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A day or two after since the scuffle of Bucky Barnes being brought into SHIELD, and Peggy is actually in office this day. Most people have said that she shouldn't be in office at all, she really is due to pop ANY time now, but most people also aren't willing to tell that to her face. So, a little after 9 am, the door from the back elevator opens (the one that comes from the underground garage) and Peggy Carter makes her slow waddle down the hall towards the bull pen. She's ridiculously pregnant, not even bothering with a suit any more, but in one of those ridiculous, too cute maternity dresses that she's cut the bows off of a long time ago. She looks tired and bloated but determined as she heads towards her office door.
*
There are some agents who, after bringing in a high profile target, would want to hang around the office and soak in the admiration. Ava is distinctly not one of those agents. She stayed with the prisoner when a larger team came to pick him up, in case she was needed to subdue him, then once he was safely in custody, she more or less disappeared. After all, she was due for her monthly physical, and there was the paperwork to fill out before the Director would inevitably want to hear about it.
But staying in the office makes her restless, so she's been keeping an eye out for when Peggy would arrive. By the time Peggy can get to her office door, Ava is standing there waiting.
*
It's sadly not hard to beat Peggy anywhere these days. While she won't give up working in the office, she's definitely not field worthy right now as going from elevator to office door is enough to leave the pregnant woman slightly winded. There simply wasn't enough room for baby, lungs and all other things needed to easily function. She had heard, of course, about the prisoner who was brought it. She gives Ava a knowing nod and motions towards the door. "MIght as well come right in, though I'll want some tea first… I take it this is longer than a two line report." Peggy half teases as she leads the way into her office.
*
"I don't think so, actually," Ava shakes her head, frowning slightly to herself. "Someone or something has…" She follows the director into the office, moving to intercept her before she can start the tea. It's not that Ava drinks tea, but she's watched the process enough times to have an idea how it works. "He is not entirely himself. Or he wasn't before. One or the other. More Red Room games."
*
"I can bloody well… " Peggy begins to protest about the tea, but she finally decides it's not worth it. She gives a small sigh. "Thank you." The door to her office isn't really shut, a quiet permission for any other senior agent to come in and join them, should they wish, but she's also not inviting the whole bull pen to listen. She shrugs out of her spring coat, the one that won't button any longer, and tosses it over the back of a chair before waddling to her desk chair and sinking down into sitting. There. She made it. Fully capable of still working! "When has he ever been himself since the war?… We knew the Red ROom had him before… the last time he was in custody we were working on breaking the brain washing. What is different now?"
*
"Something is broken." Ava gets the water heating, sitting on the arm of the couch as she mulls over the facts before presenting them. "He's like…Like I was, when everything first started. He knows things - knows how to do things - but he doesn't know how or why. It's instinct, in the back of his mind. But the rest of it? The knowledge, the intention? It's gone. I found him, which is odd enough. And he didn't notice me tailing him until after I shot him." Presumably with her electric pistol, since he didn't come in with any bullet wounds.
The door to Peggy's office is open, while inside Ava is giving her report of just what happened with the Winter Soldier, an electric kettle starting to heat water for tea.
*
The director sinks back a bit deeper in her chair, pulling the Winter Soldier file from her desk and forward so she can open it, flipping back through a few other things, "…It seems they did… quite a job on him this time. The last time, he had a fair amount left in tact… still gaps, but enough sense of self to remember the past. This time, he can't even remember them, you're saying? And… he's not aware of his own skills even?" Peggy asks, looking up from the file in her attempt to get a full understanding of what has actually changed, "And how do we know it's not an act?"
*
A tall man, dressed in a dark single-breasted suit, a red tie, and the peoper hat sticks his head in the open office door. "I heard something about Barnes. Might I come in?" Brian the Uniom Jack asks.
*
"We didn't talk long," Ava shakes her head to Peggy. "And I think he remembers his skills, it's just not in the forefront of his mind. He lifts a gun and he knows how to fire it. He knows how to run, how to fight. But he didn't even remember attacking you. He didn't remember me. He didn't remember our fight. And he knew enough to say that if I didn't put him down, then he'd fight and he wouldn't be able to control it." She looks up as Brian arrives, looking to Peggy for how to proceed.
*
A small nod towards Union Jack, he a senior enough agent and going to be dealing with this issue enough that Peggy doesn't mind. "Come in, Brian, come in…" Peggy coaches gently, giving him a half smile from her tired features before she looks back to Ava and exhales quietly, "Alright. Give me the whole story, beginning to end. The details. Every little thing. You know the drill, it might not be consequential to you, but matters in the grand scope."
*
Brian does come in, then. "I saw him too, with a small man. He claims to not know what happened to him during the war, but he does know he's being chased by the Russians." he mentions. "He claims to have met with Rogers, who claimed he could get Barnes a fair trial."
*
Bucky has arrived.
*
Ava nods once to Peggy, taking a measured breath before she begins. "I'd heard he was back in town. I tracked a few mentions, narrowed things down to Hells Kitchen, then started patrolling. When I found him, I started to trail him. I kept my distance, kept my head down, and he didn't seem to notice me. When he turned down an alley where there weren't witnesses, I shot him. After last time, I wasn't going to take any chances. It immobilized the arm, but he took off running. I pursued, but he was…Well. You've seen him go. We reached a part of the city I was more familiar with than he, and I maneuvered him into a dead end. He had a gun, which he aimed at me, but didn't fire. He warned me that he would, but that I should let him go."
*
The older woman listens quietly, leaning back deep in her chair as she considers the entire set up. Peggy doesn't look thrilled or comfortable about any of this. She exhales quietly through her nose, one hand resting idly on her far too pregnant stomach, the other paging through Bucky's file even deeper. "…Brian, listening to that… having read the file, you think he's playing us? Just trying to get inside, get information? Or… did he somehow actually break away from the Red Room *again*?" Peggy is asking that question to both of them, since Ava has far more experience with the Russians than either she or Brian.
*
Brian strokes his chin a moment. "I thought about it, but if so he's a better actor than I would've given him credit for. He seemed genuinely not to know about the SSR's successor. I wouldn't put it past the Russians or HYDRA before them to have implanted a secondary personality Barnes isn't even aware of. Something to consider."
*
"I told him he needed to come in," Ava continues. "That if he didn't want anyone to be hurt - which he claimed he didn't - then he should come back to SHIELD with me. That's when he tried to shoot himself." She grimaces, looking between the pair. "I managed to shock him enough to miss, but he was ready to follow through. And that's when he said I'd need to put him down. So I did. And then I called for pick up."
*
A slightly deeper wince crosses Peggy's features. Maybe her heart is getting soft, wincing in sympathy for a man like this. Or, perhaps, they had been close once. Almost friends. She considers Brian's words and nods in agreement, "I'd…almost put money on there being another personality back there. Something designed to come out once we've started his mental recovery. Or… something not meant to ever come out until it's triggered. That is a method of the red room, no, Ava?" Peggy asks, looking straight up to the woman again, almost wanting to be told it wouldn't be something they'd do. "It's still good you brought him in. We have… lots of talented people. HOpefully we can get through all the layers."
*
"I told him to keep his head down, hide until we could set something up to come out of the cold." Brian says in annoyance. "Too bad he wouldn't listen. Typical Barnes. Typical Rogers, too."
*
"I didn't use the words." Ava looks between Brian and Peggy, catching the inside of her cheek between her teeth for just a moment. "The last time we fought, when he'd been…when the fight was getting rough. There was a series of words he used. He was trying to trigger me, but they didn't use that on me. They did on- Well, there was sort of…feedback, from the memories from the other agent. That's what put me down. And I don't even know what the words are meant to do, or if they'd work the same on him. But I remember them."
*
Brian's comment about keeping his head down just makes Peggy smirk a bit, and she tilts her head in agreement about the typical comments, "You're not wrong." SHe echoes her fellow Brit, but then she's sighing and reaches up, shutting the file and looking fully at Ava now. It's not about the file any longer, it's about instincts. "The words he used? Alright… it's a start, to see if they will work on him. If they do not, we have to assume there are other words. We can't go forward with releasing him, trying him… doing anything with him in public until we know we've cleared those triggers, somehow…" She sighs deeper, dragging a hand across her face, "WE…might need a telepath in here."
*
Ava's brows rise at Peggy's suggestion. "We…have a telepath?" Apparently this is a surprise to her. Not a very pleasant one, either, to judge by the way she wrinkles her nose afterwards.
*
A slight shake of her head, "No… Not in house. I somewhat wish we did. I'm… tempted to outsource, but I don't want this getting out. I need to think on it more, and see what work Sofia can do with him. But first…" Peggy shift in her chair, pushing herself to stand behind the desk, "…It might be worth trying those words. It will let us know a bit more what we're working with. You… up for the challenge? I know it's early…" Peggy seems ready to go, though. She might actually be considering trying them herself, personally. But she's going stir crazy in her last trimester.
*
Ava knows people who know telepaths. But that's a part of her life she tries to keep separate from SHIELD. "Are you sure that's a good idea, director?" she asks, brows furrowing in a curious frown. "We don't know what they do. We don't know if it'll take him from slightly confused but more or less cooperative and turn him into someone awaiting orders from the Red Room again. And we don't know how to turn it back."
*
A small sigh and Peggy looks up to Ava, "I…don't know. BUt I know we can't keep the man trapped here forever like a rat, so we are going to have to do something. Sofia… may be able to do more. Maybe we should hold off on the words." Not much emotionally ruffles Peggy, but this has. She looks back to both of them and then moves slowly for the door of her office, "I'm going to see him." She does not order either of them to join, but they are clearly both faster than her. She moves out the door and down the hallway to the reinforced holding cells.
*
At the moment, his looks more like a hospital room than a cell. For he's been sedated as well as restrained, and he's disposed on a gurney taken from the medical bay. There's basic monitoring equipment hooked up to him, and it's bleeping and blinking to itself contentedly. Which is a rather necessary reassurance, for if it wasn't for the monitors and the very slow rise and fall of his chest, it'd be too easy to mistake him for dead at first glance, face pale and slack in unconsciousness. There's an IV drip of something strong keeping him under - some wise med tech's calculated the dose off one Steve Rogers.
*
Ava is coming with Peggy whether she asks for it or not, given the director's state. The tea can wait. Hands in her pockets, she trails behind the director, peering toward Barnes and his bed. She doesn't look particularly reassured by his current state.
*
Of course, Peggy has a key. She is the director, she has a key to everything. So, she gets through the triple locks of doors on both doors of his cell before stepping into the hospital-room like area and sighing as she sees the familiar, still too young looking face. "Shut it…" She calls back to Ava behind her, they having lost Brian along the way, it seems. Peggy would let one come along, that was it. She needed no baby sitter. She then waddles quietly in the direction of the man, around the head of his bed, watching his breath rise and fall. Eventually, she clips out lightly, "…Bucky Barnes, can you hear me?"
*
Brian follows along as well. He can't very well let his friend Carter get hurt by a mindwiped Yank who can't keep his head down like he was told. He positions himself mostly between the pregnant director and the subject. He's taken mental measurements between the door and the table, just in case someone has to wisk a lady out the door.
*
Well, that's not exactly true love's first kiss to wake the sleeping prince, is it? But it does call him to some semblance of wakefulness. Slowly, his eyelids flutter, and he's rolling his head to peer blearily at the others in the cell. Whatever he's on might be keeping his eyes from focussing properly. The monitors start to respond, as heartrate, respiration, and blood pressure all start to rise. There's a long moment of blank staring, but he licks dry lips before responding, "I can hear you."
*
Ava turns the lock on the door once Peggy and Brian are inside, taking up a position not far from the bed. It's a carefully considered position, one that will let her get between Bucky and Peggy at need, to hold him off before he can get to the door. For all she's a spare slip of a girl, she doesn't seem to know it.
*
The woman steps forward, towards Bucky's head, especially as he begins to come awake. She frowns a bit as she realizes just how hovering and protecive both Brian and Ava are, but she wasn't going to scold either of them. Especially not in front of their prisoner. Show no divisions. Show no weakness. She quietly steps her way to being probably too-close to the restrained Bucky for anyone's comfort, but the very pregnant director doesn't care. She makes certain to get into his field of vision, "…James. Do you remember me?" She offers quietly. The same face, if older and softer. Absolutely the same voice.
*
"No," he says, flatly, without any hesitation at all. His gaze is mostly fixed on her face, though there are darting glances at the rest of the room. His face has gone mask-like, immobile….but the best acting in the world can't fool the screens he's hooked up to. The cadence of the little electronic gauges has continued to rise.
*
"You are safe here," Ava chimes in as the monitors start to beep, glancing to them before she looks back to the man in the bed. "No one is going to reach you here. And there are a great many people who you are not going to be able to hurt. Stop worrying about what you might do and start focusing on what you are doing."
*
"She is right, Bucky… We… we spent a lot of time together, back in the war. You were a friend. We are going to take care of you… I promise." Peggy murmurs as gently as she can, trying not to scare him away. Trying to keep him calm. For all her steel spine and seemingly cold director's heart, she does care. It breaks something in her to see him like this.
*
Focus on what you are doing?….unfortunately for the collective peace of mind, his own health, and the SHIELD budget for medical equipment, what the Winter Soldier is doing right now is losing his goddamned mind. Despite Ava's assurances, the click and beep of the monitors accelerates into the kind of shrill cacophony that, were this a genuine hospital, would have the nurses coming in at one hell of a hustle.
For there's a space of a few beats where he's focussing on Peggy with what looks like a kind of desperate hope….but an abortive gesture of one hand, reaching out to her, has his attenuated strength coming up against the restraints that have him bound to the gurney. Some kind of alloy designed to resist even power beyond the human normal; the clink of his metal arm against it is a tiny sound, but it draws his eye. Then his throat works, and he makes a sound hardly louder, but wordless and full of animal fear. The pale eyes go wide, white-rimmed…..and he's fighting it with all he can muster. He can't break the bonds….but as it turns out, he can wrench the gurney right off its casters with one frantic lunge towards poor Peggy. Then he's struggling in a kind of mindless ecstasy of panic, snarling like an animal….still trying to get to the Director.
*
As the gurney clatters to the floor, Ava lunges for it, a crackle of electricity already in her hands. One that should travel nicely through the metal of the gurney and hopefully break the Winter Soldier out of whatever circle his mind has been bent to.
*
Well, that wasn't what Peggy was expecting. She just about reaches her hand for him, wanting to give some sort of comfort, but things turn from desperate to violent fairly quickly. She distantly hears Brian's voice behind her head as the man ushers her out while Ava works with their prisoner. She doesn't fight him, but she doesn't look back. She's just staring at Bucky, chest aching the whole time.
*
Alas, the initial jolt doesn't put him down or out. It does however, make him shriek in a mingling of fury, pain, and fear….and spasm and kick out, head jerking back against the mattress. Which doesn't break the restraints, but does bring both IV stand and monitors toppling over to add to the pile of wreckage he's reduced the gurney to. There are words in the yells, though…in Russian. Pleas for them to stop.
*
"Be still!" Ava snaps in Russian, falling to quiet cursing as she eyes the wreckage of the neat medical set-up. "They must have spent a very long time programming sense into you," she mutters as she tries to set some of it to rights, enough to make sure that the sedative is still flowing. "And then back out. And maybe back in."
*
There's the door. The way out. That's what he's focussed on now, trying to get to it. Luckily for everyone, he's doing it by sheer brute force, trying to wrench the entire assemblage along with him. "Fuck you," he tells her in Russian, even as one brutal fish-tailing writhe torques the frame of the bed right out of true. "Let me go."
*
"No?" Like the fact that he asked is yet another sign of a lack of sense. Ava gives him a flat look, tightening a few straps and bolts before she moves back to watch him. "You are not safe to be on your own, outside. You don't now who you are, you don't know what you want or what you're going to do. You are not in control of yourself. Do you want to be in control of yourself?"
*
Now the drug's catching up to him, the dosage upped automatically by the things he's still attached to. His struggles subside, leaving him sagging against the restraints…but still watching her with those blue eyes going vague, panting. He does seem to be listening, though. "I'm the Soldier," he tells her, slurring a little. "I'm…." A moment of confusion, that searching look, then more softly, "….James?" It comes out with the Russian pronunciation, since there's no true J in that tongue, elided into something like "Dzhems."
*
"She calls you James," Ava nods to him, keeping enough distance to be prepared without seeming afraid to be close. It's just respectfully cautious. "Steve - the captain - calls you Bucky. Your file," because of course she found a copy, "Says James Buchanan Barnes. You were in the army, with the Howling Commandos. Your specialty was shooting."
*
He's gone limp again, like a child's toy thrown casually onto the bed. But there's that wicked glint in his stare, as his gaze follows hers. He may agree that he's called James, but it's the Soldier driving, for the moment. "HYDRA," he says, suddenly, and by his expression, he's surprising himself. "HYDRA had me."
*
Ava quirks a brow, but she doesn't disagree. "No one really knows what happened to you after they thought you were dead," she admits. "But HYDRA has done all sorts of things." Her lips purse, thoughtful. "But you fight like Red Room. And you know their methods, somewhere in your brain. But HYDRA were nazis, and Russia does not have a good relationship with nazis. You must have had a very interesting path."
*
He's silent for a moment, gaze going unfocussed. One can almost hear the mental gears grinding. "I read my story in the papers. I was captured first by them, in the middle of the war….Steve and the Commandos rescued me….but they'd experimented on me." He says no more about that, but there's a deep shudder, like someone fighting down nausea. "Red Room was later, after I was thought dead."
*
"So HYDRA lost you, and the Red Room made use of you." Ava grimaces, wrinkling her nose. "Yes. That sounds likely." She crosses her arms over her chest, still keeping a wary eye on him. "You can be free of them. Eventually. But it will take time, and we will have to be cautious with you like this in the meantime."
*
The Soldier casts a cynical eye on her, at that, regarding her for a long, silent moment. "You believe that," he says, finally. It isn't a question. He lets his eyes half-lid, wearily.
*
"I know that." The words might seem hopeful, and yet there's no actual hope in them. No forced optimism. To this practical, efficient girl, it's still simple fact. "My parents were scientists who worked for the Red Room. I know what went into the research, into trying to make all of it work. And I know how often it didn't. It was science, like everything else. And it can fail."
*
"What's your name?" he asks, abruptly dropping back into Russian. "And your parents' names?" Since that's an element of polite address in Russian. No accent in it, no American drawl. He sounds like a middle-class Muscovite in that tongue.
*
"Ava Orlova," the girl answers, chin rising just a little stubbornly. "My mother was Yulia Orlova. My father was Anatoly Pavlov." Renowned scientists, yes. Yulia as a doctor and neurologist. Anatoly as a doctor, but also as an expert in the growing field of technology and computers. Both disappeared, first from the public eye, and then more quietly from the program in which they worked.
*
"Ava Anatoliyevna," he replies, after a moment. Then he grins, thin and humorless, lips pulling back. "Can't say I'm pleased to meet you." Watching her thoughtfully, from under those dark lashes.
*
"Well, this has worked out better for me than the last time," Ava replies with a sharp smile of her own, smirking. "So I will settle for that. I don't trust SHIELD," she confesses, perhaps a little abruptly. "I hid from them for years. I ran from them. But there are good people here. And the running gets very old. Better to face things. To control your own fate."
*
James is silent for a little, that keen light fading from his face. Not entirely due to the drugs. "I'm here. They have me," he says, simply. "There is no more running. I'll die before the Red Room has me again." It's not so much a threat or a promise as a kind of resigned statement. He shrugs, and this time the scrape of metal against metal doesn't send him into animal panic. "Now I'm SHIELD's."
*
"Don't be SHIELD's," Ava shakes her head. "Be your own. So long as you let yourself be someone's tool, you'll always be a tool just waiting for anyone to pick it up." She pushes a hand through her hair, glancing over her shoulder toward the door. "I have other things I need to check on. But I will come back and see you. I think you will have many visitors, though."
*
"Oh?" he asks, blinking at her. That thought hadn't occurred to him. "Why?"
*
"Whoever you were, people cared about you," Ava shrugs as she moves toward the door. "I suspect you will get sick of hearing about yourself in short order." Bedside manner: not her specialty. "Just don't let them tell you who you are, either."
*
That makes him laugh, a sharp bark of sound. "I won't take your bet on that front," he replies. And for a moment, there's a genuine smile.
*
"I will check back in a few days, then," Ava smirks as she backs toward the door. "Though I'm not sure what I'll collect when I win. I'll keep it in mind." With one last look to make sure nothing's been left loose on his medical set up, she slips back out the door.
*