at the sense-memory of the Asset’s scent filling Steve’s nose and mouth as he juddered out org*sm after org*sm, and he felt flayed open.

“I don’t think he would react to anyone else that way,” she said lightly. “Without attacking them, I mean.”

“Well,” Steve said. When did his mouth get so dry? “He knows me. He doesn’t know you.”

Natasha nodded. She blinked, and the spell of her mind-reading gaze was severed. “Are you sure you’re alright to get home on your own? I can walk you back, if you’d like.”

That was the last thing Steve wanted. He liked Natasha, he did, but after more human contact than Steve could remember having since his mother died—and bless her soul, she had not been a tall and attractive Alpha, so cuddling into her side was altogether different—Steve wanted to be alone. The Catholic part of him insisted that he needed time to do penance.

He left Stark Mansion into the bright blue noon of spring, rather than the violet of sunset or the black of night, and Steve hardly knew what to do with himself now that he was outside of that loud, crowded, tense basem*nt. He was an omega who smelled like an Alpha with the whole afternoon stretching out in front of him. What couldn’t he do?

Steve stopped in at the barber and got the haircut he’d sorely needed for weeks. He bought a hamburger and French fried potatoes at the five-and-dime and contemplated going to the pictures to see Cary Grant, the handsomest Alpha in Hollywood, in Mr. Lucky. The last time Steve had been to the pictures hung heavy in his head, though, and he wasn’t able to shake the feeling of standing up to that rowdy young Alpha in the crowd or the way the fright flick had somehow mirrored his own journey with the Asset. Although it was unlikely that a romance picture like Mr. Lucky would have much to do with the Asset or his life, Steve reasoned.

Instead he just went to the butcher shop to get supper and headed back to the omega boarding house. He would be home early enough to eat with Scott, if Scott even remembered who he was after so long since a shared dinner. And if Steve was going to be around another omega—or anyone who knew him, really—he ought to take a hot bath and scrub his hardest to get the heaviest of the Asset’s Alpha musk off his skin.

Still, Scott’s nose wrinkled as soon as he stepped into Steve’s room. “Whoo! You meet a friendly Alpha on the job today, buddy? You smell—a lot.”

Steve felt his ears go hot and he focused on flipping the two lumps of liver in his saucepan. He’d hoped that the potent aroma of liver and onions might cover the last of the Asset’s scent-marking.

“Something like that,” he said. “New guy on the line.”

“Are you okay?” Scott’s scent deepened with concern for his friend, and Steve was touched. “He didn’t really try to scent-mark you at work, did he?”

“I’m alright,” Steve deferred. “Just an Alpha who got a little excited. We’ve all been there before, right?”

Scott frowned. “I guess.” Then his nose wrinkled again. “Liver and onions?”

“Yep,” Steve agreed. “It was cheap at the butcher on my way home.”

Scott kept his nose wrinkled, but he pulled out his chair at the little table and sat down all the same. “You know, once we’re done rationing, I’m never eating liver again as long as I live.”

Chapter 13: Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Text

The Asset sat on the edge of his cot, staring down at the floor. He cradled his flesh hand in the curve of his metal one, wringing it like it was a child’s beloved teddy bear. His forehead creased with thought. Worry or concern. Memory or empty holes. Fear or resentment or resignation. Whatever was in his head, it was something. He was present, human, thinking. Alive.

Steve stared at him through the darkness between the observation booth and the pod. Watched the tiny movements of the Asset’s eyes flickering from side to side as he thought through—escape plans? Answers to Steve’s constant questions? His state of being trapped in that little glass pod in a striped prisoner’s uniform and no shoes?

He looked troubled. And vulnerable. And small, even though he was a big man.

He looked lonely.

He looked alone.

Steve’s stomach hurt as he watched him, sitting there so still except for the tiny tugs on his flesh hand and the flitting of his eyelids as he looked from left to right, left to right.

The cot had no blankets or sheets, lest the Asset somehow found a way to hang himself in a smooth glass cube. He had no shoes in case he tried to use one as a bludgeon or the laces as a garrote. The cot was built into the bottom of the pod, and the mattress was lumpy with its springs removed in case their ends were too conveniently sharp.

It ached to look at the Asset and see a man. And Steve knew more than anyone else here that he was a man, warm and human and capable of gentleness even with that monstrosity of an arm. He could easily have killed Steve yesterday—or any other day that Steve entered the pod—but he had kept his touch as light as a kiss. The pressure had been there, holding Steve’s wrists against the wall of glass, but there wasn’t a single bruise on Steve’s right wrist, the wrist that had been held by that vibranium hand.

The brace and sling for Steve’s left wrist were inconsequential. The Asset had thought Steve was being threatened by Rollins. He was just trying to protect the little omega.

Steve felt his cheeks go hot even though he was alone, standing in the empty observation booth.

The soft sound of footfalls behind him made Steve turn away from the pod.

“Good morning, Steve,” said Agent Carter. “Are you sure you want to go back in there, what with—” she pointed to Steve’s sling.

“I’m fine,” Steve said. “I blame Rollins for scaring the Asset, not the Asset for being frightened.”

Agent Carter looked momentarily displeased before her face smoothed out to its professional mask. “I just don’t want you to be hurt. He may lash out more violently as he gains more awareness of his… situation.”

“You mean the situation in which he’s a prisoner of war?” Steve shrugged his good shoulder. “I’m more heartened that his reactions mean his brain is healing from… what was done to it. He might soon be able to comprehend what we’re asking of him.”

“If he has even half a brain left in his head, then he comprehends just fine,” said Agent Carter. “He must know by now that we’re seeking information about his compatriots. He’s simply unwilling to give it.”

“I’ve had the most contact with the Asset of anyone here, and you told me once that you thought my judgment was necessary to this project. I judge him incapable of cooperation, not unwilling. But he’s healing. He trusts me. I want to continue to build that trust and earn his cooperation fairly. I don’t want to stoop to the tactics of the Axis. I don’t like bullies.” Steve jutted out his chin. “I don’t care where they’re from.”

Agent Carter stuck her chin out right back. “It’s like you think you’re his shield. He will face judgment for what he’s done, whether he gives up his comrades or not. You’re not prolonging his life by allowing him to remain silent. All you’re doing is killing Allied troops.”

“He can’t answer us,” Steve said, breathing hard through his nose. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I’m not going to torture a mute man for not speaking!”

Agent Carter stared down at Steve with her own mouth set in a sharp red purse. After a minute, she seemed to deflate slightly, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“No,” she said. “I suppose not. And if I am going to continue to champion you as the leader of our project, then I have to defer to you. You’re the only person who has actually been near the Asset since he gained consciousness. You do know best.”

Steve relaxed his hands. “Thank you, Agent Carter. I appreciate your continued confidence. Trust me, no one is more frustrated with the Asset’s lack of communication than I am.”

They exchanged brittle smiles, and Agent Carter turned to enter the observation booth while Steve stayed where he stood, waiting to be given the greenlight to head up to the pod.

Steve wondered if it were really true—that he was the person most frustrated by the Asset’s inability to answer his questions.

Because if there was a human mind inside the Asset, surely he was the person most frustrated by his inability to explain himself. Steve just needed to find a way to help the Asset unlock his ability to communicate. If speaking didn’t work, maybe he could write or sign. Morse. They were a damned codebreaking operation; they knew more modes of communication than anyone else on planet Earth. Steve just needed to find the right one. He was so sure now that the Asset could understand him…

It was only a matter of time before he began to understand the Asset, too.

“You can enter the pod, Dr. Rogers,” said Agent Carter through the overhead speaker.

Steve stood in the lift, Agent Carter called for it to rise, and Steve braced himself for another thorough scenting.

The Asset stood up from his cot when the lift opened and Steve stepped out. His eyes swept over Steve in frantic waves, balking at the brace that held Steve’s arm close to his narrow chest.

Steve attempted a light smile. “Hi, pal. Don’t mind the brace. It doesn’t hurt. You didn’t hurt me.”

The Asset’s gaze calmed, but he stayed unnervingly focused on Steve’s face. Steve kept his feet firmly planted and just waited for the feral Alpha to whuff him again—but the Asset didn’t rush him.

Instead, he approached slowly. Almost skittish. Like he were the small one in the pod, the breakable one, the person in danger instead of being the danger. Steve stayed where he was and endeavored to keep his scent steady and pleasant as he waited to see what the Asset would do. He was desperately curious.

The Asset’s throat worked, Adam’s apple rolling up and down as he took swallow after swallow. Steve watched, bracing slightly for another onslaught of scenting—

The Asset stuck his right hand out. Six inches too high, but his wrist offered forward to give Steve access to the gland there. Palm flat.

Steve hesitated, but—what was there to lose?

Steve placed his uninjured hand in the Asset’s outstretched one, his own wrist gland brushing against the Asset’s. The Asset curled his fingers around Steve’s with as much finesse as a finishing school gentleman and lifted their joined hands the rest of the way to his mouth so he could brush his lips over the back of Steve’s thin hand.

The Asset’s throat worked again.

“Hello,” he croaked.

Lightning shot through Steve.

He spoke. He could speak. And in English! His voice sounded American, from that single, painful word, creaked out from between lips that probably hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. Longer than the weeks he’d been in the tender care of the SSR.

The Asset blinked at him.

“Hello,” Steve rushed. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” He paused. “What’s your name?”

The human light went out of the Asset’s eyes at the question. They became blank granite again. His hand dropped and Steve’s fell after it, awkward and hanging in space. Steve rearranged his face quickly so that he wouldn’t look so disappointed. But somewhere inside the Asset was a man, an Alpha, who could probably smell it on Steve anyway.

“That’s alright,” Steve said gently. “I’ll take ‘hello.’ That’s a big enough day. I bet that wasn’t easy for you. Do you want to sit down?”

The Asset compliantly sat on his sagging cot. Steve walked over and stood across from the little bed with a big, big man in it, and he rested his hands on his hips just so they wouldn’t reach back out for the Asset’s hand again.

“I need to ask you some questions again today,” Steve told him. The Asset stared blankly ahead and Steve’s heart fell in a way that took some work to gather his scent back up and master it into a neutral, contented calm. “I really appreciate the effort you put into speaking. I hope that you can help me out.” Steve crouched just enough that he could meet the Asset’s gaze.

The Asset’s eyes skittered away from his.

“Alright,” Steve said. He stood again. “Asset, who gives you your orders?”

The Asset’s eyes flicked back to Steve. He opened his mouth once, twice, and then snapped it shut again.

“It’s alright,” Steve said gently. “You’re alright.” Steve paused. “What division is Schloss Strücker housing?”

The scent of Alpha distress began to float through the pod, acrid and sour. The Asset looked up at Steve from under his brows and that sweep of messy dark hair, waiting.

Steve could feel the tension in the air as the Asset, and Agent Carter outside the pod, waited for Steve to start reciting the coded padding words again. To force the Asset to—something. To obey. To comply.

So Steve just smiled gently and said, “That’s alright. We can just sit. I’m so happy that you were able to say hello today, pal. Come on, let’s check out your breakfast so you can eat.”

He crossed the pod towards the Asset’s sad little cot and the rumpled brown bag holding his daily cold toast, pat of margarine, and bruised apple.

The Asset didn’t follow right away. He kept watching Steve from under his hair, eyes big and thoughtful and full of some emotion that Steve could never hope to name. The Asset’s adam’s apple bobbed a few times as he fishmouthed silently.

Steve looked away, uncomfortable with the display of vulnerability from the Alpha. He busied himself with showing the Asset each item of food and making a show of looking it over approvingly, as he did every day.

The Asset made a creaking noise like he was clearing his throat.

Steve’s head shot up.

“Thank you,” the Asset said softly. “Steve.”

Steve couldn’t contain the grin that spread across his face. “That’s right. That’s me, Steve. You’re welcome, pal.”

A smile flickered over the Asset’s face then, and it utterly transformed him: he was beautiful.

Suddenly he wasn’t a damaged half-mad thing with scraggly, long hair and a scruffy, unkempt beard and flat eyes that looked right through everyone and everything around him. He was a young man, painfully young, with eyes the color of the Atlantic Ocean in April and a white grin that made Steve ache for his teeth.

And then just as suddenly, the smile was gone and the blank face had returned, but the Asset glanced at Steve once before slowly lowering himself to the floor. He moved forward on his knees, like he didn’t want to spook Steve.

“What—are you doing?”

No answer. But the Asset pressed his face against Steve’s stomach like the day before, and he hummed once, short and sweet.

Steve didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Are you alright, Rogers?” Agent Carter’s voice came crackling through the overhead and Steve nearly jumped with the stark reminder that he and the Asset were not alone.

“I’m fine,” he said, and he was impressed at how steady his voice remained even though the Asset’s hot breath was whuffing quietly into Steve’s belly like—

Like—

Like he enjoyed the scent of Steve, faint as it was.

“Rogers,” said Agent Carter over the speaker again. “Do you want me to send in STRIKE with a tranquilizer?”

“No,” Steve said. His hands hovered an inch above the Asset’s shoulders. The flesh shoulder radiated heat, all of those Alpha hormones and all that vitality making that big body thrum with life and flush blood. The metal shoulder seemed to radiate cold. Like that part of the Asset was still frozen, deep down. “We’re both fine in here.”

“Hopefully you’ll have time to let me know before you’re not,” Agent Carter said. Her tone, or the buzz of the microphone, crisped her words to a roast.

After another minute, Steve slowly, carefully lowered his hands and rested them on the Asset’s shoulders.

The metal arm shivered beneath his touch, recalibrating its plates like it had a mind of its own. It was cooler than the blazing flesh shoulder beneath Steve’s other palm, but it wasn’t as icy as Steve had feared. Other than the slide of the plates as it shifted—it brought to Steve’s mind the image of a flower’s petals opening to absorb the heat of the sun, the way the Asset’s metal arm shifted under the palm of his hand—the arm was completely still. It didn’t twitch, it didn’t move with the Asset’s whuffing breaths, there was no steady beat of a pulse.

Steve wondered for the first time whether the Asset could feel anything touching it, with all of those nerves left inside. Or if they simply left the nerves so that he would be in pain every time his arm moved.

Steve licked his lip.

That would be intel.

And it would sate his own burning curiosity.

“Can—can you feel this?” he asked, patting the metal shoulder lightly.

The Asset’s contented whuffing paused. His forehead rested against Steve’s belly.

Steve let him think and gather the words, let them traverse their slow way between his healing mind and his mouth.

“Warm,” the Asset grunted.

Steve kept his hand very still, too. “Does it hurt?”

No answer. The Asset just kept breathing evenly into Steve’s stomach. The heartbeat in his right shoulder calmed slowly and the scent of him grew more round and contented. Steve could more easily pick out the notes of crisp green apple and burnt sugar, and he felt his cheeks color slightly—the sweet tones of an Alpha’s scent came out when the Alpha was aroused.

He wondered if maybe he should have accepted the presence of a STRIKE team member in the pod, just in case.

He had never spent so much time alone with an Alpha as he had with the Asset.

Of course, Steve rationalized, it wasn’t that the Alpha inside the Asset were attracted to Steve. His scent was too weak and his belly and hips too skinny; he didn’t emit ripe, lush pheromones, and he didn’t have any of Darcy- or Natasha’s curves. He was simply the first, and possibly the only, omega that the Asset had been allowed unfettered access to in… who knew how long. It was an automatic reaction to pull Steve close and soak up as much omega scent as he could get, even a broken, pale variant like Steve’s.

Steve swallowed, a lump caught in his throat.

The Asset looked up. Of course he noticed the sour dip in Steve’s smell. He didn’t speak again, but his eyebrows knit in concern.

Steve swallowed again. “Why don’t you sit and eat your breakfast now, pal? You’ve worked hard today. I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

The Asset compliantly backed away and rose smoothly from his knees like a great predator cat. He towered over Steve, standing this close. But he just moved on silent feet back to his cot and sat down. He pulled over the paper bag that Steve had reassembled and removed the piece of toast.

He stared at Steve for a long minute before taking a bite.

“Good job,” Steve encouraged. He crossed the pod, too, and picked up the copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which he had left in the pod in hopes that perhaps the Asset would show some interest in being able to read—and therefore write answers to Steve’s questions. The book had gone untouched except when Steve took it in hand to read to the Asset, however, as he did now.

It was a dreadful thing to see. Humans beings can be awful cruel to one another.

As Steve read, the Asset stared at him with those huge ice-chip eyes. His metal arm whirred softly as he mechanically lifted the toast to his mouth bite by bite.

Steve wondered if without him touching it, the arm made the Asset feel cold.

Chapter 14: Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Text

Steve had to decide what type of anxiety clenched his stomach: dread or excitement.

The Asset was talking! Something Steve had been working towards for weeks! He understood English, spoke it without prompting, like it was the tongue that his brain reached for first in its reconstruction of language. That was a good thing. An important thing.

And he knew Steve’s name.

He knew how to answer Steve’s questions, as long as the answers were short and immediate. He still wasn’t giving any answers about the metal arm or the cryogenic freezing tube. Nothing about who had enhanced him from human to superhuman. No troop movements. No hints to the puzzle that he represented.

But still, he was speaking.

And he knew Steve’s name.

He also unabashedly enjoyed Steve’s scent, and Steve didn’t know how to react to that, it being something that had never happened to him before. His scent was too faint for most Alphas to register, but of course whatever had made the Asset bigger and stronger and faster than other Alphas would have enhanced his senses, too.

It made Steve feel naked, to be able to be scented.

It made a terrible part of Steve that he’d worked his whole adult life to quash start to flutter with a stupid, inane sort of hope.

Maybe someday an Alpha will find me, it whispered. Maybe someday I won’t be alone.

“Stuff it,” Steve muttered aloud to the sunrise playing in stripes on his bedroom walls. “You’re fine.”

And he was.

He was fine.

Just fine.

Steve remained fine for the next ten days as spring of ’43 turned into summer. Interacting with the Asset felt a bit like rehearsing for a play: every day the same, just a little better. A little smoother and more comfortable.

Hello.

Thank you, Steve.

He hadn’t said much more than that no matter what Steve asked him about the mystery of his past. Whenever Steve asked for his name, the Asset’s eyes glazed over and he fumbled like his thoughts were ricocheting off a brick wall. After five days, despite Agent Carter’s insistence, Steve stopped asking.

He would wait. Give the man more time to heal. Then he would try again. He could take his cues from the Alpha.

From the Asset.

Not the Alpha.

Steve continued reading to the Asset—more works from Twain, because even if he turned out not to be an American, Twain might turn him into one—and listening with him to the Starks’ wireless radio. The Asset seemed to like jazz more than classical music, but it furrowed his brow like he didn’t understand it. Steve stopped trying to ramble on and on and urge the Asset to talk through a sheer number of words. Instead, he let the pod fall into relative silence and watched as the other man ran through unvoiced questions in his mind. They listened to the news-free jazz hour most mornings, and after a few days, the Asset’s mouth began to almost-smile at the first notes of the trumpets or clarinets.

“What,” he asked four days in, pointing to the radio. “Is it.”

“Hmm?” Steve lifted the radio. “This?”

The Asset nodded, his brow creased. Steve let him find the next words and it took several minutes. “Where… is it. The music.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “That’s a good question, pal. The music is being played somewhere far away, and this little radio can help us listen to it all the way down here.”

The Asset looked frustrated. “Where is…” his right hand came up and he drew a revolving circle in the air. “This.”

“Oh!” Steve blinked. “The record? It’s a radio, pal, not a phonograph. We don’t need a record. This, ah, antenna here, it interprets electromagnetic frequencies from the air all around us and—um,” Steve trailed off. “Don’t they have radios in Germany?”

The Asset looked down at his knees. His revolving right hand fell slowly down to rest on his lap, and he cradled his left hand.

Steve didn’t honestly know whether they had radios in Germany. They were probably too expensive after the sanctions from the last war. Maybe the Asset had never seen one before. But if he were American, he should know what a radio was. They had been fairly common in houses since Steve was a baby. Even he and his ma had one, and they didn’t have much of anything worth much of anything. But it was important for Steve to get some culture, Ma always said, and she would let him listen to Mystery House if he did all of his homework and could report to her about the classical composers and news that were on while she was at work.

Maybe she wanted to get a little culture, too.

“Hey.” Steve gentled his voice. “I know you don’t like questions about Germany. But I’d sure like to know something, pal.”

The Asset didn’t look up.

Steve didn’t press.

Eventually the Asset lifted his head and said, very carefully, “No music.”

Steve blinked again. “In Germany?”

A nod.

“I guess that’s a start,” Steve said, and he smiled at the Asset. “Thank you for telling me that. I’m sorry you weren’t able to listen to any music for a while.”

“Long time,” the Asset said quietly. His eyes were haunted.

“For a long time,” Steve amended. He kept his voice as gentle as he could. “Do you know how long there was no music?”

The Asset hesitated before he shook his head. “Cold.”

Steve closed his eyes.

That was right: the Asset had been kept on ice. There was no telling how long the Asset had been in service to the Nazis when he clearly was powered down to near-lifeless and kept in cold storage like a piece of meat or a weapon in an arsenal. He could have spent mere days since 1939 awake or been a part of every major battle between Hitler’s rise to power and the day of his capture by the howling Commandos.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I forgot about the cold.” He studied the Asset’s blank face and troubled eyes. “Did it hurt? The cold?”

The Asset didn’t answer. Instead he slid down from his perch on the edge of his cot and shuffled over to Steve on his knees. Steve knew what was coming now: when the Asset was particularly upset, he buried his face in Steve’s stomach, whuffing softly as his shoulders lost their tension.

Steve sighed and focused on keeping his own mood calm and neutral. There would be no more verbal answers from the Asset today, not after a regression like this. He could expect an earful from Agent Carter after the session for not pushing to get more information about the length of time the Asset had been working for the Nazi regime.

Something about the way the question—and the cryogenic freezing—made the Asset respond made Steve think that it had been quite a while.

But how long could it really be?

Why hadn’t he recognized a radio? Even with the alien technology added by the Starks to make a radio that would work wirelessly so far below ground, he should have known the difference between a radio and a gramophone.

Curious.

Even now that he was speaking, the Asset created more questions than answers for Steve.

June in Washington, D.C. was warm. The air felt like soup against Steve’s skin. He was used to summer heat, but the wind off the Sound did more to cool the air in Brooklyn than Steve had ever known to be thankful for. He was tempted to go to work in his shirtsleeves—he’d seen Tony tinkering beneath JARVIS in his undershirt more than once—but of course, an omega could never. He did start leaving his sweaters at home. There would be no need, even deep beneath Stark Mansion. It was hardly cooler underground than it was on his route from the sweltering boarding house to the Mansion.

“Guess we’re not paying for the breeze,” Scott grunted over a cold cut dinner one evening.

“Guess not,” Steve agreed. It was hard to be hungry this sweaty. “I thought you lived in California?”

“Northern California,” Scott said. “We’ve got ocean air and morning fog to keep us cool. This swamp is a hellhole, pardon my French.”

Steve chuckled a little, but it was too hot even to laugh. “I thought Brooklyn was muggy this time of year. I’ll kiss the Long Island Sound when I get back.”

“I might ask the Bay if it’ll mate me,” Scott agreed.

Steve choked on his sandwich and glowered at Scott, eyes watering.

It was too hot to think about mating. Even as a joke. After Scott left, Steve took a cool bath and fell asleep on top of the sheets in only his underwear. He wished he could leave the window open for the illusion of fresh air, but Alphas had been known to climb all the way to the third floor of houses to get at omegas they wanted.

Ha.

As though any Alpha would go to that sort of effort for Steve.

The next morning, Steve made unhappy noises as he dressed in long pants and a long-sleeved shirt appropriate for work in mixed company. Darcy and Natasha had taken to wearing short sleeves, and even Wanda came in with little cap sleeves once in the previous days, but Steve was too self-conscious and—well. Steve’s job required up-close contact with an unmated Alpha, and theirs did not. Steve needed to preserve his image as a good omega. His mother, rest her soul, would rise from the grave if he went to parade in front of a half-feral alpha in shirtsleeves.

Steve had chalk in his hair from working with Jane on a new cipher pattern by the time he made it down to see the Asset.

The Asset, unlike Steve, had no qualms about being in shirtsleeves in this heat. He had shed his striped prisoner’s shirt and wore his soft trousers and undershirt, instead, the metal arm gleaming in the overhead lights. His right arm was no less impressive and terrifying, the muscles bulging with each of the Asset’s little movements as he paced the pod. He looked unhappy and thoughtful, but he wasn’t scowling. Steve was getting better at reading the Asset’s little expressions—and his scent, he thought, with an embarrassed little flush in his stomach.

Even with the metal arm, the Asset was handsome. The picture of a virile Alpha, able to run and hunt and catch and kill, able to provide.

Steve clenched his hands into fists for a moment before stepping into the lift to enter the pod.

The Asset stopped pacing as soon as he smelled Steve’s arrival. Even his faint scent was stronger with all the sweat collected in his hairline and collarbone and the small of his back.

He moved closer to the lift on the tips of his toes, but he didn’t come close enough that Steve worried about an escape attempt. The Asset had made no such moves at all, he thought. Like he was content to stay in a glass prison.

Although given his prior accommodations had kept him painfully frozen for who-knew-how-long, and Stark Mansion at least fed him every day, perhaps the Asset was content here.

The Asset had once been a man, Steve thought. And he deserved better than this.

Steve stepped out of the lift and it disappeared almost silently, leaving only that tiny seam in the pod’s floor. The Asset didn’t even look at it as he approached Steve, his nose working the air as he took in deep sips of Steve’s sweaty scent.

“Good morning, pal,” Steve said. “Hot enough for you?”

The Asset brushed his lips over the back of Steve’s hand just as he did the day before. His eyes slid to the side blankly when Steve, again, asked for his name, but he didn’t drop Steve’s hand this time. It shuddered in Steve’s grasp, but he maintained the same gentle grip on Steve’s fingers until Steve completed the old-fashioned ritual: he stroked the tips of his fingers over the Asset’s wrist gland, a sign of trust—respect—and availability.

This was a courting gesture.

Whatever else the Asset was beneath that blank exterior and fearsome mask, he was an Alpha who recognized the omega in Steve. And Steve wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

When the Asset let Steve’s hand go, his face twitched. For a half a second, something that could have been the ghost of a smile passed over the Asset’s cracked pink lips.

“Well,” Steve said, something distinctly flustered in his stomach. He moved to his customary seat in the pod and sat down. “What should we talk about today?”

The Asset didn’t sit down. Instead he crossed purposefully to his little cot and lifted the pillow. Beneath it was a slightly bruised apple, certainly saved from the meager breakfast that was shoved through the hatch a few hours earlier.

The Asset held the apple in his metal hand with all the delicacy of someone holding a bird’s egg.

He crossed the pod again to Steve and knelt down in front of where Steve sat. The apple lifted towards Steve’s lips.

“Eat,” urged the Asset. His voice was still rusty with disuse, but there was a low rumble of pure Alpha beneath that.

“Oh, I’m—I’m alright,” Steve said almost directly into the apple. “Thank you.”

“Eat,” the Asset—the Alpha—insisted. His eyes were big and bluer than they used to be, trained on Steve’s face with life behind them. When Steve still didn’t move to bite the apple, the Asset’s brow furrowed slightly and he brought the apple back down, close to his chest. With a flash of the metal hand and a quick twist of his human one, the apple was halved and he was trying again with just one half of the apple, its juice sliding down over the flesh thumb of his right hand. “Eat. Please.”

Steve swallowed. He was keenly aware of Agent Carter in the observation booth watching them.

But still, the Asset was talking. If he wanted to keep him that way, he should accept the offering—right?

It was one of the most basic courting behaviors of an Alpha, to provide food for their intended omega. And the Asset was already being fed so little for a man of his huge size. Steve knew better than to waste food. There was no harm in accepting.

He leaned forward and let the Asset slide part of the apple-half into his mouth. He bit down, and the crisp sound was deafeningly loud in the pod. The Asset’s breath was the only other sound as Steve chewed the bite of apple.

That almost-smile flickered over the Asset’s face again. “Good.”

Steve’s stomach clenched. He pleased Alpha.

The Asset’s eyes shone. They looked more blue from this angle, or perhaps from that lively, lovely shine, than their usual ice-chip gray. His face looked younger, like he should be smooth-faced instead of sporting an unkempt dark beard. Perhaps he was smooth-faced once upon a time, but Steve had never seen him that way. Even frozen, he’d had a covering of dark stubble on his cheeks and chin—uneven like someone had quickly hacked off any beard growth with an uncareful straight razor before the freezing process began. Or before the Asset could get that metal arm free and around their throat.

Steve took another bite of the apple. The Asset hummed softly. It wasn’t the purr of a content Alpha, but Steve would never expect that from such a pitiable man in such a horrific situation. That hum was enough to make Steve’s spine feel hot and liquid. He wanted to—to chirp, to make a content sound back to him. He wanted to cuddle into the Asset’s warm bulk even though it was easily over eighty degrees in the pod today.

He wanted to cover himself in the Asset’s scent while he was glowing with sweat and carry that sweet musk home with him. Cover his clothes in it to stash away for his next Heat. And the next, and the next, and the next. As many as he could manage before either the Asset were killed for war crimes or—or somehow healed, pardoned, and gone off to choose a suitable omega who wasn’t Steve.

The Asset’s brow furrowed. “Why. Sad.”

sh*t.

Steve forgot that the Asset could actually scent the changes in his mood.

He quickly took another bite of the apple. “I’m not sad, pal. Everyone is just fine here.”

The Asset co*cked his head, considering Steve’s lie. Steve could see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he tried to work out what could have made Steve’s mood dip from content and fed to sad enough to sour his scent.

“Steve. Is good,” the Asset said finally. His big hands came up to frame Steve’s hips gently. His face dipped forward so that he could whuff at Steve’s skinny belly. He hummed again, scent gentle, and rubbed his nose over Steve’s thin shirt.

Steve continued to eat his apple half. What else could he do?

Steve could tell that Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips were losing whatever patience they once had for this project. For him. Every morning that passed without getting real answers out of the Asset was a morning that they could not provide the men on the Front with lifesaving information. Could not tell the President that an end to the war was in sight. Could not save Allied forces from ambushes by the Axis.

Could not rightfully tell Steve that he had done anything to help his country.

And Steve did want, so badly, to be of help to the cause. The dispatches that arrived daily with news of gore and grit on the Western Front were enough to make anyone want to be a patriotic American, Steve thought, but more than that, he was invested now that his Commandos were back on the frontlines. Not that he got to hear from them anymore, not now that their role in Operation Thumbtack was complete.

He’d like to think that at least he’d be told if any of them had died.

Natasha disappeared to Europe and back on silent feet, weaving a web of intelligence around the world with the deftness of the spider that was her secret codename. Steve thought that even if Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips never would, Natasha would keep him apprised of the fates of the men he had chosen to send into the belly of the beast.

He tried not to be jealous when he thought surely, she still saw Dernier out there in the wild, wide world. Dernier, who looked at nullified Natasha like she was perfect.

It didn’t hurt as much to think about now that there was an Alpha who so clearly enjoyed Steve’s own soft scent.

Who insisted on feeding Steve part of his meager breakfasts.

Who was trying to learn to speak again, just to please Steve.

How did Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips not see what an extraordinary triumph that was unto itself? Not only had Steve proven that the Asset was physically and psychologically still capable of speech at all—he’d earned the man’s trust enough for him to try. He might not yet be able to answer the questions that the SSR most sought, but he was willing and able to answer what he could.

Did the arm hurt him?

Hurts.

Can you feel sensation with it?

Warm. Cold.

And of course, the revelation that he had been without music for a long time.

(It made Steve ache, to think of how long it would have taken the dirty Nazis to do operation after operation on the man the Asset had once been to turn him into—what he now was. The layers of scar tissue near the seat of his arm. The wires that wormed their way through the coils of his brain.

The naked nerves left inside the metal arm.

When Steve was eight, he had gotten polio. It took longer than his sainted mother would have liked for them to detect its symptoms in him: after all, weakness and fatigue weren’t uncommon for Steve. But one night he woke to a gasping, piercing pain in the back of his neck. It felt like his head weighed a thousand pounds, and he would never be able to lift it from the thin pillow. When he reached out for his mother, his arms shook like late-September leaves. Sarah had rested her cool palm on his forehead and murmured, “My love, you’re burning up. Blessed be.”

She rang Father Kelly, who was the younger and stronger of St. Ann’s priests, on the telephone in the lobby. Steve shook and sweated alone in his bed for the ten minutes Sarah was gone, certain in a way that he’d never been before that he would die before she returned.

“I can’t move,” Steve gritted when he saw Father Kelly’s black overcoat. “I can’t move.”

“Aye, you can, my boy,” Father Kelly said, his voice gentle. But Steve was old enough to read the regret in the priest’s eyes—and the panic there, too. By now, in 1943, Steve was older than Father Kelly had been that night. The priest gathered Steve up like laundry and carried him down all of the rickety flights of stairs to a waiting car owned by the church.

Steve knew that car.

It was the hearse.

At the hospital, the doctors talked about Steve like he wasn’t even there, warning Sarah that he had poliomyelitis and it had become quite serious; hadn’t she noticed? Such a weak boy, such a poor heart. Such a shame that he had gotten the disease so young; omegas who caught polio before their bodies finished developing often became infertile, their pelvic bones deformed and brittle from the wasting. Look at that twisted little creature in the narrow hospital bed. He would never be a full omega now.

Steve didn’t remember much after that until later, when he somehow survived. He remembered the terrible experimental treatments from Australia to which the nurses at the hospital subjected him: the blazing hot, hours-long steam-baths and the painful deep-tissue massages. He remembered the way his nearly dead nerves screamed in pain from both the heat and the touch.

How could the Asset stand to move his metal arm at all?)

The lift delivered Steve into the prisoner pod after an unusually terse morning salutation from Agent Carter. She still smiled at him with her Montezuma red lips, but the smile did not reach her eyes. It was hardly the look that she’d given him when she declared him the Allies’ secret key to winning the war, or when he first successfully decoded an Axis cipher.

That was alright.

The Asset sat up straight as the lift brought Steve into his view, but he waited until the hatch had disappeared back into the glass floor before he stood.

He was a man of impeccable self-control, Steve thought. Or training. He had always understood the rules of his incarceration here.

“Good morning,” Steve said. He accepted the Asset’s offer of his right hand. His lips were warm and beard scratchy when he kissed Steve’s skin. His fingertips lingered on Steve’s scent gland as his blue eyes roved over Steve’s face.

“Good. Morning. Steve.” The Asset’s face relaxed with something like pride that he managed to string so many words together in a row—and the correct words, too. “Omega.”

“That’s right, pal,” Steve said. “I’m an omega, all right.”

The Asset’s eyes lightened in an infinitesimal smile. He kept his thumb on Steve’s scent gland, rubbing it lightly. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then—

The Asset growled and herded Steve behind him, holding tight with his fearsome metal arm. The grip was so strong that Steve could feel every rivet, every shiver of the vibranium as the nerves trapped inside that metal sheath twitched.

“What’s wrong, pal?” Steve asked. His heart beat fast at the warmth of the Asset pressed up against him. "Everything is just fine."

"They. Are coming,” the Asset growled. “Not safe.”

“Who’s coming?” Steve blinked up at the sharp line of the Asset’s set jaw. “We’re all alone here, pal. Just you and me. And Agent Carter in the booth, that’s the voice you hear sometimes, the dame—the lady.”

“Not safe,” the Asset insisted. “They. Are coming.”

Before Steve could reassure him again, the floor of the pod opened and the lift rose into view. The Asset started a full growl, the low rumble making every hair on Steve’s body stand up. It was a sound that spelled of danger, of an impending fight. Of blood. Of Alpha victorious, bringing down the enemy, returning to his omega on a battle high, needing comfort.

Steve swallowed and patted the Asset’s side. He could feel every one of the Asset’s muscles ready to spring into action. “It’s alright.”

The Asset snapped his teeth.

The lift finished rising. Natasha was inside, standing in her black slacks and a black top with a long puss*bow, every red hair perfectly curled, looking cool as a cucumber.

“Why are you here?” Steve asked, at the same moment that the Asset’s growl rose in volume. Steve had to yell to be heard over it. “Natasha, why are you here?”

She looked so calm she was nearly bored. “Agent Carter wanted me to come in and try an alternative interrogation technique. You aren’t getting answers quickly enough, Steve.”

Steve flushed, furious. “I’m the head of this operation, not Agent Carter.” He looked at the glass ceiling of the pod where the speakers were installed. “I’m the head of this operation!”

“You need assistance, Dr. Rogers,” came Agent Carter’s clipped voice. “Natasha has experience with interrogation that you do not have. One would think that a strategist such as yourself would see the value in a change of tactic.”

Steve could feel the Asset’s heavy breaths making his chest and back heave. He was breathing just as hard, furious that they were going to undermine all of his progress with this damaged, but thoughtful, man.

He should tell Natasha to leave before anyone got hurt.

The Asset snapped his teeth again.

Natasha considered her bright red fingernails.

She took a step out of the lift.

And the Asset sprung into action. He threw Steve into the corner of the pod and tossed the mattress after him, shielding Steve from the melee before it even began. Steve had hardly a moment to see what was happening before the Asset bounded at Natasha, growl caught in his chest, eyes both fierce and blank as ice, as his earliest days as their prisoner.

The mattress was heavy and stank of unwashed Alpha. Steve knew that he should stand up and try to take calming control of the situation, but—

His anger welled inside of him and he stayed where he was, watching in the reflection on the glass wall as the Asset and Natasha moved like violent dancers. The ferocity and primal fury were almost beautiful: some long-forgotten part of Steve, one that had never before been piqued, rose up to watch the Alpha whose scent suffused Steve’s clothes snarl and fight. He was faster than a normal human. Steve had never seen a melee like this before, but he’d been in enough teenage brawls in Brooklyn back alleys to know that the Asset was no normal Alpha.

He’s the strongest, marveled Steve’s inner omega. He’s the best provider.

But Natasha held her own—nullified omega or otherwise, she too was fast, and where the Asset had pure strength, Natasha was wily. She practically ran sideways along the wall of the pod and got onto the Asset’s shoulders, her thighs tight around his throat as she tried to bring him down.

Steve clenched his hands into fists so tightly that he felt his short nails cut into his palms.

The Asset’s growl didn’t abate as he reached up with that metal arm and plucked Natasha off of him as though she were a flea. Natasha landed on one knee, still ready for action, eyes fierce.

Something glinted silver in her hand.

“Natasha!” Steve yelled, just as she and the Asset collided again. “Don’t hurt—”

The growl deepened, lengthened into a howl.

Natasha had managed to pin a silver disk onto the Asset’s metal arm, and it hung like dead weight. A low buzz filled the pod.

Steve pushed his way out from behind the mattress and rushed toward Natasha and the Asset, who gnashed his teeth in pain. Steve reached out for him—

“Don’t touch,” Natasha said, her voice a breathy rasp. “There’s 500 volts of electricity running through that arm.”

It was Steve’s turn to growl. “Take it off him. The—disk. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He did attack me,” Natasha said mildly. “And Steve… he’s here because he did a great many things wrong. You can’t forget that just because—”

“I haven’t forgotten!” Steve watched the Asset’s teeth grind and his head twitch as he tried to stay upright despite the electrification of his arm. Steve pictured all of those stripped nerves inside, white lines glowing on the Vita-Ray screen. “This is torture!”

“This is war, Steve,” Natasha said quietly. “This is interrogation.”

“We have a rapport!”

“You’re compromised.”

“Just because I won’t torture him—”

“Steve.” Natasha sounded tired. Not exhausted by the brawl, but exhausted by the war. “We need to know who made him. We need to stop them from making more.”

Steve clenched his fists again. He couldn’t deny that.

“Asset,” Natasha said in German. “Who gave you your arm?”

The Asset snarled, growled, tossed his head. The arm still hung useless at his side. His pinprick eyes finally moved away from his quarry—Natasha—and found Steve.

He looked so betrayed. “Steve.”

“I don’t think he knows, Natasha,” Steve said. He, too, was exhausted. His stomach hurt. “I don’t think he ever knew who gave him that arm.”

Natasha was kind enough to show her sad sympathy on her face as she removed the shocker disk from the Asset’s arm. He didn’t try to attack her again, still on his knees, breathing hard. He looked up at Steve from beneath his hair with huge eyes, trying to find an explanation for his pain.

“If he can’t tell us anything,” Natasha said quietly to Steve, “Then we have no use for him.”

He would be buried away in an even deeper hole in the ground. Somewhere no one would talk to him or play him music, somewhere without Steve.

He might be literally buried in a hole in the ground, if Colonel Phillips got his way.

And Steve couldn’t do anything about it.

“Let me keep trying,” Steve pleaded to Natasha. To Agent Carter on the intercom overhead. “We have a rapport. Let me repair it. I can find what we’re looking for. You brought me on to crack an impossible code. Let me keep working it.”

Steve approached the Asset slowly, his hands open and relaxed at his sides. When he was close enough, he gently urged the Asset to bury his face in Steve’s stomach the way he liked.

His shoulders were a line of hard tension.

Steve wondered how much the Asset understood of the direness of his situation.

Natasha nodded. She squared her shoulders and looked up towards Agent Carter in the observation booth.

“This was an error of judgment,” she said. “I agree with Rogers’ assessment of the situation. This man is clearly incapable of giving us any answers… right now.” She looked from Steve to the Asset on his knees at his feet. “But he will be.”

Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Text

Steve couldn’t sleep. He turned onto his side and punched the pillow into a new shape, but it didn’t help.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the sight of the Asset brought low by Natasha’s shocker disk, of the utter betrayal in his eyes. And after he had made sure to protect Steve before the fight. Steve had let him be injured. Steve’s own team caused him pain.

How much of the progress he had made with the Asset had been undone?

His shoulders never lost their tension that afternoon even as he breathed in Steve’s scent in great whuffs. He held his weight like his left arm had been removed all over again. Like its nerves were on fire.

Steve let out a frustrated noise and sat up. He angled his alarm clock towards the moonlight spilling in through the window to be able to read the time.

11:55. Nearly midnight.

Steve chewed on his lip.

Then he swung his legs out of the bed and clicked on the bedside lamp. He moved to the closet and put on yesterday’s outfit again—being as he didn’t own enough clothing not to save fresh clothes for the morning; he couldn’t show up two days in a row wearing the same thing without questions—and made a cursory attempt to flatten his hair.

The hallway of the omega boarding house was silent as he shut his room’s door. He carried his shoes to dampen his footsteps as he tiptoed down the wooden corridor towards the stairs.

A dark shape appeared, no windows on the stairway. Steve’s heart ratcheted into his throat.

“Oh, jeez!” Scott’s voice was breathy. “Pal, you scared me half to death.”

“You scared me, too,” Steve whispered once he’d caught his druthers. “What are you doing out so late?”

Scott’s scent heightened with embarrassment. “I—might have an Alpha. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s new. She’s very bossy. I like her so much. Her name’s Hope. I don’t know. Don’t tell anyone. I need my room here, and—”

“I won’t tell,” Steve whispered. “Congratulations.”

His face must have betrayed his pang of jealousy, because Scott whispered, “What about your Alpha from work? That still okay?”

Steve almost laughed out loud.

No, it was not going okay. And he could never explain to anyone what had happened.

“It’s okay,” Steve lied back, heart clenched tight. “Complicated.”

“Here, too,” Scott murmured, his smile just a sad tilt of his lips. “I got a whole life three thousand miles away. Cassie…”

Steve nodded.

He didn’t have a life back in Brooklyn.

If only his complexities were so simple.

Both omega men were silent for a minute, listening to the omnipresent sounds of a boarding house at night—the creak of a mattress, a few dry coughs, the quiet patter of late-night radio from behind a locked door. Nearly-muffled heartsick mewling from a nesting closet somewhere upstairs.

“Were you—” Scott started, nodding towards the shared bathroom door just as Steve whispered, “I should go.”

Scott’s brow furrowed. “You sure it’s safe for you to go out alone at this hour?”

Steve shrugged and tried not to scowl. “I’ll be fine.” He stepped down two stairs, but never heard the bathroom door open or close. Steve stopped and looked back up at Scott, still standing on the landing, staring down at him.

Steve sighed. He nodded as confidently as he could in the dark. “I’ll be fine.”

Scott nodded back and flipped Steve a little salute before disappearing into the bathroom.

Steve exhaled and tiptoed the rest of the way down the stairs, careful to avoid the creaky third step before the main floor landing. He sat on the bottom step and laced into his shoes, then retrieved his coat and hat from the closet beneath the staircase. It was black as pitch inside the closet, but Steve was able to find his own belongings by scent alone.

He had never been out-of-doors so late at night. Not even in his tumultuous, underemployed teenage years, when he was too young to work as a teacher and too omega to do anything else. He may have been angry and disaffected and alone, but he wasn’t stupid. Steve had never been that a day in his life.

Until maybe today.

He set off on the route towards Stark Mansion and found it utterly transformed under moonlight. The shrubbery set looming shadows over the sidewalk, and the pavement itself was completely devoid of its morning rushing crowds. With the war, everyone went to bed early and rose early for long days of work. Houses that were familiar now during the day became derelict haunts with ominous maws for doors.

A jingle from beside one of these monstrosities made Steve jump half-out of his skin.

“Ruff!”

Steve clutched his chest and looked to the house he passed on the corner every day—the dog he’d so often patted as it fetched the morning paper was chained to its wooden doghouse, big black eyes shining in the faint glow of streetlamps.

“Ruff!” It barked again. Its tongue lolled.

“Shhh,” Steve urged, his heart still pounding fast. What if the dog woke its owners? What if it were owned by an Alpha, and he saw Steve all alone out here, and—

Steve pulled his coat tighter around himself.

The movement caused a waft of the Asset’s scent to find Steve’s nose. It made him feel—

Well. If a rogue Alpha accosted Steve, they, too, would smell the Asset on Steve’s clothing. On his wrists and his neck. If they were an Alpha with any sense of propriety about them, it would be enough to save Steve.

The Asset had thrown Steve out of the direction of his melee with Natasha, so it stood to reason that he wouldn’t mind serving as Steve’s protector now. Steve reasoned. Steve rationalized. Steve hoped.

Still, he walked as quickly as he could without triggering an asthma attack. The wooded path to the basem*nt entrance of Stark Mansion was full of heartbroken ghosts hidden in the boughs, and Steve broke into a run for the last few yards before the door.

He rested his hands on his knees and pulled in breaths that whistled, but didn’t quite wheeze. When he could stand again, he mopped his forehead with his handkerchief before letting himself into the corridor. The click of the magnetic lock sounded as loud as a gunshot.

Stark Mansion was hardly empty—codes came through at all hours of the day and night, and people worked just as long to make sure they were broken—but the absence of Steve’s usual team made the hall feel silent as he slipped through, past the desks of other omegas working diligently on their own parts of the project. Steve didn’t know them, and they didn’t know Steve. Plausible deniability in case any of them were ever caught and found out.

He could smell that Phillips was gone for the night—no cigar smoke weighting down the air, and his too-sharp Alpha-smug scent had cleared out, too. Steve could smell Tony somewhere in the direction of the JARVIS, though, so he kept his head down. Tony didn’t know about the Asset, per se, but he was a smart man. He had surely put two and two together that something more than a cold steel weapon was in his own home, and that Steve was in charge of its care and keeping. Steve didn’t want to answer his questions.

A conversation with Tony Stark was exhausting even at more reasonable hours than 1AM.

Steve’s hard-soled shoes echoed on the hard floor as he walked down the corridor towards the last set of stairs before the pod, but he didn’t try to creep. The surest way to stand out, Natasha would have said, was to act abnormally. So Steve just walked, easy as he pleased, and descended the steps into the big, empty space that held the Asset’s pod. His cage.

Steve’s footsteps echoed on the dark stone of the sub-basem*nt floor. He kept his good ear piqued, listening for any sound—Phillips’ STRIKE team guards in particular—but he didn’t honestly expect anything. The Asset moved silently in his prison.

As it was, Steve jumped about out of his skin when he turned the final corner and almost ran bodily into a dark shape in a porkpie hat. The oppressive scent of kirsch and cherry flooded Steve’s nose.

“Ah, Dr. Rogers, I was not expecting to see you here at such a late hour.”

“Dr. Zola.” Steve’s eyebrows rose. “I wasn’t expecting to see you, either. What are you doing with the Asset?”

Dr. Zola’s small, round face smiled, but it didn’t reach his watery eyes. “Most fascinating, is your Asset. You cannot blame me for being curious about him.”

“I didn’t ask how you felt,” Steve said, his voice colder than he’d ever heard himself. Something possessive and territorial in his chest rose up and hissed, Alpha is mine. “I asked what you were doing with him.”

“Simply asking some questions,” Dr. Zola said, and he waved a hand. “He did not answer me. But then, I am not a young, unbonded omega.”

Steve bristled at the aspersion on his character, on his work. It had taken weeks to get him to respond at all, pheromones aside. “I wasn’t made aware that you had clearance to speak to the Asset.”

Dr. Zola’s eyes flashed. “I have clearance to be anywhere I want to be on this project. I was brought here by Agent Carter herself—”

“As were we all,” Steve said coolly. “And I, not Agent Carter, am the project lead regarding the Asset. You do not have my permission, my clearance, to speak with him without my presence in the observation booth.”

“He is not your Alpha, you stupid besotted thing,” snapped Zola. “This is why omegas do not make for good scientists. You cannot tell the difference between your work and your precious feelings.”

“Get out of my way.” Steve’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. He’d picked fights with bullies much bigger than Dr. Arnim Zola in his day, and he wasn’t going to back down just because he was being insulted for being small, for being omega, for being sensitive, for being all the things that he was born to be. “I will be filing an official complaint with Agent Carter for your intrusion on this project. You have no right to compromise our work by—”

“What work?” Zola looked almost amused in his anger. “You sit in that pod and let that reeking beast paw all over you and he answers a few questions about nothing like the war, and you call that work.”

“He can’t give us information he doesn’t have.”

“You are too gullible if you think he knows nothing. He was given orders by someone. He can tell us—”

“He will tell me,” Steve said. “Not us. Not you. You are not assigned to this project. Your presence here disrupts months of work by my team. My team. You need to leave. I will not ask again.”

“Fine.” Zola made a very European noise of dismissal. “Tell Agent Carter that I tried to pick up the slack you left in the line because you would rather be his whor* than do your job. You are not a real doctor… and you are not a real agent. We would never accept someone like you back home.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would. It’s a good thing we’re not the Nazis over here.”

Zola’s pink face went so purple that Steve was vaguely afraid the man would pop a blood vessel in his bigoted brain.

Then, with an eerie instantaneity, Zola’s face was back to its usual shade and calm, unflappable mien.

“Quite so, Mr. Rogers. I will leave you to your… work.” Zola adjusted his bowtie and started down the corridor again, away from the Asset’s prisoner pod.

Steve stared after him, wondering just what had gone through the man’s mind that defused his anger so suddenly and completely. Was he on his way to tell the Starks or Agent Carter that Steve was here long after he should have left for the day and on his way to see the Asset alone? That sounded suspicious, like Steve was trying to withhold information. He could be trying to get Steve in trouble, thrown off the project.

But Agent Carter suspected, if not outright knew, that Steve was, in fact, somewhat smitten with the Asset. She would guess the real reason Steve had come back to the Mansion at night.

Steve’s face felt hot with shame.

He should turn around and leave, too. Go back to the boarding house and wait another eight hours to see the Asset under Agent Carter’s supervision, as usual. At least pretend to be a professional when it came to the man.

But he was already here.

And the prisoner pod was so close.

He really should stop by and at least ascertain that Zola had not done any damage. After all, the last time he’d tried to speak to the Asset, the Asset had postured and growled. If the Asset were in distress, and Steve could help him—

Steve started down the corridor again. Towards the pod.

Maybe the Asset would be asleep, and Steve could turn tail in peace and go back to the boarding house with almost none the wiser.

But at the end of the corridor, the lights that shone into the pod were as bright now as they were at noon. The Asset sat on the edge of his cot, flesh hand cradled in his metal hand, staring down at his fingers with his brow creased in thought. At the sound of the lift being called for the pod, his head jerked up like he was expecting an executioner.

His shoulders visibly relaxed when the lift door opened and Steve stepped out and into the pod. He didn’t stand up, but his head co*cked curiously as he looked Steve over from the top of his head to the soles of his shoes. Steve was acutely aware of his wrinkled clothing and the way his hair spelled of tossing and turning in his bed.

“Uh… hi,” Steve said, reaching up to try and smooth his hair down at the back as best he could. “Hello. I know it’s not the usual time that you see me, but—I suppose I wanted to make sure that you were alright. After what happened earlier today.”

The Asset blinked and tilted his head back to rights. His shoulders relaxed just a fraction more at the soft tone of Steve’s voice.

“Steve,” he said, in his low rasp of a voice. He stood and approached Steve with the same tentative slowness that he always did, giving Steve the time and the freedom to escape if he wanted. “Hello. Steve.”

“Hi,” Steve repeated. He lifted his hand so that the Asset could kiss the back of it, could slide his thumb over Steve’s scent gland. He shuffled a few inches closer and tucked his face into the curve of Steve’s neck for a short, deep whuff and a low, happy hum.

Steve lifted his hand and gently untangled some of the long locks of the Asset’s hair.

“Are you alright?” he asked softly. “Does your arm hurt?”

He allowed the Asset time to formulate his answer and then feel out the words in his mouth.

“It hurts,” the Asset finally admitted. “All the time.” The Asset rested his forehead against Steve’s belly and let Steve comb his fingers through that long hair. Steve tried his best to unknot it without pulling, wanting to spare the Asset from any more pain. He wished that he could get a pair of scissors and a razor in here and restore some basic dignity to this man, who looked so young and handsome when he smiled. Steve wondered what he would look like with a clean-shaven jaw and a side parting.

Probably like a movie star, even with that fearsome arm, Steve thought. He was tall and strapping. Those piercing eyes.

Again, unbidden, the visions he’d entertained during his heat flickered through his head and Steve felt himself warm with an all-over blush.

They were alone.

Truly alone, for the first time.

He’d never been this alone with an Alpha before.

Anything could happen. If the Asset knew they were alone, that the disembodied British voice were not watching from overhead, then… then what would happen? When Steve had been on his midnight walk to the mansion, the idea of an Alpha finding him and—and ravishing him—had been terrifying.

It wasn’t terrifying with this Alpha.

Steve wondered what those scruffy whiskers would feel like on his bare skin. Even through his thin shirt, they scratched a bit. Would they leave red marks behind on his inner thighs? On his neck? Would people know, looking at him, that he was an omega whom someone wanted? Whom someone had taken?

The Asset hummed softly, nuzzling against Steve’s belly. Steve jolted, embarrassed, with the realization that he was wet between his legs and the Asset could surely smell it.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispered. He stopped stroking through the Asset’s hair and rested his hands on the safe, neutral space of his broad shoulders.

The Asset looked up at him with a creased brow. “Why… sorry?”

Steve swallowed around his cottonmouth. “I suppose for no reason.”

The Asset smiled that heartbreaking smile at him, then stood. He looked down at Steve with that smile still playing across his features, and Steve’s breath sped up in his chest. It felt worryingly like an asthma attack, to be smiled down at by an Alpha like that.

The Asset pointed to the little radio and tilted his head. His mouth worked a few times before he seemed to decide on the correct words to say.

“Please. With me.”

“You want me to listen to music with you?” Steve crossed the pod and turned the dial until a music program came through, tinkling piano and the low croon of the brass section. “We can listen to music for a while, pal.”

But the Asset’s brow creased. He carefully moved forward until he was close to Steve again. “With me.”

“I’m right here,” Steve said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The Asset’s flesh hand reached forward and slid over Steve’s hand, curling gently so that their palms, the scent glands on their wrists, were touching. He lifted their clasped hands to shoulder height and stared hard at Steve, trying to communicate something. The metal arm whirred softly at his other side.

Steve didn’t know what to say. He waited, letting the Asset parse his words. All that meddling with his brain… that he was healing enough to speak at all seemed a miracle. Steve could wait until he knew what he wanted to say.

The metal hand lifted and rested lightly on Steve’s waist.

“With me,” repeated the Asset. “Please.”

Steve felt his face go so red he worried that he might pass out from the heart palpitations. The music swelled into the silence, here I go again, here I go again, taking a chance, taking a chance.

“Steve,” said the Asset. “Dance with me. Please.”

“I don’t know how to dance,” Steve said stupidly. But he lifted his empty hand and rested it on the Asset’s metal shoulder. It wasn’t cold under his fingers: it blazed heat just like the rest of the Asset, energy thrumming under its plating even if that energy came from machinery and mercury instead of muscle and blood.

The Asset’s eyes softened at the corners, as though he were smiling. “I’m. Can.” He paused and closed his eyes, exhaling once shortly through his nose, frustrated. He opened his eyes. “I can. Dance. Steve.”

Steve felt inexplicably like crying. Something hurt in the pit of his stomach. He had been to dance clubs before, on occasion—when he felt well enough, when he could afford the cover charge, when he wanted to brave the odds. He always ended up standing on the sidelines and watching as Alphas and betas asked the other omegas onto the floor. But never Steve.

The Asset was a healthy, tall Alpha who probably had his pick of omegas once upon a time in Babylon Berlin.

The Asset frowned, and Steve realized that his sadness had crept into his scent. He kept forgetting that the Asset was actually able to detect the changes in Steve’s scent when most people could not.

“What.” The Asset tilted his head and studied Steve’s face. “Steve?”

Steve took a breath, but that only made the Alpha scent of the Asset fill Steve’s lungs and swirl that much closer. He tried hard to smile. “Nothing’s wrong. Of course I’ll dance with you.”

The Asset’s eyes softened again and he urged Steve a few inches closer with the metal hand on Steve’s waist. Slowly, they began to sway to the rhythm of the song, now I prove again that I can make life move again.

“Steve,” the Asset said. He sounded—content. He smelled content, the warm musk of his scent blanketing the air in the glass pod. “Omega.”

“I am,” Steve agreed. “I mean, I’m Steve. And I’m an omega. Yes.”

The sides of the Asset’s mouth lifted in a real smile, as though Steve had said something funny instead of just vaguely embarrassing. They revolved, the Asset leading Steve through a simple turn as they danced almost in place. The metal hand brought Steve closer and closer to the Asset’s body and its radiating heat. Other than when the Asset whuffed him, Steve had never been so close to an Alpha. He felt… shivery and small and delicate and overwhelmed.

“My omega,” the Asset amended, still smiling gently down at Steve.

Steve froze, and the Asset’s hand pulled as he kept turning for a moment although Steve had utterly stopped moving.

My omega.

My omega.

My omega.

Steve wasn’t—

The Asset couldn’t—

Did he know about Steve’s last Heat? About what he imagined? About the things that Steve wanted, but could never have? Because he couldn’t, not with the Asset.

The Asset was Steve’s prisoner.

Steve let his hands fall slack and stepped away from the Asset, his chest roiling with shame. How was he any better than whoever had turned a seemingly soft, gentle Alpha into a brutally efficient killing machine when he was essentially brainwashing him, too? Isolating him. Giving him metered doses of kindness to coax out information. Using his Alpha biology against him by sending in an omega in the first place! All of it primed the Asset to—to think that he could trust Steve.

(Steve had earned that trust, whispered a traitorous part of his mind. He hadn’t read the last words on that code slip the Asset so feared.)

(Steve had earned that trust by treating the Asset like a person, and not a weapon, murmured the omega inside of Steve. Steve had earned that trust by seeing the Asset as a man and not a monster.)

The Asset’s head co*cked, staring at Steve with a furrowed brow. “Steve?”

Steve crossed his arms tight around his burning chest. “I shouldn’t be here. I need to go.”

The Asset risked reaching forward with his flesh hand, but he stopped short of actually touching Steve. “What? I…” He closed his eyes and huffed again. “What did… I… do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Steve said softly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I did. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t—it’s late. I’m not supposed to be here. I need to go.”

The Asset watched Steve head towards the hatch for the tiny elevator. “Will you. Come back?”

Steve rubbed his hand over his mouth. He felt like he might be sick again, overwhelmed with guilt and want, the drive to get away and the drive to tuck himself back into the Asset’s Alpha arms warring with each other right in the pit of his stomach.

“I’ll come back,” Steve promised. “Tomorrow, in the—in the morning, I’ll be back.”

The Asset looked heartbreakingly relieved. “Steve.”

God, he didn’t even know the Asset’s name. Steve slunk into the lift and carefully avoided looking at the Asset as it descended, but he could feel the gaze of those ice-blue eyes following him until he was out of sight of the pod, making his way through the labyrinthine basem*nt and out again, into the muggy June night. Steve kept his arms wrapped around himself all the way back to the boarding house, trying to hold the shame in so no one else could witness it.

Chapter 16: Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Text

“Darcy,” Steve asked, so suddenly that Darcy jumped a bit and sloshed her mug of coffee, “Sorry—Darcy, where, ah, would a fella go to meet an Alpha, these days?”

Darcy raised an eyebrow. “You’re looking to meet someone, Steve?”

Steve shrugged one shoulder and tried not to think about the Asset’s scent in his nest or the way the Asset’s arms had felt around him while they danced the night before in the glass pod. Steve had gone back in this morning, as he promised, but he stayed only long enough to ask the Asset who gave you your arm? (no answer) and who gave you your orders? (a frown) before fleeing back up to Room Six.

“Figure I might as well try,” Steve settled on. “I’m not getting any younger.”

“You’re still plenty young!” Darcy argued loyally. “The best place to meet an Alpha around here is the Service Club. It’s sort of the only place to meet an eligible Alpha anymore, since the rest are—well. Overseas. I’ve been trying for months to round up the gals to go with me, but Natasha always says she’s too busy and, well, you’ve met Jane. But if you come, I just know they’ll agree!” Darcy grabbed Steve’s wrists. “Oh, we can go tonight! It isn’t a Saturday, so you won’t have to dress up or anything; we can leave straight from here and take the bus. Oh, it’ll be swell, Steve, really!”

“I—” Steve had been hoping for something perhaps more… distant. Something he could promise himself he would investigate and then quietly set to the side as he pined over the Asset. This was rather immediate. “Alright. Yes, I’ll go to the Service Club with you tonight.”

“Nifty!” Darcy shook Steve’s wrists joyously and he had to smile. “I’ll tell the others. Oh, this will be such fun!”

Steve kept his smile on until Darcy had disappeared. Then it melted clean away. Steve didn’t want to dance with a strange Alpha, even a serviceman.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it.

He couldn’t dance with the Alpha he wanted as his partner.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

The Alpha tucked in next to Steve, one hip co*cked to rest against the bar. He smelled like cedar mothballs and wet mulch, a smell that Steve never knew in the city but had become accustomed to over the spring and summer out at Stark Manor when the groundskeepers spread it over the dormant flower-beds for better planting. It was a fertile smell, if not the most pleasant.

Steve looked around to see who the Alpha could be chatting up. It certainly wouldn’t be him; he was too—

“I said, hey, sweetheart.” The Alpha smiled down at Steve. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you.” His accent didn’t place him too far from Steve’s home in Brooklyn. His brown dress uniform marked him as Army, broad shoulders broader for the sharp pleats in his uniform jacket and waist cinched in by the neat belt. He wasn’t bad-looking. Sharp, square jaw and a swoop of jet-black hair. His jaw was already stubbled despite the regulations to keep clean-shaven in uniform. “What’s your name?”

“Um,” Steve said. He closed his book and set it on the bar-top. “Steven. Steve.”

“Hiya, Steve.” The Alpha’s mouth quirked up into a half-smile. “My name’s Brock. Private Brock Rumlow. I’m shippin’ out in the morning.”

Steve nodded. “That’s, uh, that’s nice. Thank you for your service.”

Private Brock Rumlow kept that half-smile on and nodded. He sidled another few inches closer to Steve and out of the realm of propriety. Steve’s heartbeat ratcheted up a few notches. He was not used to attention from Alphas—and he probably still smelled like the Asset, no matter that he took a bath earlier and used neutralizing soap. He was so thoroughly scented every time he went into the pod that he knew the Asset’s scent clung to him through his clothes.

“You mind keepin’ a lonely soldier company tonight?” Rumlow asked. His hand found the small of Steve’s back. It was heavy. Possessive. “I could use some conversation and a pretty face to take my mind offa what’s comin’.”

“Um.” Steve said again. He swallowed. “Okay.”

“Whatcha drinkin’?”

“Ah, whatever you’re having is fine,” Steve said, trying to remember how to be gracious. How to flirt. Or at least how to be flirted with. He’d never had an Alpha buy him a drink. The few flirtations he’d had were betas. They didn’t touch him before they even ordered drinks. They also wouldn’t have ignored an Alpha’s scent on Steve’s skin the way this Rumlow did.

Rumlow held up an imperious hand to signal the bartender and barked out, “Two Scotch sours.”

Steve took the offered drink and held it in both hands. In the corner of his eye, Wanda materialized a few barstools away and opened her own book, but Steve could see that her eyes weren’t moving across the pages. She was there to listen in and watch out.

He was unspeakably grateful.

Rumlow drained half his drink in one tug. “So what’s a pretty ‘meg like you doing out by yourself? Your Alpha let you outta the house lookin’ so sweet?”

“I—” Steve coughed. He took a sip of his Scotch sour and it burned on the way down. “I’m not by myself. I’m here with some friends.”

“And your Alpha?” pressed Rumlow.

Steve looked down at the ice cube melting in his drink. “I don’t have one.”

The half-smile spread across Rumlow’s mouth like butter across a hot pan. “Must be my lucky night. Maybe you’ll gimme a dance later, too?”

“Maybe,” Steve said. He racked his brain for something to say. Something interesting. Something besides, why are you talking to me when there are so many more beautiful omegas here tonight? What do you really want? “You from Brooklyn?”

“Manhattan,” Rumlow corrected him. “Lower East Side. You from New York?”

“Vinegar Hill,” Steve said.

“So not real New York.” The Alpha’s chest puffed up; not quite a posture, but pretty damned close for mixed company. For a civilized dance hall. “Only Manhattan’s really New York.”

“I’ve heard that,” Steve demurred. “I think Brooklyn’s got a lot of heart, though. It’s home.”

“You’re a long way from home then, sweetheart.” The hand on Steve’s back sank an inch lower. Steve sat up straighter on his barstool in response, trying to twitch away from that hand without being rude. “Whaddya doin’ in Washington?”

“I—I work in logistics,” Steve said. He coughed again and then smiled, trying to channel Natasha. Cool and confident, good at lying. “Just trying to do my part for the war effort.”

Rumlow made a sour face. “I hate that they’re tryin’ to make you ‘megs suit up and do hard work that’s meant for betas. You’re not suited for it. You should be home, takin’ care of babies and waitin’ for your Alpha to come home.” He poured back the rest of his drink and signaled the bartender for a refill before he managed to rearrange his face. “Logistics, huh? What does that mean?”

“I work in supplies,” Steve invented. “You know, organizing where all the rations go when we send them overseas and—and which factories get the scrap and the silk from donations. Things like that.”

“Supplies,” Rumlow repeats. “And that’s interesting?”

“It helps the war effort,” Steve said. He bristled even though he didn’t even really work in supplies. “That makes it worthwhile, I think.”

“So you’re not one of the omegas who work down at Stark Mansion, then?” Rumlow asked. His eyes slid over Steve’s face, sly and slimy, and the smile that spread across his mouth was the same. Oily. “’Cause I could swear I’ve seen you before, sweetheart, walking down the hill. Hard to miss a sweet peach like yours.”

Steve pressed his lips together hard and felt the blush climb from his cheeks down his neck.

“Sometimes I work at Stark Mansion,” he managed around the lump in his throat. “We do logistics organization there sometimes. The Starks are very generous with their contributions to the war. They let us use their grounds to pack shipments. For the soldiers.” He could feel Wanda watching him from down the bar, sizing up this Alpha who knew too much.

“I heard,” Rumlow said, “That you’re all doin’ a lot more than logistics down the hill there. I heard you’re supposeda be, what, smarter than the smartest Alphas in the world? If that’s possible. Surely they don’t just have you packing up supply shipments. Although if I got a box’a chocolates and coffee and it had your scent on it, that’d get my spirits up.” His hand slid even lower. He grasped at what he could reach of Steve’s asscheek and squeezed, hard.

Steve squeaked.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Rumlow said right in Steve’s ear. “Let’s go to the john and you gimme a dance.”

“I—I’m here with friends,” Steve repeated. “I told them I’d stay at the bar. I’ve gotta stay.”

Rumlow’s brow furrowed and his jaw tightened up even more square. “These friends’a yours work at Stark Mansion, too? You all work in logistics?” He leaned close enough that his lips touched Steve’s ear as he whispered, “Or do you all work on codebreaking, like I heard you do down there?”

Steve’s heart plummeted into his stomach. How would he know? Who was talking? No one was supposed to know that Stark Mansion housed the codebreakers, no one was even supposed to know that omegas were involved in the war effort that closely at all. Steve hadn’t told anyone. He’d hardly spoken to anyone other than Agent Carter, Dr. Zola, and the Asset in weeks. The other omegas on his team—he trusted them, too. Wanda, Natasha. Darcy. Jane. None of them would have told anyone about what they were doing in the lower levels of the big Mansion at the bottom of the hill. None of them even had anyone to tell; they were all as unbonded as Steve and were mostly friends with other people on the project, just like Steve, too.

Rumlow’s smile settled onto his face and the scent of his satisfaction made the mothball scent even stronger. “I thought so. You are one of those smartypants ‘megs. You think you’re smarter than an Alpha? Is that it? You think you’re too good for me?”

“I—” Am smarter than you, asshole. “Don’t think that. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I work in logistics, like I said.” He drained the glass of Scotch sour and leaned up and over the bar, dislodging the hand still resting on his ass.

“Excuse me,” Steve called, “Can I get a vodka Collins?”

In the corner of his eye, Wanda closed her book and got up from her barstool. He knew that she would be walking into the fray of the dancefloor to find the others. Vodka Collins was their code: if any one of them ordered that drink, they all needed to leave. Someone was onto them. Someone was asking too many questions.

Someone was out to dig up their secrets.

Steve counted to one hundred in his head, not pausing even as he got the Collins and drank a few sips just to play along, before he said, “Excuse me, I need to—freshen up. I’ll, I’ll meet you on the floor for that dance.”

Rumlow gave Steve’s ass a hard smack when he stood up, before he could get away. Steve left the Collins glass on the bar and surrendered his book—maybe it would end up with the bartender and he could get it back someday, but if not, he would do without—and weaved through the heavy, sweaty, heavily-scented crowd to get to the omegas’ bathroom.

Wanda, Natasha, Darcy, and Jane were already inside.

“What happened?” Natasha asked, all business even as Steve busied himself with locking the door. Darcy went down the line of stalls and tapped at the doors, pushing them open to make sure they were alone.

“Nosy Alpha Private,” Steve said shortly. The locked door between himself and Rumlow was a primal relief. “He asked about the Mansion. And knew about the project.”

Natasha’s eyebrow rose. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said angrily, shouldering past her and to the sinks so he could scrub water and neutralizing soap over the side of his face that Rumlow’s lips touched when he leaned in to whisper in Steve’s ear. His rear end hurt from the sharp smack, and his skin felt like it was crawling away from his bones.

Wrong Alpha, whispered something deep inside him. We smell like the wrong Alpha.

On the far wall of the bathroom, Darcy lifted Jane up so she could pop the windowpane out of place.

“He said that he had been watching Steve,” Wanda reported to Natasha in her soft, accented voice. “It sounded to me like he was tracking him. Intentionally. He said—” she looked apologetically at Steve—“That he had seen Steve walking down the hill to the Mansion.”

“In so many words,” Steve grumbled. He caught Wanda’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“I am sorry that he said it to you,” Wanda said back.

Behind them, Jane had wriggled halfway through the open window and let out a not-so-quiet shriek when Darcy bumped her the rest of the way through. There was a clatter on the other side of the wall, and then Jane called, “It’s okay! It’s a bit of a fall but the grass is soft!”

“Wanda next,” said Natasha. “I’ll come through last.”

“You can’t lift me,” Darcy argued, “I should go last.”

“You can’t pull yourself up through a window that high using just your arms,” Natasha argued. “And I can so lift you. I’ve gotten bigger people than you out of bigger scrapes than this.”

Darcy looked ready to argue, but time was of the essence. She let Wanda step into the basket of her hands and then lifted her up so that she could poke her head and shoulders through the window.

“I’ve got you, Wanda,” Jane called from the other side. “Just reach for my hands and I’ll try to catch you.”

Wanda wriggled through the window and didn’t shriek as she dropped down on the other side, although Jane gave an oof.

“Steve,” Natasha said, ever bossy, waving Steve over. He was still at the sink, scrubbing the side of his neck over his scent gland, hair sticking up around his ear. “You can wash up back at home. Come on, it’s your turn.”

Steve let Darcy boost him up until he could lean out the window. The ground looked worryingly far below him, although he knew it couldn’t be more than six feet. Still, further than he was tall, and he was going out headfirst. Natasha’s hands grasped the backs of Steve’s thighs and hefted him the rest of the way up, sliding through the window on his front, and he felt a button pop off his shirt where it snagged on the frame.

Then Jane’s and Wanda’s hands came up and grabbed his wrists, and Steve was pulled down on the other side of the window, his feet hitting grass with enough force to rattle his bones.

“Good job,” Jane said. She dusted off his shoulders.

“Thank you for sitting near me,” Steve said to Wanda. “I’m—it was good that you were there.”

“It is what we must do,” Wanda said. “Even if we were not working—where we are. Omegas watch out for one another, no?”

Steve smiled sadly at her. She was too young to be so jaded.

He reached up to help Jane grab for Darcy as she yelped and squeezed through the small window, the breadth of her hips the tightest fit any of them had made so far. She was graceless as she fell from the window and landed on her rear in the grass, green stains coloring the back of her pale blue dress when she stumbled back to her feet.

“Oh,” she moaned in disappointment, “I liked this dress.”

“It will come out,” Jane encouraged her. She put her arm around Darcy’s shoulders for a quick hug.

A few moments later, Natasha dropped from the window onto her feet. She didn’t have a single hair out of place.

“Alright,” she said, looking around their small group. “Let’s go. Don’t run, just walk. The biggest way to stand out is to run, and we don’t know if that Alpha is still looking for Steve.”

With forced casualness, the omegas linked arms and started to walk down the sidewalk. Steve and Wanda were in the middle, with Darcy and Jane ahead of them and Natasha at the rear. Steve felt sure that this was a protective move, and while normally he bristled fiercely at being coddled, this felt different. He was glad to have someone watching his back.

They reached the bus stop several streets away before Steve spoke again.

“I should stop here,” he said. “I need to get back to the boarding house, anyway.”

“I’ll wait with you,” Natasha said. “Just in case.”

“We should all wait,” protested Darcy, but Wanda let out a wide yawn.

Natasha shook her head. “Darcy, Jane, you bring Wanda back to the dormitory. I’ll be there in a jiff, I just want to make sure Steve gets back to his place alright.”

She seemed to wait until the silhouettes of Darcy, Jane, and Wanda had disappeared into the darkness before she turned to Steve.

“So, tell me everything you know about this Alpha,” she said quietly. “Everything you remember.”

Steve had an eidetic memory, so he remembered every word the Alpha spoke. He told her, and he described his square-jawed sharp face and the coif of his black hair. He described his oppressive scent, all cedar and sulfur and rot.

Natasha looked troubled. “How would he know about the project? You don’t suppose he knows about—” she cut herself off and tilted her head.

Steve knew what she meant. “I don’t know. He didn’t say, but the timing does seem a bit… and to have come on to me.” He shook his head. “If he just wanted information about codebreaking, he could surely have asked Darcy or Jane or—or you—to dance. You all go out so much more often, and you’re all more—”

“More what?”

“More omega,” Steve said. “You’re all dishes, and I’m just… I’m just me. I should have suspected something was off as soon as he tried to talk to me, and I suppose a part of me did know that something was off. I’ve never had an Alpha try to pick me up in a club before, so it stands to reason that the only time it happens, it was because he really wanted information about…” He tilted his head the way Natasha had to indicate the Asset.

Natasha didn’t look any less troubled. “Steve, you’re beautiful. There’s nothing suspicious in an Alpha wanting you; I didn’t mean that at all.”

“You didn’t imply it,” Steve assured her. “I just know the truth. He mentioned… he mentioned my scent,” Steve said awkwardly. “And most people can hardly pick up that I have any scent at all. I guess I knew then that I was being played.”

Natasha reached out and laid her hand on Steve’s arm. “I’m sorry, Steve. That’s awfully unfair. And for what it’s worth, you’re more omega than I am.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and displayed the square scar of her glandectomy. “We’re just a pair of lonely hearts, huh?”

“You don’t need to be,” Steve said. “Dernier seemed rather smitten.”

Natasha’s face went very placid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steven Rogers.”

Steve smiled and nudged her shoulder with his own. Natasha nudged him back.

There was a pleasant lull, and then Natasha said, “You have to know that you smell like him. Speaking of people who don’t need to be lonely hearts.”

Steve’s face felt hot. “But I do have to be a lonely heart, don’t I? It’s not possible. There is no happy ending for us—for him. And maybe there shouldn’t be; we still don’t know what all he did, or why, or…” He blew out a long exhale. “I’ve been foolish. That’s why I came out tonight.”

“And you sat at the bar the whole night, looking like you’d rather be anywhere else,” Natasha said. “You weren’t really looking to dance. You came to the club still drenched in another Alpha’s scent. It’s like you were trying to keep ‘em away.”

Steve looked down at his feet. It was true: he had bathed, but he hadn’t used neutralizing soap. He’d stopped using it weeks ago—around the time the Asset began to start every morning by scent-marking Steve. He wanted to find another Alpha to occupy his thoughts, but they were so full of the Asset that he couldn’t bear to wash away his claim.

“Steve,” Natasha said gently, “There is no happy ending here. And I want you to be alright.”

“I’ll be fine,” Steve said. Down the street, the headlights of the bus started to glow towards them. “I’ve been alone my whole life; I’ll be able to bear being alone again. I’m alone still; the—he doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s just that I’m the only omega he’s been near.”

“If you want me to take over—”

“No,” Steve said quickly. “We have a rapport. And it’s my job. I can do my job.”

The bus pulled up to a stop and the doors opened.

Steve smiled at Natasha and squeezed her hand. “I’ll be just dandy. I promise. Get home safely yourself, Natasha.”

“I always do.” She waited at the stop until Steve waved through the window from his seat, and then she melted into the night.

Steve wrung his hands together in his lap as the bus traversed the blocks back towards the omega boarding house.

He really was in too deep. And on top of that, someone knew it, and had told someone who—what? Wanted information? Why? For whom? To what ends?

Was it all just a test? To see if Steve’s link with the Asset made him a liability?

Did it?

Had he failed?

And if not, then there was an Axis spy with knowledge of what happened in the basem*nt of Stark Mansion—and that Steve was somehow connected to it. Was he in danger?

Steve knew that he would have another sleepless night once he got back to the boarding house. He would lie awake in his narrow bed and stare up at the ceiling, mind whirring, until it was time to return to the Mansion. To the Asset.

To his Alpha?

Chapter 17: Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Text

The Asset pulled back abruptly when he leaned in to scent Steve’s neck as he normally did, and Steve’s stomach dropped as he realized yes, the horrible Alpha from the club’s scent was still there despite the neutralizing wash.

“Oh.” The Asset’s voice was very small.

“It isn’t—I didn’t—” Steve felt tongue-tied in the face of the Asset’s crestfallen expression and the bitter, sad note that had fallen over his scent. “He didn’t actually want me. I mean, I didn’t want him, either, I didn’t ask for him to scent—he just did it without asking, and I—”

The bitter note in the Asset’s scent soured into anger and a low growl ripped out of his chest. “Did he. Hurt you?”

“No, not—not badly,” Steve said, because he couldn’t lie to the Asset even though he probably should. His anger made Steve feel good, in a horrible selfish way that brought his omega to the forefront of his feelings. It felt like the Asset took umbrage on Steve’s behalf, like he… belonged to him. Like he would fight for Steve’s honor and well-being if he could.

But the Alpha from the club—Rumlow from Manhattan—was long gone, overseas to die in a ditch somewhere, and the Asset was locked in a cage.

The Asset kept growling lowly, but both of his hands were soft and gentle as he started to pat Steve over, looking for injuries.

“I’m fine,” Steve said, going faintly pink. “He was just a heavy-handed lout.”

The Asset looked up from where he was feeling over Steve’s spindly ribs. “I would… rip his hands off.” A snarling growl.

Steve swallowed, because he was currently being patted down by the metal arm that had, as a matter of fact, ripped off many men’s hands.

“I know,” he decided to say. He touched the Asset’s cheek to gentle him and stop his growling. Steve’s fingertips played lightly over the scent gland just behind the sharp curve of the Asset’s jaw, and slowly his scent became sweeter again. The Asset pushed his face into Steve’s stomach and whuffed hungrily, pulling at Steve’s scent in warm gusts of breath.

Steve tentatively brushed his hand over the back of the Asset’s hair. It was long like a woman’s and greasy from not being washed properly in—well, who knew in how long, but the strands were soft and slid easily through Steve’s fingers without too many tangles. The Asset hummed, and Steve stroked him again.

The Asset kept humming and whuffing into Steve’s belly, shoulders relaxed for the first time since Steve had been aware of his existence. Steve’s hands developed a gentle rhythm in the Asset’s hair. Eventually, the Asset nosed his way between two of the buttons on Steve’s shirt and his nose touched Steve’s thin undershirt.

Steve rued its existence.

He wanted to touch the Asset skin to skin.

That thought made his stomach clench up with shame, and he quickly stopped stroking the Asset’s hair.

The Asset pulled back, his eyes slightly glazed over with relaxation, but at the ramrod straightness of Steve’s stance he quickly pulled his hyperfocused mask back over his gaze. He blinked once, then rose to his feet as gracefully as a leopard. His height dwarfed Steve, such a contrast to the way he seemed to instinctively lower himself to his knees around him and make Steve the taller one, the one in charge.

Steve swallowed.

He was the one in charge.

The Asset was his prisoner of war.

He kept forgetting that.

The Asset’s metal hand was nimble and cool where he gently fixed the mussed front of Steve’s shirt. Then he turned on a military dime and stalked over to his bed, lifting the pillow to reveal the usual apple hidden beneath it.

He brought it to Steve and twisted it in half with a quick crack of his hands. Something that might have been a rueful smile passed over the Asset’s face when he handed Steve the first half.

“If I. Had more… I wish. I had more. For you,” the Asset admitted quietly. “But food. Only once. A day.”

Steve paused in his bite of the apple-half. “Is that enough? For a big man like you?”

All expression fell from the Asset’s face and his blank expression of the early days came back. “The Asset requires 8,000 calories per day to maintain functionality.”

Steve blinked in surprise and his stomach clenched again, this time in guilt. Why hadn’t he known that they were starving the Asset? Why had they been starving anyone? They were supposed to be the good guys, treating him better than the goddamned Nazis. Instead, they were slowly killing him.

And still, he saved some of his precious food to gift Steve. A courting gift. A present from an Alpha to his omega: food when there was not enough to go around.

The bite of apple tasted like ash in Steve’s mouth.

“I’ll make sure we get you closer to that,” he managed to say after swallowing. “I’ll start bringing you lunch myself.”

“Steve, that’s against Phillips’ protocol,” said Agent Carter from the ceiling, making Steve jump and the Asset puff up a little, crowding Steve behind him.

Steve glared up at the ceiling. “I don’t care. I’m not going to be party to starving anyone.”

Steve touched the Asset’s wrist, rubbing his thumb lightly over the scent gland there. “Wait here for just a few minutes. I’m going to go get you some food and I’ll be back, and we can talk a bit more today. Is that alright?”

The Asset looked down at Steve and nodded.

How had Steve ignored the way his cheeks were beginning to hollow out, even gaunter than the specter he’d been when he arrived?

Steve pressed half of the apple into the Asset’s flesh hand. “Eat this, please. You need it more than I do.”

The Asset opened his mouth to argue, but Steve must have ruffled himself up something fierce because instead that almost-smile passed over the Asset’s face again and he said nothing.

Steve descended from the pod and was immediately met by Agent Carter.

“You can’t unilaterally decide to change our protocol regarding the Asset,” she said. She followed along as Steve began to walk back up to the basem*nt, to his desk, where he had his lunch sack. “Steven. That man is an extremely dangerous prisoner of war. He’s a Nazi. You can’t just forget about that because you feel a little sad that—”

“That we’ve been starving the man?” Steve didn’t look at her. “He can’t very well give us information if he’s dead, now can he? I’m not going to lower myself to the level of his former handlers. I’m going to treat him like a person.”

“You’re treating him like he’s your Alpha.”

Steve didn’t say anything. How could he? He couldn’t exactly refute that with any honesty.

“Steven. He is not your Alpha. If need be, we can swap Natasha in for questioning—”

“No.” Steve did look at Agent Carter then. “I know he isn’t my Alpha. I know that he’s our prisoner.” He spat the word. “But he’s also a human being who’s suffered something terrible, and I will not be party to compounding his woes. I don’t care if I have to fix his meals myself every day, but we will feed him what he needs to survive.”

Agent Carter was quiet as they reached Steve’s desk and he pulled out his brown paper bagged lunch. He paused long enough to breathe for a minute, winded from the brisk walk all the way from the prisoner pod across the entire mansion grounds, and looked at Agent Carter.

“I know he isn’t my Alpha,” Steve repeated.

He knew that he was saying it to remind himself as well.

Agent Carter nodded. “I just don’t want you to get—he’s a war criminal, Steve. This doesn’t end happily for him.”

Steve was emphatically not hungry anymore. “I know.”

“I’ll talk to Phillips,” Agent Carter added. “We’ll make sure that he gets his 8,000 calories a day. I can’t promise that it’ll be worth writing home about, but we’ll make sure that he’s fed.”

“Good. That’s the decent thing to do.”

“I’ll talk to him now.” Agent Carter walked off in the direction of the door to the military offices. “Be careful, since I won’t be in the booth.”

Steve stared after her as she walked away.

She was leaving him alone with the Asset, even if only for a few minutes.

Even though she knew that Steve would go ass-up for him in an instant if he asked.

Even though she knew that Steve wanted the Asset to be his Alpha.

Steve headed back down to the prisoner pod and found the Asset exactly where he’d left him, sitting on the side of his little cot, staring down at his mismatched hands. He cradled his flesh hand in the metal one like it was soothing. He looked smaller like this. More human.

“I have some food for you,” Steve said when he ascended back into the pod. “It isn’t much, but it should help.”

The Asset looked up at him. “Not. I have. Not. Earned… more food,” he said awkwardly. His eyes, too, looked more human. More blue.

The words of Steve’s old neighbor floated through his head, the disdain and pity that Steve’s mother had to waste food on such a pitiful omega son, and Steve ruffled.

“You’re a person,” he said with his whole chest. “That’s enough to deserve not to starve.”

He opened his lunch bag and unwrapped the simple bread-and-butter sandwich on dark brown bread. He hesitated with the thermos of bean soup: could a thermos be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands?

The Asset’s stomach rumbled as loudly as a growl at just the sight of the sandwich, and Steve thought, to hell with it, if I die by thermos then I die by thermos. It won’t be the strangest death in this war.

Steve approached the Asset slowly with the contents of the lunch bag, and he met his eyes steadily before lowering himself to be seated on the edge of the Asset’s small cot. He was an omega sitting on an Alpha’s bed in that Alpha’s territory—lacking in privacy though it was—and Steve’s cheeks felt hot. But there was nowhere else to sit in the pod. Chairs could be thrown or used as battering rams. The bed was only a barely-glorified mattress. Other than smothering, it would be difficult to use as a weapon.

The omega part of Steve ached that his Alpha did not have any blankets, any soft things, nothing with which to nest. How could Steve have his Heat here without a proper nest? How could the Asset sleep without being cradled in the handiwork of his omega, swaddled in softness and love and good things to thank him for his protection?

“Here you go,” Steve said, holding out the sandwich. He tried very hard not to feel like he was offering food to a stray dog on the street, one as liable to bite him as the treat. “It’s nothing special, but it should help you carry on until they send you some supper.”

The Asset clenched his jaw as his stomach rumbled again. “You need it.”

“You do, too,” Steve said simply. “And I haven’t been starving for the last few months.” He looked down, ashamed. “If I’d known sooner, I would have fixed it for you before now.”

The Asset looked—confused, at that. Only for a moment. The blank expression slid back onto his face even as he accepted the offered sandwich.

It disappeared in four bites.

Steve smiled encouragingly before unscrewing the lid of his thermos and pouring soup into the small cup. “Good. I have some soup for you as well. It should still be hot.”

He handed the cup to the Asset and knew that the observation chamber must still be empty, because otherwise Agent Carter or Natasha or Colonel Phillips would be screaming for him to stop before handing the Asset a metal object.

He could bring it down on Steve’s head with that horror of an arm and that would be the end of Steve.

The Asset’s face was still blank as he held the cup in his flesh hand. He stared down at it as if perplexed for long moments before he put the cup to his mouth and sipped at the soup. When he finished, he hesitated before holding the cup out to Steve for another pour.

Steve smiled at him as he did. “There you go. You’re welcome to as much as you like.”

The Asset’s eyes skittered away from Steve’s gaze.

Steve touched his wrist gently, fingertips stroking over the Asset’s scent gland. “It isn’t a trick or anything, I promise. You don’t—you don’t owe me anything for the food. I just want you to be alright.”

The blankness broke on the Asset’s face and he looked down at his lap instead, ears red.

“Gotta give you. Something,” he muttered. “It is not… right. To take food. From an omega.”

Steve swallowed. He didn’t want to push, because he had said that the food didn’t need to be earned, but—“Do you have any information on the people who, who, who gave you your arm?”

The blankness returned like a window slamming shut. A dribble of soup spilled on the mattress as the Asset’s flesh hand went slack; his metal arm whirred and clinked at the rivets, each plate of the arm shifting to make the arm bigger. More intimidating.

Steve acted against his own instincts and gently laid his palm against that metal forearm. “Relax.” He tried to exude calm through his scent as much as he could. “Everything is fine. Just relax.”

It took a long time before life returned to the Asset’s eyes. He dropped the thermos cup and grabbed onto his head with his flesh hand like he had a blinding migraine, face contorted into a new mask of pain. His scent soured and flared high with distress.

“Hey,” Steve murmured, still trying to be calm. He touched the Asset’s shoulder. “Hey, are you alright?”

“My head,” the Asset grunted. “Splitting in two.” A slitted eye peered up to meet Steve’s concerned gaze. “Tried to—remember. Before the arm. For you.”

The modifications to his brain look to be very delicate. Genius work, smarmed Zola in Steve’s mind. It was entirely possible that the Asset had no memory of his life before the arm, or even much memory of his life after it.

“Okay,” Steve said, his heart in his throat with guilt. He used a gentle hand on the Asset’s shoulder to urge the bigger man to lie back on the small cot.

“I remember—” The Asset started, his voice small, “I remember the cold.”

Steve nodded, his heart falling. The cold had been after the Asset had been turned into this being: the cold of the cryogenic freezing tube had been so absolute. Of course it stole whatever was left of the Asset’s memory.

“I remember a train.” The Asset groaned, his eyes screwing shut as he clutched onto his head. “So—cold.”

“It’s alright,” Steve murmured. He didn’t have to try to make his scent bleed with calm. He rubbed his thumb over the Asset’s remaining wrist gland to soothe him. “That’s wonderful. You don’t owe me anything more today.”

The Asset’s only answer was another broken groan. Steve bit his lips together, wishing he could take away the Alpha’s pain. Steve knew migraines well enough to know that the light was its own form of torture for the Asset right now.

He stripped off his sweater and shivered once in just his shirt. He folded the sweater into a neat rectangle and placed it over the Asset’s screwed-shut eyes.

That he was leaving his scent behind with the Asset, like a courting card, rang in the back of his mind. But that wasn’t the purpose of leaving his sweater with him, Steve reasoned. It was to block out the light. To help heal his aching head from the pain that Steve’s question had caused.

That was all.

Chapter 18: Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Text

The depth of summer hit Washington, D.C. with a sweltering, humid heat that weighed on Steve’s skin. It was hard to breathe. Every joint ached. His head felt buzzy and slow at the same time, the letters of ciphers and the numbers of equations moving through it with a slowness to which Steve was not accustomed, like his neurons themselves were dragged down with the needle on the barometer. He trudged back to the boarding house in the evenings drenched in sweat. He needed a haircut. He felt snappish, not wanting to engage in empty pleasantries with Agent Carter or to smooth his temper with Colonel Phillips. The whirring of JARVIS made him grit his teeth. The constant scritch scritch scritch of pencils was driving him mad.

“What… is wrong?” the Asset asked. His brow furrowed hard as he scented the air that Steve brought into the pod with him, his faint omega scent bitter with frustration. “Can I… what did I…?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Steve said. He sighed and closed his eyes, tried to release the malaise and ennui from his spine. “I’m just unhappy with the weather.”

And, he didn’t say, It’s my birthday tomorrow.

He missed his mother most fiercely on his birthdays. Every year, he woke up to the smell of baking cake, even on the lean years. Even when he was nine and spent his birthday in the hospital, his mother had brought him a slice of cake with a candle in it on her way to her own rotation two floors below. She had given him a gift almost every year as well, something saved up for in precious pennies and doing without. A fine notebook and fresh pencils. An abacus. A dictionary. A little cadre of tin soldiers. A new pair of shoes.

And every year that she was able—that she didn’t pull the short straw for an overnight shift—she and Steve would sit together on the fire escape and watch the fireworks over the water. Even colorblind, even understanding the chemistry behind their shimmer and sparkle, Steve was entranced by their magic. When he was very little, Ma had told him that the fireworks were just for him, a gift from the whole city because the smartest little boy deserved a good birthday. She said that long after he’d figured out that it wasn’t true.

Still, he’d held onto it until she was gone. That sweet white lie was another present from his mother, and it made his heart clench to see the fireworks every year without her. Without being able to look over and see them glitter in her eyes as she wrapped a strong arm around him and told him that he would do great things one day.

He was still trying to do right by her.

“It is hot,” agreed the Asset. He was still in his shirtsleeves instead of the striped prisoner’s shirt. The scars at his left shoulder were gruesome in their redness. Steve wanted to kiss them better.

The Asset’s mouth lifted in that almost-smile. “I like it.”

“I don’t,” Steve said with a huffed laugh. “Back home, if it was this hot, I might go down the shore to get some relief. Can’t exactly do that here. I guess I’ve gotta wait until I get back to my boardinghouse and take a cold bath.”

The Asset’s cheeks went pink at that, his eyes darting away from Steve. Steve swallowed. Was the Asset imagining Steve bathing—imagining Steve without any clothes? No one had seen Steve that way since he was a tiny thing, save doctors and nurses trying to save his life, he supposed.

Steve quietly didn’t draw attention to the state of the sweater had had left behind with the Asset. It was tucked beneath the naked pillow on his cot, stretched out in places like the Asset had been burying his face in it and rucking it up in his sleep.

Steve wondered whether it made the Asset dream of him.

And what sort of dreams made the Asset’s cheeks flush pink now.

Steve touched the Asset’s human wrist. “Have you… remembered anything more for me?”

The Asset’s brow furrowed. “Pain. In my arm. Cold. Everywhere.” His furrow deepened. “I remember a train.” He touched his head. “And then my head hurts.”

“Alright,” Steve said gently. “That’s enough for now. Perhaps now that you’re getting enough food, your brain can heal more quickly.” He resisted the urge to glare up at the speakers and, ergo, at Agent Carter. “Are they feeding you enough now?”

“The Asset receives required 8,000 calories.” The Asset’s voice in these strange spells of information was low and smooth, flat and devoid of any emotion or accent. Steve thought—Steve imagined—that sometimes when the Asset spoke in his halting, rumbly real voice, Steve could detect a hint of Brooklyn in its tones.

But that was all in his head.

What would a boy from Brooklyn be doing working as a weapon of the Axis?

The next morning found Room Six just as sweltering as the days before. Tony’s scent was thick in the air as he swanned around in shirtsleeves, sweating everywhere, flirting with all of the telegraph girls and banging around beneath JARVIS. Phillips’ cigars made the air feel even heavier and more stolid than the Washington humidity. Steve smoked an Asthmador down to his fingers before Darcy had even reached him with a morning cup of tea.

Come to think of it, Steve realized, looking up at the clock on his office wall, Darcy was behind schedule—which was deeply unusual.

Perhaps something horrible was making its way across the wires from Europe at this very moment. Something that glued her to her desk.

Something Steve had failed to prevent.

He closed his eyes and shook another Asthmador out of its packet.

“Knock, knock!” sang a happy voice at his door. Steve looked up from his packet of matches to find Darcy and Wanda pushing their way into his office. Darcy held not only his cup of tea, but a birthday hat made from—made from sheets of lined composition paper?—and Wanda held out a baking pan that smelled of cinnamon, cloves, raisins, and nuts.

“We heard it is your birthday!” Wanda exclaimed, her eyes shining. “On also the day of America’s birth!”

“That’s true,” Steve said, and he put the Schiffman’s back in the pack in his pocket. “Where did you hear it was my birthday?”

“Natasha,” said Darcy. “She knows everything.”

She grinned and approached Steve like he was a skittish street cat. Before he knew exactly how it had happened, he was wearing the paper hat.

“Cake for breakfast,” Wanda announced, and she set a slice of fragrant brown cake studded with raisins and walnuts in front of him on his desk. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “A kiss for a year of love, Sokovian birthday tradition.”

“Happy birthday to you,” Darcy sang. Steve was struck by the memory of her drunken serenade on Thanksgiving and couldn’t help but to smile. That had been the night that started everything, that led to the Asset being found and brought to Stark Mansion. That Steve had his first real success as a codebreaker.

It seemed like so long ago now.

“Thank you, ladies,” he said, and he meant it. “But please don’t spread it around that it’s my birthday. I don’t—I don’t normally celebrate. Besides, it’s already a holiday. It wouldn’t be very patriotic to steal attention from America today, now would it?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. Even Wanda looked skeptical.

Before they could say anything contrary, Steve ate a forkful of cake. It was sweet and rich and spicy, moist without any icing.

“Is this Sokovian?” he asked Wanda.

She shook her head. “Good Housekeeping Magazine. It has no milk, eggs, cocoa, butter, white sugar… a good cake for being patriotic.”

Steve smiled sheepishly and ate some more. “Well, it’s delicious. You two should have some of your own and sit with me a minute before getting back to work.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, just savoring the taste and good cake and mediocre coffee or tea, in Steve’s case.

“You’ll stay late tonight to watch the fireworks that Tony’s rigged up, won’t you?” Darcy asked. She dabbed her mouth with her handkerchief. “Oh, Steve, you must!”

“I don’t know…”

“Please?” asked Wanda. “I do not like to think of you sitting alone on your birthday.”

“And I don’t want to listen to Tony whine if he doesn’t get enough standing ovations from everyone,” Darcy added.

Steve snorted and shook his head. “Alright. I will stay to watch the fireworks with you gals tonight. But only to keep Tony from running his mouth.”

Of course the fireworks over Stark Mansion are an elaborate affair. As if Tony and Howard were capable of anything but. A skeleton crew remained in Room Six to man the telegraph stations, but JARVIS was quiet as everyone else—day shift and night shift, codebreakers and Phillips’ cadets alike—trooped out onto the immense lawn of the Mansion to find a picnic fit for a the whole town of Washington, D.C., spread out on blankets and prepared by the human Jarvis.

Steve was very relieved to see there was no birthday cake among the apple, cherry, and raisin pies.

Darcy and Wanda linked arms with Steve on either side of him like particularly gentle wardens. They sat down at a blanket with Jane, who looked as enthusiastic as Steve felt about leaving the work for such a spectacle. But the cold carrot salad was good, and Steve enjoyed a cream cheese sandwich on nutty brown bread. Steve wondered whether Scott was having a celebratory dinner with his secret Alpha, Hope, from Pym National Laboratory.

“Oh, boy,” Darcy muttered around her mouthful of pie. “Tony’s getting on an actual soapbox.”

Steve turned to look, and there was Tony, gaudy red suit jacket with gold cufflinks, jumping onto a wooden soapbox with a megaphone in his hands.

“Hello, all!” he boomed. “I’d introduce myself but you all know me, and if you don’t know me by now, get the hell off my lawn!” Everyone laughed. “Unless you’re a beautiful omega. In that case, save me a slice of pie. Now, we’re all out here tonight to celebrate the greatest nation in the world, the U.S. of A., where any two genius playboys can become handsome, roguish billionaires if they work hard, play hard, and luck into a military contract. I’m joking, we campaigned hard for those contracts. At any rate, America is the only country in the world to boast a collection of brains like those all around me at this moment, and we should all be grateful for that, right? Right. And what’s the best way to celebrate?”

A sizzling boom sent a shower of red and gold sparks into the night sky behind Tony.

“Big explosions!” Tony yelled.

Everyone oohed and ahhed, even Steve. Tony kept running his mouth, emceeing the show and cracking jokes to the crowd, while behind him Howard lit fuse after fuse on colorful, glittering rockets. Even colorblind Steve was impressed by the array of hues and patterns as the sky shook and shimmered.

And then Agent Carter knelt on the blanket beside Steve, cupping her hand around his good ear so he could hear her over the ruckus.

“Steven… you need to come with me right now.”

A shard of ice spiked through Steve’s gut. “What’s happened to—”

“Come with me.” Agent Carter pushed herself to her feet and held out a hand to Steve. He felt dizzy and sick, the concussive fireworks behind him making his heart slam against his ribs, as they walked with a carefully speedy nonchalance across the lawn.

Neither of them spoke on their way down to the sub-basem*nt.

As soon as the glass pod was in view, Steve could see the cause for Agent Carter’s urgency.

The Asset had pulled the mattress off of his bed and barricaded himself behind it, back to the wall of the pod, left arm calibrating and recalibrating with each firework explosion unseen overhead. He crouched in a primal defense position. His long hair hung in his face.

And his mouth moved over a stream of words.

“What is he saying?” Steve asked, turning to face Agent Carter. He knew that she had to have been listening up in the observation booth before running to retrieve him.

“You’ll have to hear it for yourself,” Agent Carter said. She pushed Steve towards the lift.

“—get a dekko that, Roth, whizz-bang, need a gasper, f*ck, think I’ve gone doolally if I ain’t crook, can’t see the Jack Johnson, Roth!”

Steve wished that he knew the man’s name. It felt disingenuous to pitch his voice and his scent soft and sweet and still have to say, “Asset?”

The Asset looked up and his eyes had none of the curious intelligence that Steve had come to know. They were blank and faraway, wide with panic, and they darted around the pod as though he were waiting for the rest of Steve’s calvary to storm into the pod.

Another firework exploded overhead and the Asset shivered down to his bare feet.

“f*ckin’ hell!” The Asset darted out from behind the mattress and grabbed Steve around the ribs with his right arm, pulling him down to the floor. “You wanna be a basket-case? This foxy is bad enough with the still air, sitting ducks we are, I can’t find Roth, have you seen him?” He shook his head. “Pear drops won’t fly, want a gasper so bad I can’t think, I can’t think, I can’t think—”

“Asset.” Steve twisted to touch the Asset’s scent gland, the warm patch on his neck that was leaking out the acrid smell of Alpha distress and confusion. “Where—where do you think you are? You’re here with me. Steve. You’re safe.”

It was a bit of a stretch: he wasn’t really safe, not so long as his list of crimes was longer than that metal arm, not if Phillips got his way. But it felt like the right thing to say.

Another firework exploded overhead, and the Asset reared back like a skittish horse. He hauled Steve bodily behind the barricade of the mattress and his mouth kept running, making less and less sense.

“Got this ‘meg gone over the top only seen the last one in a hot cross bun ain’t meant to muck in, maybe he’s a dingbat, hardly time to spit and polish parade when we’re having a field day, shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be here, meant to give a goodnight kiss but I can’t find my Lucy.” The Asset looked right at Steve as another explosion above Stark Mansion made his shoulders flinch. “Steve?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, and he felt embarrassingly close to crying for some reason. “It’s me, Steve.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” said the Asset. He kept a hold on Steve but peeked his own head up over the mattress-barricade to yell, “He shouldn’t be here!” He rocked a little on his heels and started to mutter again, “Gotta find Roth and Lucy, don’t make that goodnight kiss and it’s curtains—” Another firework made him hide behind the mattress again and he curled his whole body around Steve’s as though to protect him from shrapnel that was not falling.

“Asset,” Steve said again, as gently as he could. Even with the acidity of distress, his scent made it hard for Steve to think. “Asset, you’re safe. I’m safe. Who’s Roth?”

“Roth? Roth went home in a wooden overcoat two weeks ago,” the Asset mumbled. “Left me his Lucy and the address to his Sarah, gotta wait for the red tags to come down the line but it’s all mucked in, gonna send me to Mesopolonica… Steve,” he said urgently, his forehead against Steve’s as he jerked and shivered. “Steve, gonna send me out to Mesopolonica and I don’t trust it, I don’t trust it, I think—I think—I can’t think—”

“We’re not sending you anywhere,” Steve whispered. He rested both of his hands on either side of the Asset’s neck and felt his high pulse thumping hard. “And if they do send you to—to Mesopolonica—then I’m coming with you. Okay?” Steve searched the Asset’s eyes. “I’m with you to the end of the line, pal.”

Chapter 19: Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Text

Steve wanted so badly for the stream of memories that the Asset’s shellshock unlocked to be just that—the opening of a door. The beginning of something greater.

It didn’t seem to be.

His words came more clearly and quickly now, but he still seemed to be cut off from any meaningful information that would satisfy Steve. Would satisfy Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips. He didn’t know his name. Didn’t know where he had been held. Didn’t know how he had obtained that fearsome metal arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly to Steve, just as the lift arrived to whisk Steve away one frustrating morning.

“It’s alright,” Steve promised. “I know you’re trying.”

Their eyes met, and Steve didn’t look away. He didn’t force himself to look away from the Asset anymore. He knew that he should, but he couldn’t. Because Steve had a theory.

“An American doughboy,” said Natasha flatly.

“Yes,” said Steve. “I’m sure of it. He sounded like—” Steve stopped and swept his hair out of his eyes. He needed a haircut again. “He sounded like Crazy Charlie,” Steve admitted. “A shellshocked man in my building growing up. He ranted and raved just like that. Same strange slang, same panic at the sound of fireworks or cars backfiring or broken glass.” Or chairs being thrown behind the Vittorios’ apartment door, or footsteps too heavy on the stairs, or the creak of the fire escape in high wind.

“Steve,” Natasha said gently, “That would mean that the Asset had been born in at least 1900. He doesn’t look nearly so old as that.”

“But he was frozen,” Steve argued. “Who’s to say how long?”

That just made Natasha look more skeptical. “That would mean that the Axis had the technology to freeze and thaw human beings from the time of the last Great War. Why would they reserve it for just one man, when they could have a whole army on reserve in the ice? How would the secret not have leaked in the inquests after the Great War? Hell, how would Germany even afford that kind of technology in their economic state?” Natasha shook her head. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. But it’s a hell of an improbability.”

Steve stuck out his chin.

Anything that was not impossible, he reckoned, was still possible. Even if it was a hell of an improbability.

Steve began to focus his questions on things from the Great War, rather than the current. He could feel Agent Carter’s impatient eyes on him from the observation booth, but she didn’t interrupt to stop him.

The Asset’s answers were no clearer now than before, anyway.

He didn’t seem to know anything more about trench warfare than he did the Western Front.

Maybe Natasha was right.

Steve sighed and shelved his questions for another day. He moved across the pod to take food from its brown paper sack so he could examine the Asset’s breakfast. Toast. Margarine. Apple. Powdered milk. Water.

The Asset watched him with keen, soft eyes. He stuck close to Steve, enough that Steve could feel the heat radiating off his big body. Enough that Steve was saturated with his Alpha scent everywhere he went.

Steve turned to look up at the Asset and smiled. “Your food looks good today. You should eat.”

All was quiet between them.

A scream rent the air in two from somewhere above the pod, and the Asset was up at his full height in an instant, the arm whirring madly as it enlarged and he herded Steve behind him.

Steve touched his flesh shoulder from where he was barricaded against the glass behind the Asset.

“I need to go see if everyone is alright,” he said, his heart pounding.

“Protect the mission,” the Asset grunted.

“What?” Steve kept rubbing the Asset’s flesh arm. “I’m not your mission, pal. I’m not—you don’t have to protect me.”

The Asset’s posture tightened up even more. “Yes. I do.”

Another scream split through the tense air and Steve tried to wriggle out from between the Asset and the pod glass.

“I’m sorry, pal, I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m safe, I promise. But I need to go see what’s wrong.” Steve’s stomach seemed already to know, with the way that it had sunk heavily into his gut. Natasha was due back today with news from Europe that the dispatches didn’t see fit to cover.

Steve was the leader of his team. He needed to be there.

The Asset snapped a warning noise when Steve kept wriggling.

“My omega,” he snarled. “Danger.”

Steve’s leaden stomach jolted. My omega.

My omega.

My omega.

“I’m—” Steve’s throat wouldn’t let him say, not yours. “I need to go, pal. But I’ll be back. Give me ten minutes,” he tried, as though there were a clock visible from the pod. “Just ten minutes. And you can—you can make sure I’m alright when I get back.”

The Asset was slow to move from his defensive posture, but Steve felt the relaxation of his muscles beneath the thin cotton of his uniform pants and shirt. Finally, he stepped away and Steve was able to move away from the wall of the pod.

“I’ll be right back,” Steve said, and he softened his words with a reassuring stroke to the Asset’s flank. “Ten minutes.”

As soon as the elevator deposited Steve back onto the main floor of the prisoner’s quarters, he started at an almost-run back to the main floor of the basem*nt. If he actually ran, he would just have an asthma attack, and then he wouldn’t be as safe as the Asset wanted him to be, now would he? It took him more of his allotted ten minutes than he would have liked to reach Room Six.

Wanda was collapsed in Natasha’s arms, babbling desperately in Sokovian. Jane and Darcy stood alongside her, comforting hands on the scent glands of her neck and wrists. Agent Carter waited a ways off, near the doorway, holding a brown folder of papers and a canister of film in her hands. Even she looked sorrowful, although she didn’t have tears in her eyes like Jane and Darcy. Steve hadn’t expected them from Natasha, but there they were all the same.

The bitter scent of Wanda’s distress filled the entire room like a swirling cloud.

“What happened?” Steve panted to Agent Carter.

Agent Carter looked down at her feet before handing over the brown folder. She kept the film canister clutched tightly in her hand.

“The Novi Grad internment camp was liquidated,” Agent Carter said under her breath. “Everyone is gone.”

“Liqui—”

“They killed everyone, Steve.” Agent Carter’s red manicured hand shook slightly. “Wanda’s whole village had been moved there. About a year ago. On a—I suppose on a death march. As best as we can figure, that’s when her mother and father died.”

“And her brother?” Steve felt his voice crack.

Agent Carter nodded at the folder in Steve’s hands. “Whatever was done to the Asset, it… looks as though… they may have tried to repeat it. On Pietro Maximoff.”

Steve felt sick. “But—”

“But,” agreed Agent Carter. “I suppose they didn’t want to leave any evidence behind when they…” she trailed off.

Steve cleared his throat and looked down at the folder. “Do I want to…”

“No.” Agent Carter sounded very, very tired. She took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “But this is war, Dr. Rogers. We must do things that we might not wish to do. None of us will get through this without a few nightmares.” She looked over at him. “You may find some answers regarding your Asset in the file. If nothing else.”

Steve nodded. He watched the women surrounding Wanda. She was the eye of a hurricane of pain, bitter anguish and sorrow so strong in her scent that Steve would be smelling it for days.

He turned to Agent Carter. “Have Natasha bring her back to their dormitory. Wanda should have time to grieve.”

“Steve, we need her here to—”

“Let her have a day,” Steve repeated. “She’s lost everyone.”

Agent Carter nodded and looked down at the film canister in her hand again. “We will all lose someone to this war, I fear.”

“Someone,” Steve agreed. “But not everyone.”

The brown paper folder in Steve’s hands felt heavy as a brick as he started back down towards the prisoner pod. Once he was alone in the labyrinthine corridors, Steve stepped beneath a bare light and opened the folder.

With a sharp gasp through his nose, he slammed it shut again.

His heart pounded in his chest painfully, and Steve patted his pocket to make sure that he had his asthma cigarettes. One glance at the contents of the folder and he felt like he’d run a marathon of horror.

He closed his eyes.

Breathed.

And opened the folder again.

Clipped to the front of the paperwork were two photos: one must have been Pietro Maximoff, once upon a time. He was thin as a skeleton and just as bald, the striped uniform he wore hanging off his shoulders. But his eyes were so like Wanda’s eyes, and so full of vitriol as he stared out of the picture right at Steve.

The second was a photo of a bloody, bisected brain still encased in a bald head. Electrodes and wires poked out of its gory coils.

Steve remembered Dr. Zola practically salivating over the images of the Asset’s brain and the ways that it had been altered—remembered how he theorized that before he was turned into the Asset, he must have been undesirable.

Like Pietro Maximoff.

Like a whole village outside of Novi Grad.

Like Steve.

The text was a jumble of German, some in familiar five-letter blocks of code and some in clinical plaintext. Words popped out at Steve as he skimmed through the terrible file: attachment, omega, scent receptors, memory, memory, memory..

There were more photos.

They made the Asset’s arm look like an act of mercy.

They made death look like a mercy.

Steve closed his eyes again and leaned against the cold wall. His cheeks were wet, and he didn’t remember how that happened.

He turned to the last page of the file and a single word blared at him as though in neon lights.

Asset.

Steve sunk down to his haunches and closed the file. They were trying to replace the Asset when they brutalized Pietro Maximoff.

Who knew how many other young men in Europe were being tortured into Assets right now?

Who knew what had been done to the Asset that allowed him to survive?

Steve’s stomach twisted. Pietro Maximoff had not chosen this—but had the Asset? They still didn’t know anything about him. Not really. He didn’t sound German, but that didn’t mean that he disagreed with their philosophies. It didn’t mean that he hadn’t volunteered to become der Winterwaffe, the ubermensch, a supersoldier.

All Steve really knew for sure about the Asset was that he had cut down Allied soldiers in service to the Nazi regime. In service of the people who did this to Pietro Maximoff to make him more like the Asset.

Steve needed to get back to questioning him about where he had come from and how he had been made. He needed to forget his—feelings.

Steve stood, wiped his eyes, and walked the rest of the way back to the prisoner pod with his chin tucked low to his chest.

The Asset pounced towards Steve as soon as the hatch opened.

Steve tried to brace himself for a thorough scenting, but the Asset stopped short. His brow creased as he took in Steve’s red-rimmed, wet eyes and the bitter edge of sorrow in his scent. He looked from Steve’s face to the brown folder still clutched in Steve’s hand.

“What happened?” the Asset asked. He reached out with his flesh hand, but he didn’t make contact with Steve’s body. “What happened?”

Steve shook his head. His mouth opened and shut once, impotent. How could he explain—

The Asset had committed atrocities for the Nazis, too.

Steve still didn’t even know whether the man regretted them.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat, but it just kept rising. Stubborn tears that Steve had managed to keep at bay all the way down the many corridors back to the pod pricked at his eyes with wet heat.

“Omega,” murmured the Asset. He did touch Steve now, his flesh hand gentle but firm as he found Steve’s shoulder and began to guide Steve towards the little cot and urged him to sit. The Asset still looked puzzled to the point of some vague fear, but his scent was warm and comforting all the same.

That made it worse.

He shouldn’t be comforted by der Winterwaffe.

“It will be alright, omega,” the Asset murmured. He carefully steered Steve’s head forward and into the crux of his neck, Steve’s nose pressed against the Asset’s scent glands. It was a simple, instinctual attempt to soothe.

Green apple.

Wet stones.

Alpha musk.

Coney Island cotton candy.

Steve let out a singular sob before he allowed himself to accept the comfort. He wrapped both arms around the Asset’s waist, holding on for dear life as the horrors of the world played over and over on the insides of his eyelids.

A massive hole filled with tangled bodies.

Pietro Maximoff’s bloody brain.

The Asset tearing off a man’s head.

That fearsome metal arm.

Green apple.

Wet stones.

The Asset.

Steve squeezed himself closer, tighter to the warm, strong Alpha in his arms. A hard metal hand smoothed up and down his back in long, gentle strokes, and the Asset’s flesh thumb circled lightly over Steve’s scent gland just beneath his jaw. The scent beneath Steve’s nose was flush and calm, comforting with purpose.

The Asset rocked Steve slowly against his chest.

And when Steve calmed down enough to notice, he found that the Asset was singing quietly against the top of Steve’s head.

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile,” he crooned. “What’s the use of worrying? It was never worthwhile…”

Steve stilled; his heartbeat steadied, then started to speed faster again. He knew that song. It was American, for one thing, and for another, it reminded him of he was a small boy. His mother used to sing him that song sometimes when he was sick in bed. The Asset’s voice was low and sweet as he sang, humming where he’d evidently forgotten the words. His hands were tender against Steve wherever they touched.

“Where’d you learn that song?” Steve mumbled into the Asset’s neck.

The Asset stopped humming and Steve immediately missed it. “I don’t remember,” he said finally. “I remember singing it in—in—ah.” He bent forward around Steve in his lap, eyes clenched shut as though against the sudden pain in his head. “In the mud. In the mud. We used to sing it in—the mud.”

Chapter 20: Chapter Twenty

Chapter Text

“I’m right,” Steve said lowly to Natasha. He tore a chunk out of his bread-and-butter sandwich with great vengeance. “I know I’m right.”

“I’m not saying that you aren’t,” Natasha said in a measured tone. She ate some cucumber sandwich in silence as Steve glared at her. “What I’m saying is, Steve, that I don’t think Phillips will care much whether you are right. The Asset massacred American troops, and that’s all Phillips can see. He doesn’t see—”

“That the Asset is a person?” Steve threw his sandwich down on his plate in disgust, then, with the guilt of wartime rationing, picked it back up. “That I’m a person? I’m well aware of both counts.”

Natasha had the decency to look genuinely sympathetic. “If you could prove your theory to Agent Carter, Phillips might come around. But right now it’s just a theory. You’re a mathematics genius; you know about the importance of evidence. All you have right now is a few garbled phrases and a hummed tune that he could have picked up anywhere. He could have been programmed to sing it to lull Allied troops into thinking he was one of them, for all you know.”

“But he wasn’t,” Steve said. “I know he wasn’t. He only gets those migraines when he remembers something real. Something from… from before The Asset.”

“Test your theory,” Natasha said. “See what other memories you can bring to the surface now that he’s started to recover more quickly. Use all of the weaponry at your disposal—his fondness for you, his desire to make you proud. You can use that to your advantage.”

Steve looked down. “I don’t like the idea of being so… tactical. I want him to trust me.”

“He does,” Natasha said. “And you can use that trust.”

“But—”

“You can use it to save his life,” Natasha said very quietly. “Because you know what Phillips and Carter will do to him if he doesn’t prove either innocent or useful.”

Steve’s stomach twisted. It was true. But was it right to manipulate the Asset, even if it were for his own good? His own safety? It went against everything that Steve believed in as a man—and everything that he was programmed to be as an omega.

“Sometimes we have to do what feels wrong to do what is right,” Natasha said, all spy. “You aren’t betraying his trust if you’re trying to do what is best for him. A long life in a comfortable cell is better than the electric chair, Steve. I’ve seen both. Neither is pretty, but one…” She shook her head. “Saving the Asset from that would be a mercy.”

Steve thought of the photos in the file on Pietro Maximoff.

There was an electrified chair of sorts in those, too.

Steve finished his sandwich tasting only chalk, and he went back down the labyrinthine corridors to the Asset’s pod. Agent Carter wasn’t in the observation booth anymore—it was long past the time that Steve normally left him for the day—and Steve hesitated at the entrance to the big room. The Asset sat on the cot, staring down at the empty cellophane and brown paper that had contained his lunch. Two hot dogs. An apple. A small carton of milk. He never complained that it was the same every day. He seemed grateful just to get it. Steve had to admit that since they had begun to feed the Asset enough, his scent had become even lusher and his right arm and chest had filled out to something strong and powerful.

He certainly looked like the ubermensch. With a curl in the middle of his forehead, the Asset would look like damned Superman, Steve thought. The perfect pinnacle of an Alpha.

That made his stomach twist, too.

His Heat was approaching, and he knew that the Asset could tell. He touched Steve more than he had since beginning to regain his manners and composure, and the touches lingered. He buried his face against Steve’s belly and sighed.

Was it wise to enter the pod without anyone in the observation booth, so close to his Heat?

The Asset looked away from his food wrappings and his eyes met Steve’s through the glass floor of the pod.

Steve swallowed.

He called the lift to open and stepped inside. Wise or unwise, he couldn’t stay away.

The Asset stood as soon as Steve’s torso had lifted into the pod, but as usual, he waited for the lift to disappear before he moved forward. Even when there were no obstacles blocking his escape besides a small and breakable omega, he didn’t try. Steve almost wished that he would rush him and try to make it into the lift one of these days.

It would prove to Carter and Phillips that he was a man, at least, if he wanted to be free.

But the Asset did not approach Steve until Steve stepped away from the invisible circle of the lift’s retreat into the floor. Then, though, nose scenting the air in greedy inhales, the Asset moved forward with all the grace of a white wolf slipping silently over snow, and he wrapped both hands around Steve’s waist.

“You’re back.” He sounded pleased. “Normally I see you. Once a day.”

“I’m back,” Steve agreed. He swallowed. “Felt like today you were having a pretty good day and maybe we could talk some more.”

The Asset let out a very soft grunt and tucked his face into Steve’s neck to whuff at him. “Okay. I’ve been trying to. Remember more.” He paused. “How is… your friend? The sadness?”

Steve’s heart sank as he thought of Wanda. He had gone by the Stark dormitories to see her—to bring her some food like she’d done for him so many times, although he couldn’t promise Mama Maximoff’s homemade chicken soup—and she was a girl undone by grief. And rage. Her eyes were so red from crying that they practically glowed.

“It’s kind of you to ask,” Steve said, rather than try to explain. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.” Steve had a plan. He let the Asset keep whuffing at him, his hands untucking Steve’s shirt from his trousers. Steve’s heart beat faster and the proximity to Heat made him softer and wetter between his legs.

“I wanted to talk about… baseball,” Steve blurted.

The Asset looked up from his careful examination of Steve’s skin. “Baseball?”

“Baseball,” Steve said. He swallowed. “Do you… do you know what baseball is?”

The Asset looked away from Steve, his ice-gray eyes skittering around the glass of the pod like he was checking for bugs. Checking for someone else listening.

“We’re alone right now,” Steve said softly. “No one will hear what you say except for me.”

The Asset hesitated still, but then nodded. One single jerk of his head. “I remember baseball.”

“Good!” Steve smiled encouragingly at him. “I hoped that you might. I love baseball. Can’t play worth a damn, even if they let omegas on the bigs, but it gets my brain running. All those statistics and numbers light up my mind like nothing else does. That’s how I discovered my love for mathematics, you know, listening to baseball games on the radio when I was home alone with my ma at work. I would write down the players’ stats and then calculate them out with every pitch faster than the voice on the radio. I always joked to Ma that if they let ten-year-old omegas into betting halls, we’d be millionaires, but she put on a real stern voice and told me that gambling was a sickness that we couldn’t afford.”

The Asset looked nervous, but he smiled a tiny smile at Steve’s story.

“I think I remember,” he said. “Pitching. I had… I had a good arm.”

The metal arm whirrs quietly at his side and the Asset leans his head the opposite direction, as though trying to separate himself from his own appendage.

Steve chose his next words carefully. “I love the Dodgers. That’s my hometown team, the team that represents the city where I live. When I’m not here, I mean. Do… you remember your favorite team?”

The Asset pressed his mouth together in a thin line, and Steve readied himself for the inevitable migraine that would mean the end of meaningful conversation for the day.

The Asset still had his hands around Steve’s waist, face only inches away from Steve’s belly. Steve petted through his lank hair without speaking. Giving him space to remember. To choose whether to share whatever came to mind.

Long minutes passed before—

“The Robins,” the Asset mumbled. He looked up at Steve with his eyes more blue than gray. “Casey Stengel up at bat. Gonna hit another homer.” His eyes lit up for a moment, then flattened into the blank stare of the Asset rather than the Alpha.

Steve swallowed. He nodded. Then he swallowed again. “Casey Stengel was the big hitter for the Brooklyn Robins,” he agreed cautiously.

Could the Asset have been just another boy from Brooklyn? Steve felt lightheaded at the idea.

“Liked that name,” the Asset said. His eyes skated over Steve’s face without landing there. He frowned. “Didn’t like Superbas. Played good ball, though.”

“That’s true,” Steve said. “The Robins were called—were called Superbas until… until 1910.” He leaned forward, hoping that his scent was strong enough to break through the blankness in the Asset’s face and spark something. “How did you know that?”

“Get a frankfurter sandwich at the stadium,” the Asset said. He looked away and over to the empty wrappings from his lunch. “Two a penny in the cheap seats.”

Steve nodded. “That’s true, too. But how did you know that?”

“Rube’s on the plate, gonna strike ‘em out. He’ll take us to the World Series again like last year.” The Asset’s eyes lit up, but he looked even further away than when he was the blank mask of weaponry that was the Asset. “Hey, batter batter batter, swing, batter batter batter…” He flinched and grasped onto his head, the familiar sight of those sudden migraines starting.

But still, Steve shivered. He pressed, one more question. Just one more. “Which World Series was that?”

The Asset frowned. At Steve, this time, not into space. “1916, of course.”

Chapter 21: Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Text

Steve’s summer Heat passed much like the last—he clung to any scrap of the Asset’s scent that he could find, burying his face into the sleeves of his shirts as he rubbed at his own skin. His glands all felt soft and tender, but it still hurt less than his Heats always had before spending so much time near a virile Alpha. His green apple and rain scent wove into all of Steve’s clothes and he was so insistent on rubbing his scent into Steve’s skin when he could get away with it.

Steve returned to the pod on a day when the sky decided to tear itself apart overhead, unleashing torrents of rain onto Stark Mansion. He was soaked to the skin by the time he got to work.

The Asset took one look at Steve, a day outside of Heat and shivering-wet, and pounced. He had mostly left his feral-like tendencies long behind, but Steve was grateful for their return today as the Alpha rubbed his warm body all over Steve, trying to dry him and make him smell like owned, like mate.

Steve knew he should have been embarrassed by that.

But he wasn’t.

He wanted it.

He wanted to belong to this strange, broken Alpha. This man who could kill an entire battalion of soldiers single handedly but touched Steve with gentleness bordering on worship. He liked walking around smelling like this Alpha had debauched him.

He wanted the Asset to debauch him.

His face heated as he remembered scraps of his filthy Heat fantasies: the Asset’s metal arm holding him taut around the chest as he f*cked a big knot up into Steve, the scratch of his scruffy facial hair as Steve rode his c*nt back onto the Asset’s handsome face.

A thin note of candysweet omega arousal touched the air of the prisoner pod, and the Asset stiffened where he was rubbing his heady scent glands over Steve’s hipbones.

His eyes were dark when he looked up at Steve, and Steve glanced down in humiliated horror.

“Steve,” the Asset said simply. There was a long pause, and then a new sound tumbled out of the Alpha’s broad chest.

He was purring.

Steve’s bones felt like Jell-O. If the Asset didn’t have a vibranium grip on his hips to hold Steve upright, he would have slid down onto his knees on the glass floor of the pod. His brain felt loose and soft and light, every scrap of mathematical knowledge and wartime strategy and desperate questions about the mystery of the Asset floating right out of it through Steve’s ears. He didn’t care that Agent Carter and Natasha were in the observation booth: he wanted to show his belly and keen. Wanted to sink down ass-up and present, even though his insides were still sore from the ravages of Heat.

He had just enough common sense left to feel robbed.

An Alpha’s purr was an intimate thing, just for mated partners to share. And Steve was hearing it for the first time in a glass box, watched by secret agents and spies and soldiers.

The Asset didn’t seem to care about that. He just licked Steve’s hipbone scent gland lightly, purring so loudly it made Steve’s belly shiver, and nosed his way across the concave valley of Steve’s pelvis to the jut of his other hipbone and the matching gland there.

Steve pushed his fingers through the Asset’s dark hair, holding it away from his face. His eyes were closed, brow relaxed. He normally looked so pinched and haunted.

Steve couldn’t feel badly, or embarrassed, about anything that would make his Alpha finally look at peace.

His belly clenched.

His Alpha.

He did think of the Asset as his Alpha. That was insane. He didn’t even know the man’s name. Really, he knew nothing about him except that he was a deadly tool of war—for the enemy, for the worst regime the world had ever seen. He’d cuddled right up to der Winterwaffe, for f*ck’s sake. It was insanity. It had to be borne of Steve’s own desperate loneliness, the pathetic omega inside him rolling over for the first Alpha to show it any attention at all.

The Asset opened his eyes, the same pale blue of the Potomac, and Steve felt like he was being dragged out of its depths and to its bank, to safety.

No.

This wasn’t just falling for the first Alpha to be kind to him.

He had truly fallen for the Asset. For the mismatched pieces of a puzzling man, old-fashioned manners and feral Alpha instincts, soft voice and fearsome growl, gentle touches with a weapon for an arm.

Steve needed to solve the mystery of who he was and what had happened to him. Not for the war effort. For the Asset. He deserved to be a man again.

“How will we even know if we’ve found him?” Natasha asked Steve, throwing another closed file onto the stack. “He’s got all that dead animal on his face, it’s hard to tell what he might have looked like before… before. Before whatever happened to him, apparently back in the Great War, happened.”

“I’ll know,” Steve said absently, thumbing open another folder. Azzopardi, Giuseppe. “Almost finished with all of the A’s.”

“Thank goodness,” Natasha sighed. “What if they changed the color of his eyes? What if you’ve guessed his age wrong and he’s much older?”

“Then we start again,” Steve said. “And we’ll go through the rejects until we find him. Just as we do with codes.”

Not Giuseppe Azzopardi, died of pneumonia. Steve suppressed a frustrated sigh at the size of the stack of unfinished files and tossed Azzopardi onto the stack of rejects.

“Wanda, you’ve been quiet,” he observed. “Are you alright over there?”

Wanda nodded, then paused. “How many files have we here, did you say?”

“Two-thousand, six-hundred eighty-one,” Steve couldn’t help sighing. “We’ve made it through the A’s over here.” There was a light sob. “Wanda, are you sure you’re alright?”

“That is fewer people than in my village in Sokovia,” Wanda said softly. Her voice was wet but clear. “But Natasha, you say—there is nothing left there. No people alive.”

Steve didn’t know what to say to that, and judging by the silence, neither did Natasha. How many villages like Wanda’s had disappeared to the Nazi machine rolling through Eastern Europe, crushing whole families and shtetls and ghettoes beneath its armored feet? This room was utterly filled with files that held only the bare facts of each man’s life: his birthdate and death date, his height and weight and the colors of his hair and eyes. Perhaps an anecdote of his bravery if he had been particularly extraordinary. And still, the room was utterly filled.

How many rooms would it take to hold the names and faces of everyone killed by Hitler’s gruesome holocaust?

“Do you want to be excused for the day, Wanda?” Steve asked, finally. “I don’t mind. It’s alright if you need more time.”

“No,” Wanda said, and her voice was much stronger. “I want to be here. I need to help.”

Steve looked up from the file of Babco*ck, Jonathan (died of gangrene). “Any time you need to stop, Wanda. You have my permission. Even if you just want to go into town and see a movie and get a soda, you have my permission.”

The ghost of a smile touched Wanda’s lips for a bare moment. “I want to be here,” she repeated. “But thank you.”

After another hour, there was a sound in the room: Natasha made a little breath of disbelief.

“Steve, I think I might have found him,” she said. Papers fell and rustled as she got to her feet and waded through the stacks of files towards Steve, brown folder in her hands.

Steve pushed himself to his feet, too, joints all cracking and aching from the hours spent on the floor. His spine felt like a row of poorly-fitted stones. “Let me see.”

Natasha handed over the file and Steve let his eyes skim over the name on the front. Barnes, James. Army.

He flipped the folder open.

And promptly sat down on the nearest sturdy-looking stack of folders.

“What is it?” Natasha asked. “That is him, isn’t it?”

Steve nodded. “I know him.”

Natasha frowned. “How could you know him? This man was reported killed in action when you were just a baby.”

“I know him,” Steve insisted. “Not personally, but—I know his family. I recognize this portrait.”

“But you didn’t recognize him when you saw him?”

“Like you said… something’s happened to him,” Steve protested. “The beard, and the hair, and… those eyes.” He shook his head. “But this portrait,” he waved the file, “I’ve seen this portrait a hundred times in my life. His parents own a grocery in my neighborhood, Vinegar Hill, and every time I have enough money to buy proper groceries, that’s where I go. I know him, Natasha. Or as good as.”

There was a little movement beside Steve and he looked up to see Wanda standing beside him, looking down at the folder and its portrait with curiosity.

“Are you sure that is him?” she asked dubiously. “This man, he is handsome, but the Asset—” her cheeks went faintly pink. “I do not mean offense. Simply I mean that the Asset, he is… what is the word…”

“Feral,” offered Natasha. “He’s feral. Steve, even if you know his family, I don’t think the Asset is this James Barnes anymore. Not really.”

Steve’s chest boiled beneath his skin. He knew that it was Natasha’s job on this project to keep an eye on him—the civilian, the omega in too deep—and keep him in line. To remind him of the reality of the war that she’d seen with her own eyes, and of the power held over him by Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips and Tony and Howard and the government of the United States of America. He knew, too, that she genuinely believed her words were said for his own good as a person—as a friend, even. That she was protecting Steve by undercutting the hard work the Asset was doing to become a person again. That she would be able to save Steve’s broken heart by reminding him that the Asset was more machine than man.

But she was wrong.

And Steve was sick and tired of Natasha playing both sides.

“I know that he isn’t this James Barnes,” Steve said, his voice deadly calm. “But doesn’t he deserve a chance to become any James Barnes again? If we’re right, he’s been a prisoner of war for as long as I’ve been alive. Longer than either of you. We know that he has shellshock. What makes him less human than any other broken man who comes home someone different?” Steve stared hard at Natasha. “You of all people should know about being looked at as less than human.”

Natasha just blinked, but Steve knew that she understood. The lack of any scent reaction said it all.

Steve closed the file and stood. “I believe in the Asset. I believe in Sergeant James Barnes. He deserves to have his name. And he will remember more once he has it. I know it in my gut, Natasha. Once he knows incontrovertibly that he is a man, he will remember being that man. And he will be able to tell us who tried to take that away from him. I just…” Steve deflated slightly. “I just know it. I can’t explain how.”

Wanda looked between Steve and Natasha and their shoulders-back posturing at one another.

“I think it is worthwhile for Steve to try,” she said quietly. “If there is any way to get answers from the Asset, it is worthwhile to try. We have to stop whoever made him. We have to stop whoever tried—tried to—” she broke off with a shuddering breath. “They are still free in the world when so many are gone. Anything that can lead us to them to end them is worthwhile.” Her red eyes gleamed.

Steve didn’t wait for Natasha to speak before he picked his way through the field of boxes to the door. He carried the file close to his chest all the way down to the sub-basem*nt. Agent Carter was not in the observation booth; the only people Steve passed were a few of Phillips’ cadet STRIKE team guards, Rollins and someone Steve didn’t recognize who reeked of Alpha cologne, all musk, leather, and red fruit.

Steve allowed himself a smile as the lift brought him up to the Asset’s—James Barnes’—pod.

He would be so excited to have a name.

Steve got to gift him that. A repayment for so many apples and so much gentleness.

The Asset stood up from his cot as Steve lifted into the pod, and that soft, rare smile lightened his face for a moment.

“You came back,” he observed. “It isn’t tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” Steve said. “I have—I have big news. You should sit down.”

James Barnes’ eyebrows drew together, but he followed Steve’s lead and sat back down on the cot.

Steve wondered where to begin. How do you tell a person that they’re a person?

He settled on opening the file and removing James Barnes’ official Army portrait. He handed it to the Asset.

Whose face shuttered closed.

“Do you recognize that man?” Steve asked gently.

“No.”

“His name is James Barnes,” Steve said. He leaned closer to James Barnes. “Does that name sound familiar?”

The photo was thrust back into Steve’s hands as James Barnes stood and stalked away from Steve to the corner of the pod, facing out towards the observation booth. He looked into the glare of the observatory lights like he was trying to see past them to Agent Carter or Colonel Phillips or Adolf Hitler himself pulling Steve’s strings.

“No.”

Steve swallowed. “Think hard. Do you know the name James Barnes?”

“No.”

Steve stood and joined the Asset in standing near the glass wall of the pod. He showed the photograph again, James Barnes clean-shaven and grinning with eyes full of good humor. He was a far cry from the bearded, bedraggled, ice-eyed man standing beside Steve, his metal arm whirring and adjusting with anxiety.

“This is you.” Steve said it plainly. Gently. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve touched the Asset’s right arm. “You were born on March 10, 1893.” He held out the file so the man could take a closer look if he wanted.

The Asset—Barnes—didn’t take the offered folder.

“Your mother’s name is Winifred. You grew up in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn.” Steve studied Barnes’ blank eyes. “So did I. I live on the same street where your ma lives, James. You enlisted with the United States Army on May 25, 1917. You were reported as killed in action on November 1, 1918.” Steve leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “You were a member of the 107^th Alpha Infantry Reg—”

“No!” Barnes lashed out and the folder hit the glass wall, followed by his metal fist. The entire pod shook with the force of the punch. Papers rained down around them.

“Whoa!” Steve raised both of his hands in surrender. “It’s okay, James, it’s alright—”

“Who the hell is James?”

Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Text

Steve sat on the train with his hands folded tightly in his lap. He didn’t vomit this time, although the rushing view through the window made his head hurt and his stomach lurch. He didn’t carry a suitcase: this was no vacation, and he had nowhere to stay. He was—as Natasha said—going in and out. A spy mission of his very own.

Well.

Sort of.

Steve was headed to Brooklyn to investigate the life and alleged death of Sergeant James Barnes. It wasn’t exactly a spy mission, but it was off the books even more than his off-the-books work with the Asset. With James.

Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips had no idea that he was on a train racing northward. The gals were going to cover for him that he was sick and back at the omega boardinghouse, stuck abed. They hadn’t yet divulged the Asset’s true identity to the SSR. Steve didn’t want to give them a name and a rank without giving them proof that he was right: that James Barnes was a good man, and a prisoner of war, and innocent of the deeds his captors forced him to commit with their vile brain surgeries and tortures.

He needed that to be true.

That determination was strong enough for Steve to swallow down the rise of his bile as the train banked a curve. He would be on another train back to Washington in a few hours.

And with him—he hoped—would be the key to unlocking James Barnes’ memory about his torturers.

Brooklyn felt strange.

It was the same as it had ever been—there were the Tucci boys on the corner, there was the paperboy yelling headlines, there was St. Ann’s on the corner of Front Street with its pointed black steeple. But it felt different, after so many months away, the first time Steve had ever really been gone that long. He was a Brooklyn boy in his bones, but maybe those bones had stretched and he was a man of Washington now, too.

Or maybe he was just more of a man of the world, learning all that he had in the last few months. About Sokovia, and Ukraine, and Russia, and Germany, and Alphas, and engineering, and what happened to some people who disappeared.

He turned the corner and walked along in front of the rowhouses until he came to the waterfront, where the homes turned into businesses on one side of the street. Barnes Kosher Grocery still stood where it had for Steve’s whole life, and already he could see what he’d come here all the way up on the train for: just as it had for Steve’s whole life, there, behind the front counter, was a framed portrait of a handsome young Alpha in a doughboy’s uniform.

The same portrait that was in James Buchanan Barnes’ file.

The same face that was on the Asset.

He must have seen it a hundred times in his life, glanced at it every time he was ever lucky enough to be able to buy real groceries, and it never sunk in that the man in the portrait had been real. Was still real. In the portrait, the Asset’s—James’—eyes were bright and soft, and the smile he wore on his face looked genuine and like it came to him often and easily. The cleft in his chin was the same. The sharpness of his cheekbones. But this boy was clean-shaven and innocent to the horrors of the world, and Steve ached for the way that sweetness would be tortured out of him.

He wished that he had been alive way back when, so that he could have protected James Barnes from the worst of the Great War. That there had been some miracle that made Steve big enough and strong enough to shoulder James Barnes’ burdens and save him from… whoever had taken him, whoever had turned him into the Asset. Whoever was now siding with chaos and pain and death and the Nazis, and who made James Barnes kill for their cause.

He looked at James Barnes and saw the Asset. But he wanted to look at the Asset and see James Barnes.

He paused outside the door to Barnes Kosher Grocery and wondered, what am I even going to say? Hello, my name is classified, and I’m in love with your formerly-dead son?

The woman behind the counter, near the till, just under James’ portrait, noticed Steve standing in the window and raised her eyebrows at him.

She had the same shape to her face as James and the same cleft in her chin.

Steve blushed and bumbled his way through the door. “Hi, hello, good afternoon, sorry.” He took off his hat and bobbed his head to the woman at the till.

She laughed and brushed her hands on her apron. “It’s no problem, little Stevie Rogers. How have you been getting on without your ma?”

“Oh—alright,” Steve said. He was surprised to be recognized, and said as much.

“Everyone knew your ma,” the Alpha woman said. “She fixed up everyone’s bumps and bruises and broken bones at least a time or two, and my brother had to finish every fight that I started in every alley in Brooklyn! He was too old to be wading into my messes, but that was Bucky. Always willing to take one on the chin for me. That was before you were ever born, so don’t feel bad about not knowing me in return. Once you came, I was old enough not to be so reckless and I didn’t see so much of your ma anymore. But you look just like her, the spitting image.”

Steve smiled at that. He did look like his sainted omega mother, but he didn’t realize that anyone besides himself would ever have noticed. His mother’s funeral had been sparsely attended, and he had lived alone ever since. And that was years ago.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “That’s kind of you to say. You, ah, you look like your brother,” he said carefully. Then he pointed up at the portrait of James Barnes just to clarify. “Assuming that’s him?”

She looked over her shoulder with a sad smile. “Yeah, that’s our Bucky. He went missing somewhere in the Swiss Alps in the last big mess over in Europe, you know. But he was the best big brother anyone’s ever had.” She looked down at the countertop with fresh sorrow painted across her features for a moment before she shook her head. “Anyways, what can I get for you, Stevie?”

“Er,” said Steve, because he didn’t actually have a plan for this. Some spy. “I’m looking for something for supper tonight. What do you recommend?”

The woman with James’—Bucky’s—face raised her eyebrows. “What do I recommend? I recommend the most expensive things in the store for most people, but for Sarah Rogers’ son, I’ll recommend… hmm. I suppose I’ll continue on honoring our lost loved ones and recommend Bucky’s favorite dish, red flannel hash. Do you know how to make it?”

“I know how to make a hash,” Steve said. “It’s simple enough.”

Bucky’s sister moved behind the counter to lift a large slab of bright red corned beef out of its speckled brine. She wielded her long-tined fork and butcher’s knife with practiced grace as she cut off part of the fat cap and discarded it before starting to slice off shards of tender meat.

“How much would you like?” she asked.

The Asset requires 8,000 calories a day. “I’ll take a pound, please,” Steve said. “And say, I never got your name to thank you.”

She smiled, and it looked just like the few moments that the Asset escaped his pain long enough to grin. “Guess I forgot that nicety. I’m Rebecca Barnes, but you can call me Becca since you’re Stevie to me.”

“Becca,” Steve repeated. He stuck out his hand above the countertop and let her wipe her hands clean on her apron again before they shook. She smelled a bit like her brother, too, once Steve was close enough to scent her above the sharp brine of pickled meat and the rows of fish on ice and the sweet juice of all the late-summer fruits and vegetables that filled the small store. She smelled like pear where Bucky had apple and Becca had the soft-rounded shade of mated in her scent, but it was pleasant. Steve wanted to tell her that her brother was alive and nearly whole and almost healthy. And that he was—loved, maybe. Maybe.

But of course, he couldn’t do that.

Steve wondered if she could scent the ghost of her brother on him.

“For a pound of beef, you’ll want a pound each of potatoes and beets,” Becca said, all business after their handshake. “That’s more than any person needs for one supper, especially someone as trim as you are. But all of the ingredients will keep in the icebox. That’s the beauty of corned beef, it will keep for an age.”

“Of course,” Steve said. He took the paper-wrapped package of meat and headed deeper into Barnes Kosher Grocery to find the potatoes and the beets, and he checked his pockets for his ration book to make sure that he could get a knob of butter as well. He had planned ahead that far, at least, in his undercover disguise as a grocery shopper.

“It was nice to meet you again, Becca,” Steve said as he was checking out at the till. “It’s sure nice to hear that someone besides myself remembers my ma fondly.”

“Of course,” Becca said. She smiled with sad eyes and said, “If my brother were here, he’d’ve said the same. She set a dislocated shoulder from down the docks for him once, saved his wages for the week.”

Steve thought of the indestructible metal arm that James “Bucky” Barnes now had. “I’m glad to hear it. That she helped.” Steve coughed around a lump in his throat. “He looks like a very good man.”

“He was,” Becca said wistfully. “He was the best.”

Steve decided to go for honesty when he lifted the packet of groceries and said, “I’ll think of him when I eat the red flannel hash, then. And wish him well.”

Becca sniffed once and nodded. “You take care of yourself, Stevie Rogers.”

He stopped in the door to put his hat back on and tipped it at her. “I will. Thank you, ma’am.”

Brooklyn felt too loud and too much when he stepped back onto the street.

Steve managed to walk to the corner before he dropped, hands to his knees, and wheezed as he tried to catch breath that refused to come. He fumbled for his Schiffman’s cigarettes without dropping his grocery bags, and he was buffeted on both sides by impatient Brooklyn crowds surging and moving on either side of him like unceasing waves. He managed to get the cigarette lit with trembling, ice-cold fingers, and the first hit of acrid smoke made his eyes water as his lungs took in the belladonna and began to dry out. Oxygen returned to him puff by puff, and Steve smoked the cigarette down to his fingers.

He hadn’t expected to talk about his mother.

He hadn’t expected Sergeant James Barnes to be called Bucky. To have a sister who still loved him. To have had a favorite food, like a person, like anyone, like ten thousand thousand other young soldiers who went off to war and never came home.

Steve held the grocery bags close to his aching chest.

“You’re coming home, Bucky,” he whispered into the anonymity of the Brooklyn streets. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Chapter 23: Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Text

Steve arrived back in Washington to find Natasha waiting for him at the train station, her red hair half-hidden beneath a stylish black hat.

“Did you have a nice time?”

“I did,” Steve confirmed. “A lot of things changed about the old neighborhood. But some things stayed the same. It was nice to see.”

Natasha measured Steve with her gaze as they walked through the crowd. Steve held his bag of beef, potatoes, and beets close to his chest.

“It looks like you had luck at the grocers.”

Steve doesn’t know how to explain how much in this stilted spoken code. “I did. I’m—going home to make a red flannel hash.”

“That sounds delicious,” Natasha said. “Do you need a hand in the kitchen?”

“No!” Steve almost yelped the word. He coughed, embarrassed, and said again, more lowly, “No, thank you. I know what I need to do.”

“I hope so,” Natasha said. Her voice was light, pleasant. She strode through the crushing crowd like she couldn’t feel the elbows or smell the rankness of too many scents all at once. “If you burn this dish, I think Peggy and Chester will be forced to find their dinner elsewhere.”

Steve ground his teeth. “I won’t burn it. They’ll get their helpings and then some.”

“I believe you,” Natasha said, and Steve wanted to believe her in return. “I’m no good in the kitchen myself. Great at chopping onions to help out, but I hate to be the chef.”

“You won’t need to be. I can make a mean red flannel hash,” Steve said. “It brings back a lot of memories.”

When Steve glanced over at Natasha, she had one cheek dimpled as though holding back a smirk.

Maybe that was a bit heavy-handed.

“Good,” was all she said. “I look forward to hearing about them. Bring me leftovers tomorrow.”

Then she let the crowd swallow her up, disappearing before Steve could respond. He had no idea where she was headed—back to the Stark dormitories or halfway to Europe. Steve exited the train station and crossed to the bus stop to catch a ride back to his boardinghouse.

He really was going to make a red flannel hash.

The midnight walk from the boardinghouse to Stark Mansion felt no less terrifying this time around, but the urgency in Steve’s chest kept him from jumping at shadows. He carried the covered plate of red flannel hash in both hands, unwilling to let any of it go to waste.

The dog he had seen before trotted to the end of its leash at the smell of the corned beef, but Steve just whispered, “Shoo! I’ll bring you something in the morning!”

Steve skirted close to the walls of Room Six on his route to the sub-basem*nt because he could hear Tony’s plummy voice ringing out from somewhere near JARVIS. No one else on the night shift knew Steve, and Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips were long gone to bed, but Steve didn’t need Tony to see him and demand explanations.

The Asset—James—Bucky, Bucky Barnes—co*cked his head at the sight of Steve approaching the lift. He didn’t move towards it, but he watched Steve’s ascent with keen, confused eyes.

“Hello,” Steve said once he was ensconced in the pod with the Asset. With James. With Bucky. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to see you earlier today. Did anyone come to talk to you?”

James shook his head. “No one. I could tell they were watching me.”

“Did you get food?”

James hesitated this time, but shook his head again. “Not today.”

Hot anger slashed through Steve’s gut at that. Did they only feed the Asset—feed Bucky—when Steve was there to make sure he was treated as a human being?

Did Agent Carter sign off on that maltreatment?

Who else knew?

Steve removed the brown paper covering from the plate of red flannel hash, and he smiled—

But at the plume of scent and steam from the plate, the Asset recoiled as though struck.

“What,” asked the Asset through nearly-closed lips, “Is that.”

“I made it,” Steve said, brows furrowed. “I made it for you. It’s red flannel hash. I was told… that it was your favorite. Before your arm.” He approached the Asset’s cot and sat down, still carrying the plate. The Asset did not sit down, and instead watched Steve warily, his nostrils flaring.

“You must be hungry,” Steve said gently. He produced a fork from his jacket pocket. “Come try it, see what you think.”

The Asset shook his head tightly. “Not safe.”

“Not safe?” Steve frowned. “I made this myself, just half an hour ago. No one else has gone near it, no one else has touched it.” Steve forked up a bit and ate it. “You see? It’s perfectly safe. I promise, Bucky.”

The Asset reeled back as though Steve hit him with a vibranium discus. “No.”

Steve set the plate aside on Bucky’s cot and left his hands on his knees, showing the Asset—James—Bucky—that he was unarmed. That he was safe.

That he was still just Steve.

“Bucky,” Steve confirmed. He tried to keep his voice level and his scent calm, light and sweet. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Your name is Bucky.”

“Stop,” the Asset croaked. He sounded inches away from vomiting. “Stop!” He backed himself into the corner of the pod and faced away from Steve, out into the dark abyss of the rest of Stark Mansion’s sub-basem*nt, empty and silent.

“I know you like red flannel hash, Bucky. I found out in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn. That’s where you’re from,” Steve said, and his voice was the only sound in the world. “You were born on March 10, 1893. You enlisted with the United States Army on May 25, 1917. You were part of the 107^th Alpha Regiment of the United States Army. Just like my father. Bucky, you knew my mother before you—before your arm.” Steve swallowed. “Bucky, look at me, please.”

The Asset—James—Bucky—turned away from the glass wall of the pod and slowly, slowly looked at Steve.

If his eyes had held flashes of life before, these eyes blazed with it, with memory and pain and self-awareness. Wet built up in the lower lashes and began to stream down Bucky’s face.

“My name is Bucky Barnes,” he whispered. “R-32557038. Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn.” His voice shook. His hands, both of them, shook. “My name is Bucky Barnes. R-32557038. Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn. My name—”

Steve crossed the pod and closed both of his hands around Bucky’s shivering wrists. His thumb and fingers didn’t meet around the width of either his flesh wrist or the hulking metal abomination. “I know. Bucky, I know. You’re Bucky Barnes. Your mom’s name is Winifred. Your dad’s name is George. You have a sister named—”

“Becca,” whispered Bucky. “Becca. Gotta write back to Becca. Got a letter.” His eyes skittered away from Steve’s face and his right hand twitched like he was looking for a pencil and a pen. “She’s hiding a kitten, gonna drive Mother crackers.”

Becca Barnes was 47 years old and married, the mother of three of her own. According to Natasha’s intel, her oldest was named James Buchanan.

They called him Bucky.

“Bucky,” Steve said, still soft. “It’s been a long time. Becca’s not hiding that kitten anymore. It’s okay.”

“Gotta write her back,” Bucky repeated. “She’ll worry about me. Think I died if I go too long without a letter.”

Steve bit his lips together hard. His own eyes blurred with tears. “She’s not worried, Bucky. She’s okay. She’s just fine.”

Gray-blue eyes full of horrible, painful intelligence looked into Steve’s face. “How long has it been?”

Steve swallowed. He kept his loose hold on both of Bucky’s wrists and rubbed his thumbs over Bucky’s scent glands there, trying to soothe him before dropping the bomb:

“It’s 1943.”

Bucky jerked like Steve slapped him, but he didn’t pull away. His jaw clenched.

Steve almost wished that Agent Carter or Natasha or even Phillips were in the booth to see Bucky right now, in this moment. There was no denying that he was a human being—or that he was just as surprised to find that out as anyone else at Stark Mansion would be. Bucky Barnes’ eyes were a tempest of agony as he stared down at Steve and tried to process the idea that he had missed a quarter of a century.

“I’m gonna get you outta here,” Steve promised. “You don’t deserve to be in a cage.”

“You don’t know what’s in my head.”

“I know something happened to you,” Steve said. “And that all the things you did… I don’t believe you chose them. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Bucky Barnes.” He swallowed again and pressed his thumbs against Bucky’s wrist glands. “It wasn’t my Alpha.”

Bucky inhaled a shuddering breath. Tears dripped silently down his face, shining against the unshaven, unruly beard covering his jaw. “They’re never gonna let me go.”

Steve pulled himself up to his full height and stared at Bucky’s face until the Alpha met his eyes. “They will. They’ll have to. I’ll make them.”

“I don’t know what I am,” Bucky murmured.

“I don’t know either,” Steve admitted. “But I know I—want to belong to you. It doesn’t matter to me whatever else you are.”

Bucky shook his head. “You’re crackers, too.”

“Maybe,” Steve admitted. “But I know that Bucky Barnes was a good man. And a good soldier. And I don’t think that isn’t true just because of—I’m not a scientist,” Steve interrupted himself. “I can’t pretend like I understand what they did to you or tell you that it can be fixed. But I’m pretty smart. And I’m observant. And you’re still a good man. I’ve seen it.”

Bucky shook his head again. “It’s 1943.” He pulled his wrists out of Steve’s grasp easily and his own flesh hand curled around the metal arm like he wanted to pull it off—pull it out of himself. “I’m not even a man anymore. I don’t know what I am.” He started to shake, but this time it was barely constrained anger, not an outpouring of sudden pain. “I can’t tell you who made me, or how, or how you can make more of me. I don’t know what I am! I don’t know what happened to me. I just know—” He sucked in a breath.

Steve stepped closer again and reached out, but stopped before his palm actually touched the metal arm. “What, Bucky? What do you know?”

“Hail Hydra,” Bucky whispered. “The only thing I remember is hail Hydra.”

Sequences of gibberish code flashed through Steve’s head all at once like the newsreel before a motion picture. H-A-I-L-H-Y-D-R-A. Nine letters. A perfect crib. Double-letters. Anagrammatic. English, not German.

Steve blinked to clear his eyes of the code sequences dancing in front of him, and instead there was Bucky: right hand pulling at his left shoulder like he could tear the metal arm away, his back curved and shrunken in the opposite of his primal posture. His hair hung long and scraggly around his bearded face. If Steve didn’t know better, he would never have connected this brokenhearted man to the smiling doughboy whose photo hung behind the counter of Barnes Kosher Grocery in Vinegar Hill.

“You’re brilliant,” Steve said.

He rose onto his toes. Slowly, holding himself back furiously so that he didn’t spook Bucky, he tipped his face forward, eyes softening and scent going wanting and sweet.

There was no way that Steve could reach Bucky’s face on his own. He stayed on tiptoe, waiting, all omega instinct in the open, welcome lines of his body.

Steve stayed as still as he could, patient, until Bucky won his internal war.

Bucky’s face lowered. He brushed his lips against Steve’s just long enough for Steve to taste the salt of his tears and feel the scratch of his beard against his mouth.

And then Bucky buried his face against the side of Steve’s neck, whuffing in his omega’s scent for all the comfort in the world.

Steve stayed in the prisoner pod with Bucky long enough to hear the shift-change of Phillips’ STRIKE cadets at the end of the corridor. The red flannel hash went long congealed and cold.

Steve didn’t mind.

He took the plate with him and scraped the cold hash into a trashcan at the bend of the hallway near Howard’s laboratory. He couldn’t very well leave it with Bucky and risk Agent Carter knowing that Steve was making late-night visits to the prisoner without any observers.

Despite the changing of the guards, the day shift was a long ways off when Steve emerged into the basem*nt.

Just as well.

He had work to do and no time to waste on pleasantries.

Steve stretched onto his toes at the bombe machine and adjusted the dials to read H-A-I-L-H-Y-D-R-A. With a groaning, clicking whirr, the machine came to life and began to sort through the millions of possible decryption combinations for the alphabet soup on the code slip.

He began to pace back and forth across the floor in front of the machine, fingers crossed behind his back as he prayed that there would be no new messages caught between now and when the bombe finished its run. It might take hours, but Steve knew in his gut that this was the crib they needed to crack the codes to and from Schloss Strücker.

The codes that would spell out what had happened to Bucky since 1918.

The codes that might help the Allies win the war.

“Hey, Dr. Computer!”

Steve jumped. He pressed a hand to his jumping heart. “Hello, Tony. Did a new slip come through traffic?”

“Nope,” Tony said. He stuffed his hands deep in his pants pockets and rocked backwards on his heels. “Apparently all is quiet on the Western front tonight.”

“I suppose that’s good,” Steve said. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton.

“So my question is, why are you running ten-thousand volts of very expensive electricity through the bombe when nothing new’s come through?” Tony leaned forward on his heels this time. “Don’t think I don’t notice that your team’s working on something juicy.”

Steve swallowed. It was true: they were. And they were housing it and feeding it in Tony’s family basem*nt.

“Loose lips sink ships,” he managed.

Tony twisted his mouth. “So does good code-cracking. Come on, you know I can help.”

Steve kept his mouth shut.

Tony took his hands out of his pockets and held them up in surrender. “Alright. I understand. I just pay for everything and program everything and make everything look spiffy. But you’re the real head of this place, and I can understand that.” He looked Steve up and down with a soft, considering appreciation. “I can even respect it. You’re not like other omegas, are you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“You know, until you,” Tony continued, “I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone smarter than me.”

“What about Howard?” Steve bit the inside of his cheek.

Tony scowled and waved a dismissive hand. “He’s a better fancy-talker but I know you don’t think he’s on our level. I’ve read your math paper, the one you wrote as a kid. It was almost over my head. Almost.” He rubbed his thin mustache. “You want a job after the war?”

Steve blinked. “What?”

“We’re going to win this war,” Tony said confidently. “America and England and France. We’re going to win, and this job will be done. I’m guessing that as an omega, you don’t have many opportunities that actually fulfill your intellect, so I’m offering—do you want a job after the war?”

“I—” Steve shook his head. “This is a bit sudden, Tony.”

“Well, I only just thought to ask. But Howard and I, we’re starting a technical computing company when all of this is over. He’ll design the best computing machines you’ve ever imagined and I’ll build them, but we sure could use someone with your brain to write the programming.” He looked expectantly at Steve. “We’ll be heading back to Manhattan once this place goes back to rattling around empty. Say you’ll think about it?”

Steve felt like he’d been socked in the gut. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” Tony nodded and moved to walk away, but then stopped short and turned to face Steve again, pointing with one finger. “You know, one of these days I’ll figure out who your team’s got stashed in my basem*nt. I know they’re an Alpha, whoever they are. You reek of them.” He narrowed his eyes. “But your classified secrets are safe with me.”

And then Tony Stark disappeared around the massive bulk of the whirring bombe. Steve stood in front of it, as stock-still and staring as Bucky’s first week in the prisoner pod, for so long that it felt like no time at all had passed when the bombe made its horrible noise and spit out a long stripe of code tape.

Steve grabbed it up. German read like his native language now, so many months into drafting and redrafting the Eins Catalogue and looking at tens of thousands of words of German code.

TWO MORE GROW BACK STOP HAIL HYDRA STOP THE ASSET MUST REMAIN UNDER OUR CONTROL STOP REMOVE THIS UNDESIRABLE IMPEDIMENT STOP HAIL HYDRA STOP IN ITS PLACE.

“Another grows in its place,” Steve whispered. “The Hydra. Cut off one head… another grows in its place.”

Then time seemed to slow for a moment, stretching like taffy being pulled, before snapping back into its real speed, if not faster:

Remove this undesirable impediment.

That meant Steve.

Somehow, the Axis—Hydra—knew not only that the Asset was still alive, but exactly where to send messages about his status… and about his connection to Steve.

Someone on the project was a double agent, feeding information back to the very enemies from whom they had taken Bucky. From whom they had freed him, although Steve knew it would be an uphill battle to make Bucky truly free. All this time, as Bucky slowly healed and as Steve fell in love with him, someone else on the project knew exactly who, what, and where Bucky was, and where he had come from.

They knew who had given Bucky his orders.

With the phrase ‘our control,’ it was entirely possible they were one of the people who gave Bucky those orders in the first place.

And they knew about Steve.

This second head of the hydra had sprouted in America, in Stark Mansion itself, and Steve had no idea how to cut it off and cauterize the wound.

Was it just a coincidence that Tony showed up and offered Steve a job—to keep him close?—as he was decoding this message?

Was Natasha really a spy for the other side, embedding herself in the project here so that the codes could be changed faster than Steve and Jane could decode them?

Why was Agent Carter, a British woman, in charge of an American operation, anyway?

How far would Howard go to make money?

And that Dr. Zola, praising the torture done on Bucky’s brain as genius medical work… was he smugly praising himself?

Jane, Darcy, Wanda… they might let information leak without even realizing it; Darcy was so social and Jane so absent-minded and Wanda so young… could they have met someone pretending to be a serviceman out at the club and told them too much?

Steve had no idea who to trust.

Except Bucky.

He carefully folded the code slip as small as he could and tucked it into his shoe, down near the toes with the rest of his wadded-up newspaper. His heart pounded in his chest, and his fingers shook as he checked for his asthma cigarettes.

He was in danger. Bucky was in danger. The whole goddamn world was in danger.

And the only person who could save it was Steve.

Chapter 24: Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Text

Steve felt strange and buzzy the next morning as he arrived back at Stark Mansion. He had lain in bed for three hours between leaving and getting up again, but he hadn’t had a wink of sleep. Too much had happened yesterday to feel like the world was right-side-up: he had given Bucky back his name, and Bucky had given him the information Steve had been seeking for over a year now. But in doing so, Steve had discovered that they were in greater danger than he ever would have imagined, and now, Steve was heading right back into the middle of a pit of snakes. It felt strange, not to trust his new friends. His pack. Wanda, Darcy, Jane, Natasha. Even Agent Carter and the Stark brothers. Steve did trust them all.

The only people who knew about Bucky whom Steve did not trust were Phillips and Zola. And somehow, Steve knew that they would both be present that morning even before he entered the Mansion basem*nt and hung up his coat and hat.

“Rogers!” barked Phillips, looking for all the world as though Steve had kept him waiting for an hour when it was hardly a minute past eight o’clock. “Agent Carter says you just got back on a fact-finding mission about our so-called James Barnes. How did you make out, sol—Rogers?”

“I was able to confirm the Asset’s identity as James Barnes of Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, sir,” Steve said. “I saw his file photo on display in the family’s place of business and spoke to Barnes’ sister about his disappearance and alleged death during the Great War. The Asset is undoubtedly Barnes, sir. I’m sure of it.”

“Hmm,” grunted Phillips. He tapped his foot on the stone floor. “I don’t like it. An American soldier defecting to the Axis—”

“I don’t think he defected, sir,” Steve interrupted. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I believe that he was taken prisoner after his alleged death. According to the reports from his final mission for the Army, Barnes fell off a troop transport during an avalanche in the Alps. It’s possible that he survived the fall and was taken as a prisoner of war.”

“And they never declared it to the International Prisoners-of-War Agency? What would make Barnes so special that they would turn him into—that abomination, rather than just leverage him for the return of their own men like everyone else?”

Hail Hydra. Steve bit the inside of his cheek. “Perhaps he had qualities they were looking for in their experiments to create the Asset, sir.” He cleared his throat. “Barnes was, I mean, Barnes is, Jewish. For example.”

“Hmm,” Phillips grunted again. “I don’t like it, Rogers. Too many questions. I think it’s much more likely that Barnes faked his death and defected to the enemy. Who knows how much he was paid per massacre? I want you to get that out of him next.”

Fury built in Steve’s chest until it felt like an inferno beneath his skin. Bucky was tortured! He would never have chosen to become the Asset. No one would.

No one did.

“I’ll keep researching the circ*mstances of his alleged death,” Steve said stiffly. “Perhaps there is more information about Barnes’ service that could answer some of your questions, sir.”

Phillips narrowed his eyes. “See that you do, Rogers. Carter told me that you and Barnes are, ah… that he’s become familiar with you. Don’t make me regret letting Carter choose you for this project. This is why omegas don’t serve, you know. All those hormones, you forget the value of cold, hard, rational logic. What’s more likely, Rogers, a man survives a fall down a mountain and the Gerries single him out for no good reason, or a simple Brooklyn Jew is offered enough money to make it worth defecting to the other side?”

The inferno clawed its way up Steve’s throat. “I suppose we’ll find out, sir.”

“Hmm. See that we do.”

Phillips left Steve’s office, his loud voice barking out for Agent Carter as he marched down the corridor away from Room Six. By the time Steve’s hands unclenched, he couldn’t feel his fingers.

There was another knock at his open door, and Steve opened his eyes. The vein behind his temple was throbbing already, and it wasn’t even nine in the morning.

Darcy looked apologetic even as she carried his cup of tea and a small plate with what looked to be a yeasty roll on it.

“I’m sorry I’m a bit late with your breakfast,” she said, wincing. “I didn’t want to interrupt while Phillips was here lest he send me out to get him a four-course meal and call me a ‘good girl’ again.”

Steve tried to smile. “I understand. He’s… very Alpha.”

“Yes.” Darcy set the tea and roll down on Steve’s seldom-used desk. “The roll is from Wanda, a Sokovian sweet-roll.”

Guilt replaced the inferno in Steve’s chest. How could he think that Wanda, at least, would ever do anything to help the Germans? Help the Nazis? Steve himself was more likely to turn out to be the mole than Wanda.

“I’ll tell her thank-you when I see her,” Steve said quietly. “Darcy, can you close the door a moment? I’m afraid I need to ask you a question as your—your supervisor.”

Darcy’s face spelled surprise, but she did shut the door. Steve usually went out of his way not to pull rank on the rest of the team.

“Is everything alright, Steve?”

“Well, I’m not really sure,” Steve said. “I have reason to believe that someone on our team leaked information about the existence and location of the Asset. I can’t say to whom, or how I know. But Darcy, have you spoken to anyone about what we do here at the Mansion?”

Darcy looked incensed. “Of course not! I know what ‘classified’ means, and I take my job real seriously! I accepted this position because I want to save American lives, not cost them. Any time I’ve ever been asked what I do here in Washington, I say I work in supplies, just like Agent Carter said to do. And nobody’s ever questioned me on that, because, well, I look like the kinda gal who could only handle sorting supplies before care packages go overseas. But that’s a good thing for keeping secrets! And I do keep our secrets, Steve. I’d swear on my grandmother.”

Still, Steve remembered his own encounter at the Service Club. “And no one has ever asked you pointed questions about what we do here? No one out dancing, or on—dates?”

Darcy shook her head. “What’s happened, Steve? Why are you asking me this?”

Steve bit his lip, torn between confiding in Darcy and keeping a potentially world-shattering secret to himself alone. Darcy knew about Bucky’s existence down in the sub-basem*nt. She had stayed with him the night of Thanksgiving, when JARVIS decrypted the Anlage code. She was smart and dedicated, and Steve knew that she could be fierce.

But the Hail Hydra message singled him out. Him alone.

“I can’t say,” Steve said, somewhat miserably. He picked at the sweet-roll. “I just need to know… if anyone on our particular project might have said something they oughtn’t. You spend time with the other gals, too, you haven’t heard—Jane or Wanda or…?”

This made Darcy’s face darken. “None of us would ever jeopardize the work we do here, Steve. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the Nazis coming to my parents’ back door. And I’ve been here longer than you have. I know things going on in this wretched basem*nt beyond anything that you’ve seen. Sure, your Asset is unique, but every group here is trying to save the world, Steve. You aren’t the only one.”

“I know.” Steve sighed. “I would tell you if I could, Darcy. But I’m—frightened.”

“Of me?”

Steve shook his head, then nodded, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed. “What did the Asset tell you? Because he could be lying, Steve. Manipulating you for the Nazis’ aims. You could be falling into a trap.”

“He didn’t tell me this,” Steve said. And Bucky would never lie to me. “I just—I’m doing due diligence,” he said firmly. “Making sure that everyone on our team is keeping their lips sealed as they should.”

Darcy stared at Steve, assessing him with the same diligent eyes that she used to take coded notes on the telegram receiver.

“You can trust me,” she said finally. “And Wanda and Jane and Natasha. You’re our pack, Steve, and we could be yours, too. The only time to my knowledge that anyone’s approached one of us about our real work was when you came with us to the Service Club.” Darcy’s red lips pursed. “Which makes me worry for you. It was you that serviceman knew to find. Not any of us.” She touched Steve’s hand. “At least tell me if you’re in danger?”

Steve smiled thinly. “The world is at war. We’re all in danger.”

Steve’s next stop was the office beside his own, where Howard held forth on the telephones to senators and congressmen and whoever else needed to be briefed without being briefed on anything too important. On anything that mattered.

Howard nodded as though the man on the other end of his handset could see him, muttered, “Right… right… right… right. Alright. Alright.” He laughed plummily. “You, too, my best to your omega. Alright. Alright. Alright.” He hung up. “Bastard.” He spun in his chair. “Steve! What can I do for you and does it involve finding Darcy for a cup of coffee?”

“Um,” Steve said. “It didn’t, but—”

“Oh, damn. Alright, I’ve probably had enough coffee,” Howard said. He looked abashed, but expectant as he stared at Steve.

Steve coughed, trying for nonchalance. “How difficult would it be for you to rig up another set of those magnetic door-locks for the doors between Room Six and the, uh,” Steve checked over his shoulder. “The pod downstairs.”

Howard stroked his mustache. “Not difficult at all. I might get some questions from Tony, but he knows already that something’s down there that he hasn’t got clearance to see. How many keys would you want?”

“Just two,” Steve said. “One for Agent Carter and one for myself. If that would be allowed, do you think?”

“I don’t see why not,” Howard said. “You’re the head of the project and she’s your CO. You don’t want a key for Natasha or anyone for backup?” He raised his hand beside his head. “I could be of use eventually, if you want me to be.”

Flashy investors zipped through Steve’s head. Who knew how many people with too much power Howard Stark knew? And what they would do to make a little more money, even if it meant the deaths of American servicemen? Even if it meant the death of the American democracy and the world as they knew it?

Steve shook his head. “That’s alright, Howard. No offense intended, of course. I just think I’m—I’m close to something and I want to keep it tight to the vest.”

Howard looked, if anything, pitying at that. “As long as what you’re getting close to won’t be spending the rest of its life in a very, very dank jail cell once all of this is over, Steve.” He stroked his mustache again. “It’s not my place to say I’m worried about you, but—”

“It isn’t your place,” Steve agreed. “And you don’t need to be worried about me. I’m fine. Just—rig up those magnetic locks, please. And let me know when they’re installed.”

Howard’s face was carefully neutral. “Will do, Cap.” He gave a little two-finger salute. “Should be ready by the end of the day. I have all of the materials I’ll need.”

“Thank you,” Steve said. His embarrassment and pride simmered back down to a manageable level, and he said, “For the worry, too. But please, it’s not necessary.”

“I sure hope not,” said Howard.

Steve found Natasha talking to Wanda at her desk. Wanda looked older than she had the first time Steve came upon them like this—Natasha in her slacks leaning against Wanda’s desk, Wanda looking up at her as they exchanged soft Russian words. Wanda’s hair was no longer in neat pigtails, instead set in a tight continuous roll. She no longer looked up at Natasha with something like awe in her eyes. The set of her shoulders was tired.

Steve smiled kindly at her. “Hello, Wanda. How are you?”

Her returning smile did not reach her eyes. “I am well, thank you, Steve.”

“Glad to hear it. May I borrow Natasha for a few minutes?”

Wanda gestured magnanimously, and Steve nodded for Natasha to follow him to his office. Once again, he took a seat at his desk and closed the door.

“Steve?” Natasha asked. “Did something happen in Brooklyn?”

Steve shook his head. “Not exactly. Just… I need to know… does the phrase ‘hail Hydra’ mean anything to you?”

Even before she spoke, Steve could tell that Natasha knew exactly what those two words meant, and that they scared her. He had never seen such an unguarded expression on Natasha’s face. One of her hands came up to touch the square scar behind her ear where her scent gland should have been.

“Where did you hear that?” Natasha’s voice was low and urgent. “Steve?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve said, unwilling to share that there was a mole amongst their ranks. Unwilling to put Bucky in further danger. “But I know that it has something to do with the experimentation done on Bucky and on Pietro Maximoff, and I have reason to believe that—” He cut himself off. “I have reason to believe that it’s important, that’s all.”

“Damn right it’s important,” Natasha said fiercely. “Steve, Hydra is a sleeping giant. Hitler’s own elite science division, in search of the truth behind Teutonic myths. But it’s larger than that. Larger than the Nazis. There are offshoots all over Europe, from Switzerland and Austria to England and Russia. Their agents number amongst our allies. They’re slippery. Are you saying—are you saying that they’ve reached America, too?”

Steve and Natasha looked deeply into one another’s eyes. Steve weighed his options: trust her. Don’t trust her.

“I have reason to believe they’ve reached this Mansion.”

Natasha’s fingertips pressed into the empty skin of her scar. “Then we’ve already lost.”

“Don’t say that,” Steve said. “In knowing, we’re a step ahead of them.”

Natasha shook her head. “You don’t understand. My parents were scientists,” she said, switching gears abruptly. “In Russia, between the wars. It put a target on their backs. On my back, even though I was only a child. Only an omega,” she said bitterly. “My scars—they experimented on me. My father fled with me in the middle of the night and we had to leave my mother and sister behind. To them. It doesn’t matter that Russia is our ally in this war; the ties to Hydra run deeper through the bedrock than any border. They’re—everywhere.”

Steve reached out and laid his hand over Natasha’s fingers. “They’re not in this room.”

“When I saw the Asset, I thought, perhaps,” Natasha admitted. “But the work was so much more advanced than anything done to me. I suppose I was naïve in my hope that Hydra couldn’t have advanced their science so far in only twenty years.”

“It isn’t as though the Nazis themselves are strangers to human experimentation and torture,” Steve said darkly. “Pietro may well have been the work of the Gerries alone.”

Natasha shook her head. “Maybe.”

She sounded doubtful.

“How do we root them out?” Steve asked. “Whoever is—how does one kill a hydra?”

“Cut off one head,” Natasha said despairingly, “And another two grow in its place.”

“Then we cauterize the wounds,” Steve said. “Natasha, they don’t know that I know. They don’t know that Bucky has begun to remember his life before their torture. They may not even know that we’ve discovered his identity. And,” Steve said, leaning in, “We have a weapon of which they can’t even dream."

"What’s that?”

“Me,” Steve said, simply. “I’ve never met a bully who didn’t underestimate me. Hydra will, too. And that’s to our advantage.” He thought of Bucky’s smiling face in his WWI portrait and the sobbing man he’d left in the prisoner’s pod the night before. “I’m not going to stop until all of Hydra is dead or captured. They’re already getting panicked and sloppy, if we know that they’re here. I figured that out, and I’ll figure out the rest of their schemes. My brain is a weapon they don’t have and can’t recreate. And I can do this?” He tapped the side of his head. “All day.”

Chapter 25: Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Text

The next two weeks felt as full, fraught, and jittery as the time Steve had spent waiting for word from the Commandos on their trek to retrieve the Asset. He felt like every code that comes through might be assassination orders coming down on his head; every person in Stark Mansion might be a Hydra spy.

And Agent Carter and Colonel Phillips were not helping the mood.

“Rogers!” Agent Carter had demanded the morning after Steve had Howard install new locks to protect Bucky. “A word?”

Steve stood before her and waited while she neatly collated a stack of index cards. He knew she was waiting to see him squirm—and he would not give her the satisfaction.

“Howard told me that you specifically requested new protections between Room Six and the sub-basem*nt. Do you have any particular reason for this? Colonel Phillips was quite agitated that neither he nor his STRIKE cadets could access the pod directly.”

“I have my reasons,” Steve said. “No one in Room Six is in danger from Bucky, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“So you believe the Asset to be in danger from someone in Room Six?” Agent Carter’s eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. As a beta, she didn’t exude a strong scent, but Steve figured that if she were Alpha or omega she’d be quietly reeking of rage. “And the basis for your belief is…”

“Classified,” Steve said. He jutted out his chin. It wasn’t strictly the truth—it was a secret, but since it had never entered any chain of evidence it could not be ‘classified’ as such—but it felt more urgent to call it classified than to coyly say, ‘it’s a secret.’

“Mister Rogers,” sighed Agent Carter, and Steve noted that he no longer rated as an honorary doctor. “If you do not have any real evidence that someone in this building poses a danger to the project, then you need to have Howard remove those locks. Colonel Phillips is the ranking commander of this operation and his STRIKE cadets are working security for your own good. They cannot do their jobs with the locks in place.”

“Bucky isn’t a danger to me.” Steve shrugged. “And I never asked for Phillips to assign cadets to patrol down there. The one time I’ve interacted with them, they provoked aggression from Bucky and didn’t do anything to protect anyone, as far as I can tell.” Steve tried to be a little less spiky as he said, “Bucky is remembering more by the day. Talking more about what he remembers. The fewer people have access to that information, the better-protected it is. Loose lips sink ships and all that. The only people who need to hear what he tells me are you and me, and no one should have access to Bucky without one of the two of us present. He’s… he’s fragile.”

“Fragile,” repeated Agent Carter. “Three hundred pounds of pure Alpha killing machine.”

“He’s a person,” Steve said quietly. “And he’s been through horrors. He’s just begun to recover from them. So yes, he’s fragile.”

“Forgive the 43 American soldiers he killed for not seeing it the same way you do.”

“Does it not matter that he wasn’t in his right mind? Non compos mentis is an element of our justice system for a reason.”

“When it comes to treason,” said Agent Carter curtly, “It doesn’t matter.”

Treason. “It sounds like quite the conundrum, to say that Bucky must be a foreign agent and therefore we can treat him as a prisoner of war, but if he is American, then he’s committed treason and we can imprison him. That isn’t fair. It isn’t just.”

“It’s reality,” Agent Carter said. “Somehow, that man from Brooklyn ended up pulling the trigger for the Nazis and killing nearly four dozen of our men. This war will not end well for him, Rogers. I’ve—” she sighed. “I’ve warned you of that time and again.”

“That was before we knew the truth!” Steve clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “He was incapable of making the decision to pull the trigger. That ought to count for something. He was… you remember what the early days of his presence here. He was more weapon than man. And weapons are amoral. They simply fire where pointed.”

Agent Carter rubbed her forehead, nostrils flared. “Fortunately, Rogers, this is a problem for people above either of our paygrades. The problem that affects you and me directly is the question of the locks barring Phillips and his men from seeing the prisoner.”

Steve chewed at the inside of his cheek. “Please trust me that they are necessary for Bucky’s protection. And mine.”

“You are not to enter the pod without my oversight from the observation booth,” Agent Carter said after a long silence. “I am trying very hard, Rogers, not to make assumptions based on your secondary gender. Do not prove my open-mindedness wrong.”

Steve’s smile felt brittle as an eggshell. “No, ma’am.”

Steve slowly collected dead code slips to rerun through JARVIS using ‘HAIL HYDRA’ as the decryption phrase. Finding time to use the bombe without needing to answer difficult questions from Tony, Agent Carter, or Colonel Phillips proved almost impossible, so instead Steve was growing a stack of index cards hidden beneath a pencil case in his desk drawer. Eventually, he would be able to run another code and see whether the Hydra mole had heard again from their mysterious headquarters. But ‘eventually’ felt very far away when he spent all day, every day wondering whether someone in the room was gunning for his head.

Maybe, Steve thought, this was what it felt like to be a real soldier. Unable to fully relax. Knowing that an enemy lurked somewhere near. Relying on a small troop of close comrades and distrusting everyone else.

If only his Commandos could see their Captain now.

Steve stood on a stepladder and scribbled an equation in chalk on the highest point of the blackboard he could reach, Jane on an identical stepstool a few feet away to take the second half of the proof. They were both fairly covered in chalk and Steve’s lungs felt tight, but they were so close to finding the geographical location of Location KJS, the Hydra messages’ origin point.

When Steve asked Bucky about the place, Bucky had shaken his head.

“I was almost always… decommissioned, during transport,” he said haltingly. “I don’t remember anything except the room where they did maintenance on me. On my arm.” He looked pale and sick. “On my mind.”

Steve had leaned in and gently kissed Bucky’s temple, knowing that the observation booth was empty so late at night.

“No one will ever do that again,” Steve had promised.

Now Steve had to root out Hydra to make good on that promise. He couldn’t stop until all of Hydra was dead or captured.

“Steve!”

Steve startled and looked down, where Natasha had evidently been trying to get his attention for some time while he was lost in a whirl of mathematics and thoughts of his Alpha.

Steve stored his chalk in his pocket, dusted off his hands, and climbed down the stepladder. “Sorry, Natasha. Did you need something?”

The set of Natasha’s severe brows changed the slightest, significant cant. “I have something that might help your search.”

Steve’s breath caught in his throat, and not from the chalk dust. “I’ll meet you in my office.”

He took a roundabout route to his office, stopping in the omegas’ lavatory to wash the dust from his hands and splash some cold water on his suddenly hot face. Natasha would pull him away from his work only for news about their shared secret.

And the sooner he solved the problem of Hydra—

He could save Bucky, sure. That was vitally important to Steve, as important as breathing.

But he could also end the war. And that was important to more people than just Steve.

Once he entered his office and closed the door, Natasha wasted no time.

“I reached out to my contact in the Résistance,” she said in a low voice.

“Dernier,” Steve supplied.

Natasha’s lips thinned. “My contact has remained on friendly terms with your other Commandos, and they’ve all been making note of occurrences that remind them of the things they saw while chasing down the Asset.”

“Bucky,” Steve said. “His name is Bucky.”

“Bucky,” Natasha amended. “Empty villages that haven’t seen official battle and the like. My contact—”

“Dernier.”

“Also kept in communication with that Norwegian Resistance fellow they met, calls himself Thor? And his tales are wild about Axis action in the far North. I tried… I tried to put out feelers on the Russian front, but I haven't... haven't heard anything back.”

Steve gently touched her arm.

That must be her sister. Or her mother.

“What’s happening in the far North?”

“There’s a village called Tønsberg that was razed to the ground, including its 900-year-old church,” Natasha said. “The group had weapons that—oh, it sounds ridiculous. Had guns that shot light, according to a survivor. Vaporized people rather than shot them with bullets.”

“That sounds…” Steve trailed off.

“I know it does,” Natasha said crossly. “But I thought, so does the idea of keeping a man alive in a refrigerator, and we know that Hydra can do that. So does turning a man into half a robot, and they did that, too. Who’s to say that their weaponry hasn’t evolved alongside their human experimentation?”

“But why? What was in Tønsberg that Hydra would want?”

Natasha shook her head. “I don’t know. But the important thing is that this Thor fellow tracked reports of those light-guns from Tønsberg all the way to the very Northernmost tip of Norway, far above the Arctic circle. Town called Hammerfest.” Natasha leaned in to look Steve squarely in the eye. “He told Dernier that it was crawling with Axis and ‘spooky scientists.’ All of the civilians have been evacuated. Every last building except a single church has been replaced by a single gigantic Nazi monstrosity. Munitions factory, laboratory, troop training, hangar, U-boat base. All rolled into one.”

Steve felt fairly hit on the head. “Schloss Strücker.”

Natasha nodded. “That’s what I think, too.”

Steve squeezed his own thighs, needing to ground himself in the slight pain of his own tight grip. No wonder there was no Schloss Strücker in maps of Axis territory—that far North, they were practically invisible.

But thre they were.

Hydra.

“What do you want to do?”

Steve looked up at Natasha in surprise. “What do I want to do?”

“The Army is busy fighting the Germans and the Italians and the Japanese,” said Natasha. “The Resistances are busy protecting their own countries, their own people. Hydra is… something else. Like you are. Something outside the War while being within it.”

Steve shivered.

What did he want to do?

He wanted to burn Hydra to the ground.

He wanted—he wanted to find the man who had hurt Bucky and tear his face off.

But he was just Steve. A small, sickly omega. A small, sickly omega thousands of miles away from Hydra’s house of horrors, who would never see warfare, who would never survive the climate alone of somewhere like Hammerfest, let alone a brutal fight against spooky guns that vaporized people.

So what did he want to do?

“Do you think the Commandos might be willin’ to go AWOL on orders from their Captain?” Steve asked Natasha.

She actually smiled. “I think they’ve just been waiting for you to ask.”

The pod felt even smaller and less private than it had before. The only thing that made it bearable was the thick scent of Bucky that suffused the small space—and the threads of Steve’s own faint scent weaving through it. This was their space, even though it wasn’t really, and never could be.

But for now, the observation booth was still empty. Steve sat on the edge of Bucky’s cot as Bucky stalked around the perimeter of the tiny space, looking for listening devices or explosives.

It hurt Steve’s heart to think that might have happened to Bucky to make him feel like that was necessary.

But finally Bucky stopped pacing and his shoulders lowered, his posture returning to normal rather than that of an agitated Alpha. A small smile flitted over his mouth as he approached Steve and gently cupped his face in both hands, thumbs rubbing circles over Steve’s scent glands so that he would send more of his own light smell into the air.

“Steve.”

Steve kissed the heel of Bucky’s metal palm. “We found the main Hydra base, Buck. I think we did, at least.”

Bucky’s whole body seemed to still, that unnatural stillness that he had when he first arrived at Stark Mansion.

“Did you find the… the mole?” Bucky asked finally, stumbling over the words a little.

Steve shook his head. “Not yet. But if we take down the heart of the operation—”

“No,” Bucky protested. “Cut off one head, two more will grow back. You’ll still be in danger.”

You are in danger, Steve wanted to argue. You will be locked up forever if I can’t prove that Hydra controlled you. But now I can. Schloss Strücker is proof. It has to be.

Instead, Steve just swallowed and put on a smile. “I’ve been thinking… When the war is over, we can get a place together. A place of our own, that—that—we share. If you want.”

Bucky’s lips rubbed together. “I’d like that a lot, sweetheart.” His eyes slid to look at the hatch in the floor, the only way in or out of the pod. “But they’re never gonna let me go.”

Steve’s stomach ached. “They have to let you go. Even if they tried you, it… you didn’t do anything wrong. You were a prisoner of war.”

“I killed a lot of Americans,” Bucky muttered. “I don’t much think anyone but you’ll care why.”

“We’ll make them.” Steve tried to keep his voice steady and strong. “After we take down Hydra, Agent Carter will know the truth of what’s happened to you, and Wanda and Natasha and Jane and Darcy… there’s five witnesses right there to testify to the strength of your character. Your goodness. We’ll convince Colonel Phillips.” He turned his face and pressed a kiss to the heel of Bucky’s metal palm. The hand twitched in response. “You’ll be free. And we’ll get paperwork so you’re alive again and can do whatever you want. We can move back home to Brooklyn.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Bucky’s face. “Get a room in a brownstone at Hudson and Plymouth and a job down the docks, like everybody else, huh.”

“Sleep on the roof when it gets hot in August.”

“Come home to my omega cookin’ a pot roast.”

“Dress up real pretty for my Alpha,” Steve added, quietly, still looking Bucky right in the eye even though the words made Steve’s ears feel hot.

Bucky leaned in closer so his lips brush Steve’s forehead when he murmured, “Keep my omega all full of pups.”

Oh, no.

Steve’s chest went cold and his heart skipped a beat. He could tell from the way Bucky pulled back to look at him with concern in his blue eyes that his scent had gone sour with distress, and he hated himself. He should never have gotten attached.

Stupid.

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asked, thumbs circling over Steve’s scent glands again in an attempt to calm him.

He would make a good Alpha for someone once he was free.

Steve wouldn’t let him rot in an SSR cell forever just because he wouldn’t want Steve anymore.

“I can’t,” Steve whispered. He coughed and then repeated, louder: “I can’t have pups. There’s damage to—I got sick. I would die.” He looked away from Bucky’s face and waited for his hands to leave Steve’s skin.

Bucky was quiet for a long minute before he spoke.

“To be honest, I probably shouldn’t breed, anyway,” he said. “And besides, with all the… testing… done on me… I don’t rightly know if I can, either.”

Bucky’s scent was still strong and full and lush. Steve would bet money that he could still sire pups, and strong ones—beautiful ones. Maybe they would stay friends and he could meet Bucky’s pups one day, if his mate was alright with Bucky having an unbonded omega pal.

“Stevie,” Bucky said softly. “Won’t you look at me?”

It felt like trying to slog through molasses, but Steve managed to bring his eyes back to Bucky’s face. Bucky’s soft, concerned gaze.

“I don’t care about that,” Bucky said, and his hands didn’t move from Steve’s jaw. “I just want a life with you. Whatever that looks like is more’n than I thought I’d ever get. Still more’n I really think I’ll get. But I want to imagine it. Livin’ with you.” His voice lowered. “Bein’ with you.”

“You deserve more than I can give you.”

“Hell, Stevie, you gave me—you gave me me back. You found my name. You found my ma.” Bucky shook his head. “You’ve already given me more’n I’ll ever be able to repay. But that’s not even why I want you. I want you because you’re… because you’re Stevie Rogers. And you’re a good man.”

Steve rose onto his toes so that he could reach Bucky’s mouth with his own. In the last two weeks since Howard had installed the locks, Steve and Bucky had not done more than kiss—but oh, Steve loved to kiss Bucky.

And Steve’s Heat was approaching soon.

Chapter 26: Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Text

Steve scarcely had time to reach out to his former Commandos via a contact of Natasha’s—someone she referred to only by the codename ‘Hawkeye’—before his Heat came upon him hard and fast. The amount of time he spent with Bucky (and thinking about Bucky and dreaming about Bucky and kissing Bucky and worrying about Bucky) made the first cramps that lanced through his gut sharp enough that Steve had to shove his pillow between his teeth to dampen his howl of pain.

He blindly picked his way across the room to his nesting closet and sobbed his way inside. He curled up around a shirt that smelled of his absent Alpha and cried so hard that he hardly noticed the hardness of his little dick or the wetness between his thighs. It paled in comparison to the anguish in his chest.

It wasn’t right. Bucky was a good man, he was sure of it, and a victim, and should be looked at with sympathy by the others. Like a war hero come home a miracle.

And Steve couldn’t even do anything to help him for the next five days because he was an omega, trapped by his own biology, lost to the curse of an infertile Heat that his body didn’t realize was useless. That it made him useless.

He cried and rubbed against shirts that smelled of Bucky and tucked fingers inside himself and wished they were made of vibranium.

He cried for Bucky. He cried for himself.

He cried until he lost track of time, alone in the dark.

The sound of breaking glass was just loud enough to rouse Steve from his achy, dehydrated doze.

He lifted his head from the pile of blankets—

And in the next second, the door to his nesting closet was thrown open and Steve made a long, pained lowing sound at the bright lights that assaulted his sensitive eyes. The shadow cast into the nesting closet by the fat full moon in the broken window was huge, hulking, breathing hard. Growling.

It would have been everything that Steve, that any omega, feared most if it didn’t bring with it the familiar, wonderful, overwhelming scent of Bucky.

The growling turned into a low purr as the shadow lowered itself to its knees at the door to Steve’s nesting closet.

“Omega,” Bucky breathed. “Stevie.”

“How’re you here?” Steve managed to ask. One of his hands came up out of the blankets, too, and shook as he reached out for Bucky to see if it were a mirage. A hallucination brought on by the throes of a terrible Heat.

“You needed me,” Bucky said, his voice low and gentle. “So I came to find you.”

More questions--how and why and where--hovered somewhere in front of Steve just out of the range of his grasping mind. Instead he just stared up at Bucky and whined again, more slick cramping its way out of him and into the cocoon of blankets and darkness.

“May I enter your nest?” Bucky asked, and he let Steve’s shaking hand touch his metal shoulder. His scruff bristled like velvet against the back of Steve’s wrist when he turned his head to kiss Steve’s knuckles.

Steve nodded, his eyes huge and watery in the too-bright moonlight. Bucky shuffled forward on his knees and his scent swirled around Steve like a cyclone, green apple and wet stones, a roaring autumnal bonfire and cotton candy melting on his fingertips. There was a burning edge to the scent that Steve had never smelled so strongly before—not on Bucky, not on anyone. It smelled… hungry.

The door to the nesting closet clicked shut again, and then they were alone in the dark. Steve tried to sit up, but cool, steady hands on his shoulders urged him back down into the nest.

“Shh,” Bucky murmured. “Don’t gotta get up for me. I know you’re hurtin’.”

“I can’t—” Steve mumbled, “I’ve never—”

“I know,” Bucky said. “But you can, I promise. You’re so good.”

Steve tugged at the sleeve of Bucky’s shirt with an ineffectual hand. “Off. Please. I wanna feel you.”

A low rumble echoed around the nest. Steve wanted to roll around in it. “I wanna feel you, too, sweetheart.”

Steve’s eyes, adjusted for the dark and privacy and safety of the nest, saw perfectly the way that Bucky’s nimble fingers undid each button on his shirt and as soon as it was free, Steve snatched it up and wove it into the nest right near his head, where he could bury his face in it and take deep lungfuls of Bucky’s scent whenever he wanted. When Bucky was gone.

He frowned.

No.

Bucky wouldn’t leave him.

But something in the back of his mind reminded him that certainly, Bucky couldn’t stay.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Bucky’s hand was huge on the small of Steve’s back. “Your scent got all sad just now.”

“Dunno,” Steve mumbled again. “Need more nest.”

Bucky chuckled softly and then with a shush, his white undershirt landed in Steve’s hands, too. Steve held it right up to his nose and inhaled, almost dizzy with exhilaration at the crackling-fiery unmistakable lust and need girding Bucky’s warm scent.

There was a movement in the corner of Steve’s eye as he thoroughly debauched the undershirt, rubbing it all over his scent glands and taking the neckline into his mouth to taste the remains of Bucky’s sweat, and then a pair of trousers landed in Steve’s lap and the scent of Alpha was stronger than ever, musky and sweet.

Steve swallowed. His throat was dry but his mouth was all drool.

“Bucky,” he whispered. He tucked the undershirt and trousers into the nest, too, and then pushed himself up to sitting so that his face was almost level with the bulge in Bucky’s white underwear. He shuffled forward on his knees, just a few inches, and Bucky’s scent was so strong here that Steve felt like he was swimming in it and slowly losing himself to the current, being washed downstream to the rapids. He tipped his head forward and his nose nuzzled along the length of the bulge, following the thrumming pulse beating beneath the plain cotton until he could find the source of all that scent. He exhaled, drunk.

“Stevie,” Bucky whispered back. His human hand found Steve’s head; fingers ran through Steve’s damp hair. “What’re you doin’ to me, baby?”

Steve just made a noise back, too busy rubbing his nose and his cheeks against the warm hardness in Bucky’s underwear to say anything. He wanted to live here. Wanted this co*ck in him, on him, anywhere, like he’d never quite wanted anything before.

“Gonna kill me before we even get started, you keep that up,” Bucky said. He gently pulled Steve’s head away and Steve looked up at him with wounded, glassy eyes. “You want it bad, huh?”

Steve nodded. “Hurts.”

“I know, sweetheart, but we’ll make it better. Can you—” Bucky’s scent flared as he blushed and Steve moaned a little. “Can you uh, present for—I mean, how do you want me?”

But Bucky had said present and everything came to life at once in the back of Steve’s mind. He fell back into the warmth of the nest and turned over onto his front, keening until he could bury his face in Bucky’s shirts again. He tucked his knees up under himself and didn’t think about the crooked, unsightly line of his spine; didn’t worry that Bucky would take one look at him and think, this one is defective.

Bucky didn’t disappoint him.

“Look at that,” he marveled. “Stevie’s beautiful. Prettier’n a picture, that little pearl shining for me.” He rested his hands, one warm and one cool, on Steve’s hips and Steve couldn’t help starting even as he keened into the touch. “Shh, I gotcha, Steve. Promise.” Bucky grew quiet except for the ragged intake of breaths as he took in all of the details of Steve’s Heat scent, the need and the pain and the want, all at once.

Steve knew that his Heat scent didn’t have the same lushness as every other omega’s—the promise of ripeness, the promise of breeding.

Bucky might still choose to leave.

“Stevie,” Bucky rumbled, low in his chest. His hands stroked hot lines up Steve’s sides and back down to his hips again. “You smell so good, it’s drivin’ me crazy. I’m—I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Steve said into Bucky’s shirts. Then a bit of clarity filtered through the haze of his Heat-drunk brain and he blurted: “There’s Vaseline. In the nest. To help.”

Bucky’s thumbs stroked over Steve’s hipbones and followed the lines around to measure the meat of his ass. “Alright. Can you get it for me?”

Steve grumbled but pawed through the thicket of blankets and clothes until he found the little pot of petroleum jelly. He thrust it backwards towards Bucky, cheeks flaming with humiliation.

“Hey,” Bucky whispered. He took the Vaseline but kept holding onto Steve’s hand after it was exchanged. “Turn over and look at me. Please.”

Steve hesitated, but Alpha was asking, so finally he did roll over, his back landing in a depression of the nest just the right size to cradle him comfortably. He made a little noise at that, hands palpating the soft cloth of the nest to soothe himself, and he looked up at Bucky in the absolute dark and silence of the nesting closet.

Steve could only see him because of the way his eyes changed during the Heat, acclimated to the dark and sensitive to light. Bucky had shut the nesting closet door and plunged them back into blackness, but Steve could see every detail of Bucky’s strong, virile, scarred body. The arm shone softly even in the pitch darkness, each plate and rivet as distinctive as they were in the brightness of Bucky’s prisoner pod.

The last time Steve had seen Bucky without clothing was when he was unconscious, stripped to intake as their—as his—prisoner of war. He’d focused only on the scarring then, the angry lines that radiated out from Bucky’s left shoulder where the monstrous arm connected into his body, his brain. Those scars were still there, of course, but now Steve wanted to touch and kiss them, to show Bucky that they were just another part of the most perfect Alpha ever to exist. He couldn’t quite make him look at Bucky’s co*ck, although he could see it in the edge of his vision, tall and flush and ready.

Bucky looked down at Steve and lowered himself slowly to rest above him, all of his weight balanced on the arm so that his flesh hand could trace over Steve’s face and down to the scent gland on his neck, swollen and achy with the need to be bitten and Bonded.

“Don’t be embarrassed with me,” Bucky said, his eyes serious as he searched Steve’s face. Steve could only wonder whether Bucky could see him in this darkness because of an impending rut or because of—whatever else had changed him into the perfect soldier. Of course he could see in the dark. Steve’s scent would never send an Alpha into rut. “I think you’re perfect.”

His fingertips drew over the bow of Steve’s lips and Steve couldn’t say anything, so instead he flicked out his tongue and caught the tip of Bucky’s middle finger before he could pull it away. Bucky smiled gently and pressed the fingertip against Steve’s lower lip, inviting him to taste it again.

Steve drew Bucky’s finger into his mouth up to the first knuckle, suckling on the strong taste of skin and Alpha sweat.

Bucky exhaled shakily. “That make you feel better?”

Steve kept sucking on the tip of Bucky’s finger and nodded. Bucky let him keep playing with his hand, each finger getting a long turn at the inside of Steve’s mouth, until another cramp wracked through Steve and he grunted in pain, hunching up against the feeling and spilling more slick into the nest.

“Poor sweetheart.” Bucky drew his hand away from Steve’s slack grip gently and Steve heard the lid of the Vaseline jar opening. Bucky’s weight shifted, and then two slippery fingertips traced over the lips of Steve’s c*nt. Again, Steve startled at the touch before relaxing, eyes fluttering shut.

This was Bucky.

Bucky was going to take care of him.

“I love your puss*,” Bucky murmured. “Look at that slick, smells so sweet. Gonna take my knot so well. I just wanna make sure you’re nice and ready for it first, so I don’t hurt you, okay? But you’re gonna get what you need, Stevie.”

Steve nodded against the blankets and reached up to touch Bucky’s face above him, both hands holding onto the sides of Bucky’s prickly face. His little fingers just reached the scent glands on Bucky’s neck, pumping out all of the musky Alpha smell into their shared nest. Bucky shivered when Steve stroked over one of them.

“Gonna give a fella ideas about what you want, you keep touchin’ my mating glands,” Bucky said. “I’ve half a mind to bite you and keep you on my co*ck for the rest of your life.”

Slick dripped from Steve’s puss* over Bucky’s fingers at that. “Please.”

Bucky’s pupils blew out bigger and blacker in the darkness. “Stevie. You don’t know what—first things first, alright?” He started to push one finger into Steve’s slick, but tight, channel. “Relax for me, sweetheart, or you’ll never be ready for more.”

“Knot,” Steve protested, still rubbing at Bucky’s scent glands absently. His c*nt fluttered around Bucky’s finger at the prospect of getting filled up by the big co*ck that Steve still hadn’t gotten brave enough to touch.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “Wanna give you my knot, baby, but—there you go, that’s better, nice and relaxed.” Two fingers spread open inside Steve, carefully and gently, and Steve sighed. It wasn’t enough, but having someone else’s fingers inside him—having Bucky’s fingers inside him—was better than anything he’d ever been able to give himself during a Heat before.

Bucky’s fingers disappeared and there was the quiet sound of more Vaseline being spread over his fingers, and then three tucked tightly together slid into Steve.

“Big,” Steve said, and he hitched his hips up into the feeling, chasing more than Bucky’s hand could give. He wanted him deeper, wanted to be fuller. Bucky shushed him gently with his mouth against the side of Steve’s hot face.

The fingers inside Steve curled to find the spongy patch of nerves inside him right as Bucky’s mouth latched onto Steve’s swollen mating gland and began to suck, just as gently but just as earnest. A loud yelp punched out of Steve’s chest and his small co*ck twitched, spurting watery come over his stomach as an org*sm caught him by surprise.

Bucky purred with his whole chest. It vibrated through him and into Steve’s lungs, making it hard to breathe anything but Bucky.

“Didn’t even need to touch it,” Bucky rumbled into Steve’s neck. “God, that’s beautiful.”

Steve panted and tried to catch his breath, head falling back deeper into the softness of the nest. “Still need you,” he managed to say, uncoordinated hands coming up to trace Bucky’s sides and the hard cut of his hips.

A fourth finger started to edge carefully into Steve, and even with his slick and the Vaseline and the looseness of having just come, it was a stretch. Steve whimpered and wriggled a little, both pulling away from and pushing down into the breadth of Bucky’s big hand, but Bucky made another deep rumble low in his chest and then his teeth were on Steve’s collarbone, a warning to stay put and take it.

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Bucky said again, once Steve had settled down again and lay prone in the weave of nesting blankets and soft clothing. “You’re almost ready, sweetheart, but I gotta make sure my knot’ll fit in this sweet puss* without hurting it. Gotta be nice to it ‘cause it’s so nice for me.”

Steve felt like he was floating on the scent of Bucky all around him and his deep voice lulling him with gentle words and he was making more slick than he’d thought he was capable of, Bucky’s hand down between his legs making soft, wet sounds as Bucky opened his fingers flat inside Steve and curled them, beckoning another org*sm closer. Steve shouted nonsense.

“Shhh, baby, you’re not supposed to have an Alpha here, remember?” Bucky kissed Steve’s mating gland again and buzzed a low groan against the pink skin. “I love your sounds, but you’ve gotta be quiet.”

“I’ll be quiet,” Steve panted. He didn’t know what to do with his arms. He wanted to fling them out wide because he was too big for his body feeling like this, and he wanted to wrap them around Bucky and see just how big and thick and strong his chest was, and he wanted to tear through his sweaty hair to get it off his face, and he wanted to reach down and wrap the fingers of both hands around Bucky’s co*ck to see if they met in the middle.

He did finally get brave enough to reach down and touch Bucky’s co*ck. It was heavy and hot in his hand, vibranium hard and velvet soft at the same time. At Steve’s touch, the thing jumped a little like it wanted to be in his hand, and Bucky made a good, primal noise into the side of Steve’s neck.

“Alpha,” Steve whispered, because he didn’t know what else to say. The proof was in his hand and hovering above him and in the air all around him, Bucky was an Alpha and he was here and Steve needed him. He opened his legs wider and the wet sound of Bucky’s hand moving in Steve’s c*nt filled the warm, dark nest.

“Omega,” Bucky answered. His teeth scraped lightly over Steve’s swollen mating gland and Steve’s own small dick hardened up again so fast Steve gasped. “You like that?” Bucky pulled back enough to meet Steve’s glazed eyes. “You really like the idea of bein’ my omega like that?”

Steve nodded, mouth red and wet and open. He couldn’t close his fingers around Bucky’s co*ck, but he tried, feeling the aliveness of it in his palm. “’M already yours.”

Bucky blinked fast like tears had pricked his eyes. “Yeah, y’are aren’t you.” He bit his plush lower lip. “Want you to be all mine. Bite you and Bond you and keep you all filled up.” He slowly curled his fingers inside Steve. “Want this to be all mine.”

Steve whimpered and nodded. “Yeah. Please, I’m ready, it hurts, and I need—Alpha.”

Bucky withdrew his fingers from Steve’s c*nt and then his slick hand wrapped over Steve’s on Bucky’s co*ck. Together they drew up and down a few strokes, and Steve was amazed that Bucky could get impossibly harder.

“You wanna present for me?” Bucky asked.

Steve nodded and rolled over, off-balance already and needing to rearrange the piles of blankets and pillows in the nest to cradle his hips just right. He normally didn’t take this position during Heat; it felt too vulnerable to go ass-up all alone, and rubbing off against a pillow just made his heart ache.

But Bucky kept a hand on Steve the whole time Steve pushed himself up on his knees and elbows, metal thumb stroking over the scent gland on Steve’s hip as he spread his legs and ducked his head. He could hear the little tin of Vaseline opening again behind him and then the soft skin sound of Bucky stroking his co*ck was louder. It didn’t feel like humiliation, the way Steve had expected. It didn’t feel like Bucky was saying you didn’t make enough slick for this. It felt like he was saying, I don’t want to hurt you. And that felt good.

A short purr burst out of Steve’s chest.

He could hear the smile in Bucky’s voice and smell the pleasure in his smoky lust-scent. “What’s got you so happy, Stevie?”

“You,” Steve muttered into the blankets under his face. They smelled like sex already.

The thumb rubbing circuits over his scent gland stuttered at that, but Bucky seemed to recover quickly enough. He was solid and warm where he crowded up behind Steve. Thick thighs nudged Steve’s thinner, paler ones further apart, and the light scratch of hair on the tender insides of his thighs made Steve tremble.

The metal hand tightened on Steve’s hip, holding him in place. Bucky’s flesh hand smoothed up the length of Steve’s spine and back down again, rearranging Steve in gentle movements like breathing. In the past, when Steve had imagined presenting for someone, for some someday Alpha and having that mysterious person bear him face-down into a nest, hands heavy on his shoulders so he couldn’t twist away, it felt—claustrophobic. But Bucky’s weight and the pressure of his big hands soothed some part of Steve’s hindbrain that he had always ignored until Bucky. It sang, Alpha is taking care of you, and Steve purred quietly again in agreement.

“Let—let me know if I’m holding you too hard,” Bucky said, and the pressure from his metal hand eased up.

“It’s good,” Steve slurred into his nesting blankets. “I like it.”

The pressure on his hip was back, Bucky’s fingertips pressed into the scent gland right on the inside of Steve’s hipbone where it jutted out too far because Steve was too thin. He felt tiny in Bucky’s big hands.

And he liked it.

The warm weight of Bucky’s flesh hand holding his shoulders down disappeared and Steve almost whined, but then the head of Bucky’s co*ck snubbed up against Steve’s c*nt and he realized, oh, he needs to guide himself inside. Alpha isn’t going away.

“Yes,” Steve chanted under his breath, mouth and nose buried in the nesting blankets. “Yes, yes, yes.”

The slick and the Vaseline and the long stretch on Bucky’s thick fingers made it an easy push for Bucky to dip into Steve, a little bit at a time, thrust by thrust. Steve didn’t know how to explain the feeling of taking Bucky inside his body, all that hard heat moving so carefully and steadily and opening up parts of Steve that had never felt right.

“Stevie,” Bucky murmured, once his head was fully engulfed in Steve’s slick c*nt. “What’d’I ever do to find you?”

Steve just mumbled something into his blankets. He was drooling a little. Even as Bucky worked his way into Steve, Heat was fizzing inside him and making him desperate. He didn’t want careful, gentle ministrations, he wanted a big Alpha co*ck pinning him in place and making him ache and filling him up.

But it was Bucky, and Bucky was Alpha, and Alpha knew what was best. Alpha was taking care of him.

All at once, Bucky was deep enough inside that his hand was back on Steve’s shoulders, pushing them down to the floor with a steadying pressure. Steve exhaled and let himself be moved, and some tension in the back of his neck eased like a balloon lifting into the sky and floating away.

Bucky purred, a low rumble that Steve could feel all through his body. “Beautiful, omega. Perfect.”

Steve tried to hold his noises inside himself as the fullness of Bucky’s co*ck inside him eased a cramp before it even got its teeth in him. This was what he’d been missing for years, this is what he’d been missing his whole life. Bucky—

Bucky completed him.

“Alpha,” Steve said, just to feel the word in his mouth. “Bucky.”

Bucky just grunted in reply, and then Steve’s ass was flush against Bucky’s thighs. Steve felt full enough that the ghost of Bucky’s co*ck was practically in his throat, and he experimentally squeezed the muscles of his c*nt around Bucky the best that he could. His slick glands were stretched to their limits and Steve felt a trickle of wetness down the inside of one thigh.

He buried his face in the closest nesting blanket.

He hadn’t thought he’d be able to do that, to do this. To get wet enough to take an Alpha without pain. And he didn’t feel any pain. He just felt good, and Steve almost never felt good.

And then that metal arm wasn’t holding onto Steve’s hip anymore, it had curled around his torso to clutch him tight against Bucky’s chest as Bucky’s whole weight bore Steve down into the nest. The vibrations of his rumbling purr filled Steve as much as his co*ck did, and Steve couldn’t quite get a breath around the smell and sound and feel of Bucky all around him.

“Omega,” Bucky murmured into Steve’s hair. “Y’okay?”

Steve tried to nod, and he must have succeeded because Bucky kissed the back of Steve’s head. Steve’s face was full of soft things that smelled like Alpha and sex and his c*nt was full of Alpha and sex and the whole world had gone away, narrowed down to this warm nest and Alpha and sex. Bucky’s mouth laved over the shiver-sensitive glands on the sides of Steve’s neck as he ground in and out of Steve. Bucky moved like a desperate man, purring and grunting against Steve’s skin as he moved in ragged undulations that kept Steve full enough to keen high in his throat.

He'd just never thought he could have this.

It felt like a dream.

Steve would have been certain that he would open his eyes and find himself alone on the heels of a Heat-ravaged sleep, alone and sticky, except that his wildest fantasies never conjured up the details of this.

The sharp, ozone taste of vibranium against his tongue.

The nip of Alpha eyeteeth against his mating gland. Hurt, but a soothing hurt.

That same soothing hurt of his c*nt stretching around Bucky’s swelling knot as the Alpha pressed into Steve again and again, whispering, “Please, baby, so good to me, don’t know why.”

Steve wanted to answer. The part of him that was still aware of anything beyond Bucky’s knot wanted to answer, anyway. He wanted to say, “Because you deserve better than me,” or “Because I love you.” He wanted to say, “Let’s disappear so I can keep you safe.” He wanted to say, “I will burn those motherf*ckers to the ground for hurting you.”

But he was an omega in Heat on the cusp of being knotted for the very first time, so instead he just whined until Bucky slipped that metal thumb into his mouth.

Bucky clamped his teeth over the wing of Steve’s sharp shoulder blade.

His knot bloomed inside Steve, just where it belonged.

And Steve did something he had never done before: he turned his brain off.

Hours later—f*cks later—Steve rested against Bucky’s bitten-up chest and sang a soft purr of his own. His eyelids were heavy, eyes almost closed, not with sleep but with satiation. Bucky’s metal fingers were tucked inside Steve, pushing the endless supply of Alpha come back inside him in a futile fight against gravity. Steve hoped Bucky won. The fingers had been cold at first, raising tiny hairs on the small of Steve’s back in a shiver, but they were warm now—the temperature of inside Steve. Hot. Heated. Blazing.

Steve whimpered quietly and came again, tightening up on vibranium knuckles. He was sore inside from both taking his first knot (and second, and third, and fourth) and from those intractable-hard fingers, but it was still that good hurt. It made him feel little and soft and pretty.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Bucky praised him, and Steve whimpered again. Bucky slid his fingers out of Steve, and Steve moved to present again, already used to the pattern of fingering and f*cking, keeping his c*nt full all the time. The emptiness just intensified its ache.

But Bucky didn’t drape himself over Steve’s back.

Instead, he kissed Steve hard on the forehead, then brushed his sweaty hair back and away from his eyes. “I need to go. If I’m not back in my cage when Agent Carter arrives, there will be trouble.”

“Don’t go,” Steve said, pouting. He knew that Bucky was right: if Agent Carter—or worse, Phillips—knew that Bucky was able to get out of the pod, there would be hell to pay. They would move Bucky somewhere else, somewhere impenetrable. Somewhere without Steve. “Will you come back?”

“Of course I’ll come back.” Bucky traced the side of Steve’s face with his flesh fingers. “I’m going to leave you a few glasses of water just outside the nesting closet door, alright? And some cut-up fruit that I want you to eat today when you can.”

Steve swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. He nodded.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave you.” Bucky’s words held an undercurrent of an unhappy growl. “I need to know you’re safe.”

“I’m safe here,” Steve promised. “I need you to be safe, too.” He lifted one heavy hand and brushed his fingers through Bucky’s tangled hair. “I love you.”

Bucky smiled and kissed Steve’s fingertips. “I know you do, sweetheart.” He rolled up to his feet gracefully. “Close your eyes, honey, I’ve gotta open the door and I don’t want the light to hurt your eyes. I’ll be back tonight.”

Steve nodded and rolled onto his side, facing away from the door with his eyes screwed shut against the sight of Bucky leaving.

What if he didn’t come back?

What if he were caught sneaking back into the pod and—and punished?

What if he made a break for it, escaped from Washington and the SSR while he could?

What if he just didn’t want to come back?

No. Steve was surer of Bucky than that. If he could come back, he would come back. They were mates; they were meant to be together. Steve knew it in his bone marrow. Bucky would come back. He was taking care of Steve, leaving him water and food and making sure that he was warm and satisfied. He was his partner.

He would come back.

Chapter 27: Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Text

Steve dozed through the day: it hurt, still, when the cramps hit him and he doubled over, wheezing, without his Alpha. But it wasn’t as frequent as his past Heats and he found a smear of Bucky’s come on the blankets that he rubbed into his lax slick glands. He had never known he could make this much slick so easily. It made the primal omega part of him that lived in the base of his spine stand up straight and proud, preening like a peaco*ck. Steve was a good omega.

He just needed a good Alpha to see it. To understand him.

He drank the glasses of water and ate the cut fruit, too, determined to be good for his Alpha. When Bucky returned, he would see the empty dishes outside the nesting closet and know that Steve had listened to him and done what he asked. And then he would be happy with Steve and smell so, so good when he opened the nesting closet door, and he would f*ck Steve again.

Steve grunted happily and smushed his face into the soft blankets that smelled of desperate Alpha and ripe sex. He was sore inside from last night, but it was a different sort of ache than his Heats normally caused. This was a good hurt, a delicious sort of hurt. If Steve kept his eyes closed tight, the ache reminded him of Bucky moving inside him, of the tug and pressure of his knot tying him to Steve.

Steve’s dick hardened, interested in the daydream and the scent of Bucky’s smoky lust still caught in the soft nest. Steve grunted again and reached down to wrap his hand around himself, swiped his thumb over the drippy head. Maybe later Bucky would put his mouth on Steve’s dick again, maybe he would let Steve taste his co*ck. Steve groaned, mouthing at the blankets beneath him. How long had it been since Bucky had to leave?

When would he come back?

Steve worked his hand with more desperation as he wished Bucky were there and worried that he might have been caught—might never come back—and then fell into another doze, more troubled than the last. Now that he’d had a taste of what it was not to be alone, the idea of needing to be on his own was somehow worse than before.

Steve woke to the soft snick of his broken window sliding open outside the nesting closet. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, blankets pooled around his thighs and small dick already hard against his belly in anticipation of his Alpha’s return. Instinct somewhere ancient inside Steve crooned that Alpha had been away hunting, catching, fending, protecting, he comes back successful and Alpha is strong.

Steve smiled into his shoulder. He did have a strong Alpha. The strongest, the most deadly, the fiercest and more fearsome. His Alpha made other Alphas cower and shake. His Alpha had ripped men’s heads from their bodies with only his hands.

The instinctual omega trilled in want. Because Bucky, because Alpha, was all of those things, but he was also so gentle with Steve. Touched him so nicely. Said sweet words. Gave him apples and glasses of water and carefully cut fruit. He would never hurt Steve.

There was a soft knock on the nesting closet door. “Stevie?”

Steve tried to find coherent words through the meal of lust in his mouth. “Bucky. Alpha.”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Bucky sounded relieved—as though there were a world in which Steve wouldn’t welcome him back. “May I enter your nest?”

“Please,” Steve said. No—begged, unashamed. He was holding onto his dick again, thumb worrying at the head just for the sharp sensation. He was slicking all over the blankets beneath him and it was a strange, new sensation to be so wet.

The door opened and there was Bucky, tall and beautiful and perfect. His arm glinted in the low light and Steve wished that he were an artist instead of a mathematician, that he could capture the beauty of Bucky’s arm reaching towards him with soft fingers.

“Hey, baby,” Bucky murmured. “How are you feelin’?”

“Need you,” Steve managed. “Makes it—feel better.”

Bucky’s eyes were tender and black in the dark of the nesting closet. Steve reached out with his free hand and traced the hollow beneath Bucky’s eye with his index finger. No one had ever looked at him the way Bucky did.

But then, he had never looked at anyone the way he looked at Bucky.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Bucky said. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his undershirt over his head and Steve purred, immediately tucking his cheek against Bucky’s chest to rub against the expanse of newly bared skin. Bucky chuckled so quietly that Steve only felt it, rather than hearing it, and he ran his metal fingers through Steve’s hair. “I missed you too, sweetheart. All day I kept thinkin’ about you here all by yourself, needin’ me and only having your little fingers to put inside yourself. Almost left at noon even though I knew that Agent Carter was up in the booth starin’ at me. I just wanted to be back here with you.”

Steve moaned into Bucky’s neck. He could feel Bucky’s co*ck press at him through the rough pants that Bucky still wore, and Steve felt brave enough to reach down and trace the shape of it with his fingertips.

“Will you,” Steve started, then stopped and huffed. His cheeks felt hot. “I need—I mean, it helps when—I want you,” he finished lamely.

“Of course, Stevie.” Bucky stopped touching Steve only long enough to unfasten his pants and push them and his underwear down his thighs. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.” He traced his metal fingers down Steve’s back and over his little ass. “D’you wanna present for me?”

Steve nodded, then paused and shook his head. “I want to face you. So I can—your neck,” Steve tried to explain. “Smells so good.”

Bucky smiled and brushed Steve’s sweaty hair off his forehead and away from his face. Steve leaned into his hand and kissed the heel of his palm with warm lips.

“Do you want to be on top?” Bucky asked, two fingertips rubbing at the swollen scent gland behind Steve’s ear.

Steve flushed. He shook his head. “I don’t know how.”

“Sure you do,” Bucky murmured. “You’re the smartest omega in the world.”

Steve just went redder. “Don’t want to. Please.”

“Okay,” Bucky agreed. He kissed Steve’s face gently. “Whatever you want, sweetheart. You just say the word.”

Steve kissed Bucky’s palm again and then tried to pull him down into the nest, tugging at Bucky’s big arms like he didn’t weigh 100 pounds soaking wet and Bucky didn’t weigh three times that including the bionic vibranium arm. “Just want you.”

Bucky’s eyes kept smiling down at Steve, crinkled in the corners in a way that made Steve purr low in his chest, as he eased down on top of Steve in the piles of soft blankets and worn clothing. Steve immediately opened his thighs so that Bucky could nestle between them.

He reached up and tucked Bucky’s long, bedraggled hair behind his ear. His fingertips ran along the Alpha’s sharp jawline, and Steve marveled at the feeling of the sharp scruff of his short beard against Steve’s fingertips.

“Hi,” he murmured.

Bucky smiled. Wide enough that his eyes crinkled at the corners. Steve had never seen that before on him, and he loved it. “Hi, Stevie.”

Their mouths met, and Steve relaxed into a purr. Bucky was here; he’d really come back. Everything would be okay now. Steve spread his thighs wider and chirped against Bucky’s lips as he rocked his wet slit against Bucky’s belly.

“Okay,” Bucky said softly. “Okay, I’ve got you. Impatient little thing.”

“Need you,” Steve insisted. He was an impatient little thing. He always had been. ‘S’why he worked so hard even though he was an omega—he wanted things done right and he wanted them done now, and if nobody else was capable of the task, then Steve would—would—

Bucky pushed inside Steve in a long, slow roll, and Steve lost his train of thought.

Steve exhaled, his eyes opening slowly as he took stock of his body and surroundings. It was dark in the nesting closet. Cozy. Warm. Bucky’s weight rested atop Steve and bore him down into the soft clothes and blankets of his nest, but Steve suspected that even now, Bucky was taking care of him—keeping balanced on his metal arm so that he didn’t crush Steve. Steve’s lungs burned from exertion, but he didn’t think he needed an asthma cigarette. His Heat simmered low in the background of his awareness, sated by Bucky’s knot.

Bucky lifted his head and measured Steve’s face. “Y’okay?”

Steve nodded. He ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair.

Bucky’s nose wrinkled. “Don’t… it’s greasy. Haven’t washed it in who knows how long.”

Steve frowned and continued to finger-comb through Bucky’s snarled locks. They were greasy.

“Do you want to wash here?” Steve asked. “When your kn—I mean, when we’re done with—you know what I mean. After?”

“Gotta take care of you,” Bucky said. “That’s why I’m here. I can deal with greasy hair.”

“I feel okay,” Steve insisted. “You deserve a bath, if you want. I want to take care of you, too.”

Bucky’s soft smile made Steve warm to his bones, and he squirmed happily on the knot still pumping come inside him.

“You’ve been takin’ care of me for a long time,” Bucky said. “You don’t need to do anything more for me.”

Steve set his chin. “Then think of it as takin’ care of your omega, then. Maybe I deserve an Alpha with clean hair, jerk.”

Bucky let out a small laugh, but his eyes grew impossibly sad. “You sure do, sweetheart.”

Steve could hear the soft splash of water as Bucky got into the small, omega-sized bathtub. The scent of him rose with the steam of the hot water, and Steve shivered. It would soak into his bedding: he would smell Bucky in here until he washed his sheets. He would have Bucky’s scent long after his Heat was over.

There was another splash, and then the icy peppermint scent of Steve’s neutralizing soap started to waft over.

“Not that one,” Steve said, heart in his throat. He coughed. “The other bar of soap is, um. Better.”

“Alright.” Bucky sounded almost amused. More relaxed than Steve had ever heard him, for sure. The wonders of a hot soak—and not being in a cage. “You can look, you know, Stevie. I don’t mind.”

“I know,” Steve said, carefully not looking. He turned the unread page of his newspaper. “I’m just giving you some privacy. You haven’t had any in a… a long time.”

Bucky’s voice was quiet and sincere. “I don’t need privacy from you.”

Steve swallowed. He tentatively looked up.

Bucky’s bulky metal arm hung out of the tub. The skin where it attached into his shoulder was a mess of deep, puckered, shiny red scarring with four new welts where he’d dug his fingers into the seam in a wild attempt to pull the thing out of himself. Steve wanted to touch the marks and murmur assurances that the arm didn’t make Bucky any less perfect. But he found himself pinned in place, sitting on his threadbare armchair, staring across the room to Bucky overfilling his tub, unable to make himself get up and move.

“Hi,” Bucky said. Half of his mouth quirked up in a smile.

Steve coughed again. “Hi.”

“Could you…” Bucky’s face turned pink. “Could you wash my hair? It’s—I can do it one-handed,” he added quickly, “But I can’t remember if I can submerge the arm.” Bucky went even pinker. “And you’re too far away.”

Steve nodded before he actually thought about it. “I can do that.”

It took infinite seconds to convince his legs to stand and walk over to the tub. He couldn’t look down into the water, down at where Bucky’s skin just kept going and going. He knew his face was bright red, and he could feel the blush spread down his neck until his armpits started to sweat. What a dope.

Bucky’s face was pink, too, though, as he looked down at his own lap, head tilted forward so that his greasy hair fell in a dark curtain around his face. Steve knelt down at the tub’s side.

“Can you—tip your head back,” Steve asked.

It was a sign of trust. Of submission. Alphas did not bare their necks for omegas.

Bucky met Steve’s eyes as he did as he was asked. His hair fell behind him, long like a woman’s, and Steve gently used one hand to smooth all of the strands straight back from Bucky’s face. He looked younger like this, blushing in the steam of a hot bath, vulnerable and trusting. His gray eyes flickered over Steve’s face.

Steve paused. “I’m—be right back.”

He stood and crossed into the kitchenette where he took a glass down from the cupboard. He showed it to Bucky. “To wet your hair.”

He knelt at the tub’s side again and swallowed before he dipped the glass into the hot water. His knuckles brushed Bucky’s ribs as he filled the glass, and both of them jumped.

“Close your eyes.” Steve’s voice was so quiet that if Bucky weren’t so, so close, he would never have heard him.

Bucky closed his eyes, and Steve poured the hot water over Bucky’s hair, shielding his face with his hand. It took another three fills of the glass before Steve decided that Bucky’s hair was all wet enough for the castile soap.

“I’m going to lather the soap now,” Steve told Bucky, whose eyes stayed obediently closed. Bucky nodded, head still tipped back. There would be a little puddle on the floor from his dripping hair.

Steve dunked the bar of unscented white soap into the water and lathered up a thick foam between his hands. “I’m going to touch your hair now,” Steve said, still quiet. There was a spell in the room, woven between them, in a meditative peace.

Steve worked the lather through Bucky’s hair from the frayed ends up towards the tangled roots, trying to be gentle as he finger-combed through the snarls. When he got up to Bucky’s scalp, he lathered up again and then set about massaging the white bubbles into Bucky’s skin to clean away who-knew-how-long a buildup of grease and dirt and battlefield ash. He rubbed his thumbs into the tense, tender muscles at the base of Bucky’s skull and around his ears.

Bucky purred once, without thinking, and one eye peeked open to check for Steve’s reaction.

Much like the first time, it hurt Steve’s heart. At least this time they were alone.

He smiled encouragingly at Bucky. “Feel nice?”

Bucky nodded. “I like your hands.”

Steve’s cheeks flushed. “Thank you. I—I like when you purr for me.”

Bucky smiled and his eye closed again before soap could get into it. His chest vibrated with a steady, quiet purr that made the water all around him ripple.

Steve felt—soft. The urgency of Heat relaxed inside him at the sound of the purr and the reassurance of a pleased Alpha that it meant. Every blink felt long and slow, syrupy, as something uncoiled inside him that he hadn’t even realized was there: a tension, an anxiety, a sense of not safe not safe not safe. A content Alpha’s purr was a promise of total safety, and Steve’s inner omega finally calmed. Alpha would keep him safe. Bucky would keep him safe and satisfied. Steve cooed softly as he rinsed gray bubbles from Bucky’s hair and then lathered his hands again to keep massaging Bucky’s scalp and neck, anything to keep him purring.

Bucky’s right hand came up out of the water and traced over Steve’s side. “You’re starting to smell sweet again.”

Steve hadn’t noticed he was slicking. His face flushed. “Uh-huh.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not right now,” Steve said honestly. “I think it helps when you—when I know that you’re happy.”

Bucky smiled with just one side of his mouth, a self-satisfied little smirk. “Probably helps that you’ve been coming an awful lot, too.”

Steve’s face felt hotter. “Probably.”

Bucky touched Steve’s red cheek. “You’re so cute. My shy omega.”

“Not shy,” Steve argued. “Just—a lot of new all at once.” He rinsed Bucky’s hair and combed the wet strands back from Bucky’s face. The thrum of Heat was coming back with a vengeance now that Bucky had stopped purring, now that Bucky’s flesh hand was tracing over Steve’s side and belly and butt. The path of his fingers felt like it drew sparks beneath Steve’s skin. “I think I—I need you again.”

Bucky nodded and his fingers slid between Steve’s legs. “I can tell.”

Then Bucky stopped moving. Completely. It was a return to the stillness of his first days as an SSR prisoner, that unnatural near-invisibility. Steve could practically hear Bucky’s focus swing from him to the door of Steve’s room, could see Bucky’s hackles raise.

Bucky stood up in one fluid motion, water cascading down his body and over the sides of the tub. And utterly opposite to his earlier purr, Bucky began to growl.

“What—”

“Omega,” Bucky snapped, teeth flashing. He herded Steve behind him and backed away from the door. “Mine.”

“Yes, I’m—what’s—” The growling set Steve’s stomach on edge, and his heart hammered as he considered what could make Bucky react. Was Agent Carter on her way to bring Bucky back to the SSR—to send him to a new prison? Colonel Phillips? Worse? Had one of the Stark brothers come by to see if Steve had stolen their prisoner and now Bucky was taking their Alpha scent as a potential challenge? What if—what if—what if—

The lock in Steve’s door scraped and Bucky’s growling deepened.

The door pushed open.

Bucky half-crouched, ready to pounce while still keeping his omega behind him.

“Evenin’, Ste—whoa!” Scott stopped short in the door to Steve’s room and immediately went into a submissive stance, his hands raised to his chest and neck bared. “Okay, Alpha from work, hello, hi. Steve?”

Steve was currently being bodied behind a growling—and naked—Bucky, pressed up against the stove. “It’s okay, Scott. Bucky, it’s okay. That’s just Scott. He’s my neighbor, he’s an omega, too, it’s okay.”

Bucky didn’t stop guarding Steve. He stared down Scott with flat eyes. “Schlägt man einen Kopf ab.”

“Um,” Scott’s voice wavered. “I don’t—I don’t know German. Was that German? I don’t know German. I’m… not a spy. Or anything like that. I just work in security consulting. I don’t, I can come back later, or, or not, I was just—”

“Bucky, it’s alright,” Steve repeated.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Bucky mumbled back, his voice low enough that it melted into Steve’s skin like oil. “They’re everywhere. Schlägt man einen Kopf ab und zwei wachsen an seiner Stelle nach.” Every vertebra on Bucky’s spine shifted as he changed his stance, growling again.

Steve rested his hands on Bucky’s hips. “It’s alright. I promise.” He raised his voice just enough that Scott could hear him across the room and over the growling. “I think you had better get out of here, Scott, but thanks for checking on me. Um, maybe—if you could not mention—?”

“I won’t,” Scott said, sounding grateful to have an excuse to get out of the thickly scented Heat chamber and away from the aggressive, naked Alpha. “Congratulations, I guess, pal, I’ll—I’ll just leave you to it, then. Bye!”

The door didn’t quite slam behind him, but Bucky didn’t stop growling until—Steve assumed—Scott’s footsteps had disappeared back down the corridor to his own room and another door, another barrier, was placed between them. Then Bucky stalked across Steve’s room and locked the door. He snarled at the single lock and wedged Steve’s desk chair beneath the knob.

“My omega,” he mumbled. “Safe.”

“Thank you, Bucky,” Steve said, trying to placate him. Slick dripped down the inside of his thigh. “I am safe now, I promise.”

Bucky’s ice-blue eyes flicked to Steve and looked from his face down to the drip of creamy slick. A short noise that sounded like it wasn’t sure whether to be a purr or a growl burst out of Bucky’s throat, and then Steve was somehow not standing on the floor anymore, instead held up in Bucky’s strong arms as Bucky carried him faster than a human should be able to move back to the nesting closet.

“My omega,” Bucky repeated. The closet door didn’t slam, but the snick of its shutting was clear and definite, and then they were alone in the darkness of the nest again. Steve wrapped his legs around Bucky’s waist so they stopped dangling.

Bucky grunted and the tip of his co*ck slid a little aimlessly between Steve’s legs as he searched for Steve’s c*nt. Steve squeezed tighter against Bucky’s chest and fumbled to wrap his arms, too, around Bucky—surely Bucky didn’t think he could f*ck him standing up; there was a perfectly nice nest right there, and Steve didn’t weigh much but he must still be too heavy, and besides, it felt dirty, like being some ‘meg in a back alley whose Alpha couldn’t wait to get them home—

“Omega,” Bucky mumbled, and his co*ckhead jerked up between them. His face tipped forward into the curve of Steve’s neck and he whuffed greedily, soaking up the scent of Steve’s Heat. “Open.”

Steve swallowed and shivered as electricity crackled through his veins. Bucky’s eyes were black with raw need, and the scent of him bled hot and heavy through the enclosed space of the nest. Steve couldn’t tell whether Bucky’s co*ck was wet with his own slick or with Bucky’s needy precome. He exhaled a shaky breath and relaxed, trusting Bucky’s strong arms—that impossibly strong arm, that monstrous wonderful terrible beautiful arm—to hold him. To move him where he needed to be. Alpha would take care of him.

It took the effort of a breath for Steve to sink onto Bucky’s co*ck. Bucky purred into the side of Steve’s neck, his soft lips and sharp teeth buzzing against Steve’s swollen scent gland. Gravity pulled Steve down onto Bucky even though Bucky’s strong arms kept him aloft and held close: he felt fuller this time than any of the previous times they had mated, like Bucky was somehow bigger from this angle. Already the bump of his knot was starting to swell, rubbing and stretching at Steve’s c*nt.

Steve whimpered under his breath and buried his face in Bucky’s neck. The scent there was soothing even as Heat rippled through Steve and made him squirm further onto Bucky’s co*ck, made his c*nt try to swallow the knot whole.

Bucky held Steve up with just the metal arm as his flesh hand came up to stroke Steve’s hair back from his face.

“My omega,” Bucky crooned. “So sweet.” His teeth latched onto Steve’s mating gland. Not hard enough to break the skin: not hard enough to take. But enough to bruise and sting. His flesh hand followed the length of Steve’s spine down until he could grip onto Steve’s hip and start to lift Steve up and down, sliding him over the length of his co*ck.

Steve whimpered again, feeling Bucky in his throat.

Bucky whined back, breathing hard. He pulled Steve even closer like he was trying to open up his chest and tuck Steve inside him. Between blinks, they were down in the nest again and Bucky’s hips were rabbiting into Steve fast and furious and desperate.

“Mine,” Bucky begged quietly. He didn’t tear his eyes away from Steve’s face. Both hands came up to frame Steve’s red cheeks. “Mine.”

Steve nodded and hitched his legs higher around Bucky’s waist, knees folded almost to his shoulders. “Yours,” he agreed. Heat made him dig his nails into Bucky’s back and drag, marking Bucky up.

The copper scent of blood blossomed in the air between them and it made Steve feral. Ravenous.

“Bite me,” he begged. “Alpha, please…”

Bucky’s mouth latched onto Steve’s neck again, his teeth sharp against the swollen gland at the side of Steve’s throat.

Steve sobbed once, overwhelmed as an org*sm ripped through him without warning.

Bucky didn’t bite down.

He pulled back, instead, nuzzled his nose and the soft of his lips over Steve’s skin. He kissed away Steve’s shocked tears and purred as the pace of his frantic thrusts slowed, grew more luxurious. He murmured sweet nonsense words against Steve’s forehead as Steve clung on closer with all of his thin limbs.

“Bite me,” Steve insisted. Humiliatingly, the plea caught in his throat and more tears spilled down his cheeks. “Bucky—Alpha—please?”

Bucky nuzzled against the swollen mating gland again, but he kept his teeth away. He stopped f*cking into Steve even though Steve was still soft and wet and open and Bucky was still hard, halfway to a knot.

“You deserve better’n me, Stevie.”

Steve shivered, nipples pebbled hard enough to sting. “Don’t I deserve whatever I want? I want you.”

Bucky’s mouth was hot over the pink, stretched skin over Steve’s scent gland. But he didn’t bite. He sucked at the mark lightly, enough to tease, and then dragged his hot mouth down and down and down. He kissed and nipped and sucked at Steve’s collarbone and over his chest, teeth catching one peaked nipple and then the other. He paused to whuff at Steve’s belly, at the streaks of dried and drying come that striped Steve’s pale skin. Bucky purred lowly at the evidence of Steve’s pleasure and his tongue poked pink out of his mouth to lick at the still-wet strands.

“Bucky,” Steve whined. His hips twisted in Bucky’s grasp. “Bite me, bite me, bite me.”

“I will,” Bucky whispered. But he didn’t move towards Steve’s neck. He kept his kisses moving downward, pausing to nibble at Steve’s navel and bite softly at the smooth skin beneath it.

Steve hissed, his dick hardening back up again as Bucky’s breath ghosted over it.

“But Steve, I think—it’d be better for you if… it will be hard to explain,” Bucky settled on. “It will be hard to explain how you found an Alpha, and I don’t want you to lose your room here, and—Steve, I do want you, but—”

“Bucky.” Steve squirmed in his grip again. “Bite me, please. I just want you.”

Bucky looked torn, and he lowered his face again to Steve’s belly where he could whuff in Steve’s comforting scent. Steve bucked at the warmth and wet of Bucky’s breath washing over his dick.

“Bite me,” Steve murmured. He ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair to hold it back from his face. “Bucky.”

His name felt good in Steve’s mouth. Like chocolate, like cream. Steve knew Bucky was meant to be his mate.

His eyes pricked. Maybe Bucky’s hesitance was just… a kind letdown.

No.

No. Steve was sure. He belonged to Bucky, and Bucky belonged to him. He kept running his hands through Bucky’s soft damp hair as Bucky kissed his way towards the swollen scent gland on the inside of Steve’s hipbone. Bucky nuzzled it softly, ran his nose over the wing of bone and the sensitive gland beneath Steve’s stretched pink skin. His stubble scruffed over the mounded little gland and rubbed Bucky’s scent into it, mixing their aromas together. Steve wanted to live in that smell, in the combination of his own scent with Bucky’s apple and musk. Bucky kissed the achy spot, his lips soft.

He met Steve’s eyes, and Steve smiled a little wetly down at him.

Then Bucky opened his jaws and bit down on the scent gland with his sharp Alpha eyeteeth, breaking the skin and piercing the gland beneath.

Steve gasped at the shock of pain and the sudden overwhelming sensation that made him shiver from his hair to his toes.

The Bond formed like a cipher unscrambling—first a wriggle in the back of Steve’s mind that something was there, and then a single word, a single feeling. Warmth. Slowly, unfolding and unfolding, the Bond unscrambled and unspooled letter by letter. A whisp of Brooklyn sea air. The sound of horse-hooves on cobblestone. The stench of blood in the mud. An ever-present ache in his arm.

Terror.

Loss.

Nothingness.

And then—

Himself. Steve.

Steve, standing in the glass pod, refusing to read the last trigger word.

Steve, letting Bucky listen to music for the first time in twenty-five years.

Steve, the scent of clean cotton and thyme leaves and dark caramel and the bite of frost.

“Oh,” Steve murmured. He had never seen himself through someone else’s eyes before.