marvelbox | [Flashback] SHIELD HQ, New York: Our Secrets Have Secrets

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[Flashback] SHIELD HQ, New York: Our Secrets Have Secrets

Pulling James Barnes out of Russia had been the easy part of the operation, and that was saying something, because it had been in no way easy or even remotely legal, but it had been the only way. They'd bought him from a broker who wanted them to think he didn't know who he had on his hands, or what he could do. They still had operatives working their way up that chain, trying to trace this back to what he hoped wouldn't be another Red Room operation, but in the meantime the deal had gone through all too smoothly, and Coulson thought he might actually like it even less than Fury did.

He'd grown up on stories about Captain America. He and his friends had taken turns pretending to be Captain Rogers and his Howling Commandos. He'd never imagined that they'd find the Captain's best friend nearly seventy years later, brainwashed almost beyond hope. The assassin known as Winter Soldier had been little more than a ghost until they started putting the pieces together, and now he was going back to the grave. Officially, they needed to be sure Barnes wasn't a sleeper, and that he was relatively sane besides. Unofficially - well, that was irrelevant.

The transfer to the New York facility had been quick and quiet and restricted under Level 7 security protocols. They'd kept Barnes under even after they brought him out of cryostasis and locked him down besides. No one got near unaccompanied, and only a handful of Agents even knew he existed at the moment. Specialist Brandon Young was one of them.

Coulson had some limited experience with people who had superhuman abilities, but it was enough that he didn't think this idea was entirely insane. It was certainly the best shot they had.

A scan of his prints let him into the room where Young waited to be briefed. The man was almost startlingly, well, young, which was always one thing to see on a file, and almost another thing entirely in person. Coulson had a reputation among the junior agents: most of them thought he was a hardass, if they thought anything of him at all.

"Specialist Young," He held out his hand as he approached, smiling politely. "I'm Agent Coulson. I'm here to brief you on the details of your assignment. You'll be reporting directly to myself or Director Fury for the duration. As you've no doubt gathered, we'd like this to be kept as quiet as possible."

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The worst part about all of this was the fact that Brandon couldn't just tell what was going on. The tension in the air was thick, everyone knew that something was going down even if no one knew exactly what, and he couldn't just read someone's mind and get his answers. It put him on-edge, even moreso when one of the rumors floating around that whatever was going on, the new PsiOps initiative was involved somehow.

Rumors... in some ways, being a super-human agent wasn't all that different from being in high school.

This did mean that Brandon wasn't surprised when he was asked to report to the briefing room. Nor when he was left waiting for a few minutes. Thus, when Coulson walked in, he'd find Brandon in a suit- he didn't wear the more form-fitting outfit when he wasn't on a mission- that he still felt awkward wearing and which tie he still couldn't quite get right. That, and he was wearing headphones, piping in a judicious mix of pop, rap, and r&b to keep the silence at bay.

At least he had the courtesy to remove said headphones when Coulson walked in?

By habit, Brandon tucked his amplifier- a small palm-sized device- into his pocket as he stood up, keeping his hands out and away from it. Just another habit he got into, to keep people from being afraid of him or jumping to conclusions. Instead, he brightly grinned, taking Coulson's hand and shaking it firmly. "I understand," he affirmed, "I'll keep it secret..."

That being said... he couldn't quite hide the interest in his eyes. The agents Brandon hung around with knew that Coulson was important- he reported directly to Nick Fury, and they all treated Fury rather like a principal or a general. Important, but not someone you wanted to meet, because the only time important people met with junior people was when someone had screwed up in a spectacular way.

But that wasn't the case this time. On the contrary... it was either Agent Hardass or the Director he was report to, instead of anyone else in S.H.I.E.L.D. That meant something important. And that meant something big, something that they needed a psychic for. Somehow, he doubted it was a need for spoon-bending. "...whatever 'it' is."

As quiet as they tried to keep this, there was a hell of a lot riding on it among the higher-ups. SHIELD already contracted metahumans for various operations, but the proposed PsiOps division would be the first of its kind in the country if it went through, and there was already a lot of interdepartmental gossip circling. Coulson was aware of it. You couldn't move anything through SHIELD without people talking.

"We know you will." He replied, expression unchanging, his grip firm before he released Young's hand. It was more a statement of fact than anything else. "Please, sit down, we're going to be here a while."

He took the chair opposite Young and shifted a file from under his arm to the table in front of them, though he didn't open it yet. "'It' is memory augmentation. We need you to go into someone's head and block out several years worth of... programming. Wetworks programming, in fact." It wouldn't be clean. He laced his fingers in front of him, the slight tension in his hands the only thing that belayed any kind of emotion. "You have the option of backing out of this now, before I tell you more, if you feel that it would be in any way beyond your capabilities."

That was seriously the most eerie thing about Coulson. Not only did he keep a completely unchanging expression, no matter what happened, but he used 'we' like it was natural. Like all the suits here were part of one hive mind or something. Somehow, Brandon wouldn't have been surprised to learn that they actually had tried that.

As it was, he sat down, having to fight off a sense of dread. That sense was only confirmed as Agent Coulson started explaining what, exactly, he wanted. Part of Brandon wondered if either of those two men knew what they were asking. It wasn't possible to just shut off parts of the brain- that risked any number of unintended and disturbing possibilities. So if they wanted to block of memories, and presumably keep the person functioning normally, that'd involve precision. That'd involve...

...shit. That'd involve experiencing it all himself.

Even still, he took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "I'm willing, and I think I can do it, but... I just want to warn you about what it means. I'm not a psychic surgeon, and all the memories I've modified have been small. No more than a few minutes, and nothing really important."

Like convincing his teacher that he'd made it to class on time, or making a police officer forget seeing some pieces of evidence. He knew Coulson knew about some of those abuses, so why lie about it? Still... he softly added, "...but I do know this. You can't just erase memories. The brain doesn't work that way. And it's a living thing, Agent Coulson. New connections can spark old memories, especially if it's something sufficiently jarring."

"And programming's the worst. When you're talking about deep, ingrained things, things that go down to the core... there's going to be a lot of connections. A lot of ways for memories to leak through the blocks, a lot of ways that the stream of consciousness could go in unexpected ways."

He wasn't looking at the older man, now. No, his eyes were downcast, and there was subtle tension in him. His one chance to impress these two, and he had to go on about just how likely he was to screw it up. Shit. "...what I'm trying to say is, if it took years to build up all those memories, I'm not going to be able to undo it all in one day. It's going to be a long, hard process. I won't be able to do anything else, all that time, and... it's going to be complicated."

Now, though, he did look up at Agent Coulson, steeling his gaze before he firmly nodded. "...but I can do it."

He waited as Young considered his options and presumably worked out the logistics of the request. It had been unlikely from the start that he would refuse, but Coulson wouldn't have objected if he did. Not only was the operation a much larger undertaking than anything they'd asked of him before, it would be grueling work, and barely justifiable... and as much as he told himself that they had all started somewhere, Young wasn't even a field agent. Petty crime didn't prepare you for this.

The complications with the procedure itself were expected. They could never have kept this from Barnes forever, even if they'd wanted to, but he needed to remember how to be human first, and that wasn't going to happen with his head full of Winter Soldier programming.

"Part of the reason you were tapped for this assignment, Young, is that you seem to have a firm understanding of your own abilities. It's good to know we weren't wrong. Let us worry about what happens after." He paused for a moment before adding, sincerely; "Thank you, for taking this on."

He reached forward and pulled the holofile open, images and information flickering onto the screen in front of Young. Some of them were clips of old film reels, photographs. "This is Sergeant James Barnes, of Captain America's Howling Commandos. He was presumed dead in 1942, less than a week before the Captain himself went down. He was't."

He flicked the screen from behind, pulling up the next set of files. There were pictures in this one too, fuzzy images from security cameras, political targets, dates and scans of files all labeled PROJECT WINTER SOLDIER.

"The USSR found him, experimented on him, and passed him on to the KGB, who decided to give him Black Ops training and use him for high-profile political assassinations during the Cold War. He's been on-ice since then. Two days ago, we took him back."

"Hey, it's what I'm here for, right?" But even as he said it, Brandon felt a smile creeping across his face. Genuine gratitude from Agent Hardass, now that was something he'd have to remember. And hah... yeah, he knew his own abilities better than anyone else. It was a continual source of frustration, especially since he knew he could do this with no problems if he was at full strength, but at least it wouldn't be too big of a deal here.

The names meant nothing to him, of course, but the fact that he was alive since the 1940s meant that he was a very, very old person. At the start, he thought this would be easy- an older person would be less mentally flexible, he was sure, which meant that while changing a memory might be difficult, submerging it and making sure the brain didn't reconnect to the memory could be a lot easier.

Even still... as he scanned all those pictures and reports, he found himself frowning. That was a lot more challenging than he thought it would be; erasing the occasional memory and smoothing it out into normalcy probably wouldn't be too difficult. But that long a gap in memory, and an almost single-minded determination in the course of his duties? That was going to be a lot more difficult, especially since the natural questions of what happened during all of that time would make the brain search for its own memories, and that... that would test his attention to detail to the limit.

He also knew that this was going to be a nightmare for him. Assassinations... well, hopefully they were all clean and quick. He could deal with that. "So I'm guessing you just want me to erase his time with the USSR? I can... probably do that. But he's going to ask questions, and I don't know how long any block can last with that."

That being said... he tapped his finger on one of the security photos, glancing up at Coulson as he did so. "Just one thing. What do you mean by 'on-ice'? How old is he, mentally?" A pause, and then he quietly asked, just to see how much room he had as a margin of error, "...and how important are the rest of his memories, to keep?"

That seemed to do the trick for Young's confidence, and Coulson smiled briefly before leaning back, fingers laced across his lap again. He gave Young the time to browse at his leisure, and would likely leave the file with him at the end of the briefing. There was nothing in it that he wouldn't have found in Barnes' memories, and the least they could do was be sure Young was as well-prepped as possible for the undertaking. Short of his own stint in Black Ops, whatever they gave him wouldn't be enough.

"Yes, as much of it as possible. It doesn't need to last forever. Just long enough for him to remember who he is." Which was an ambiguous statement, but there was no way around it. "The rest of his memories are the important ones. I can't tell you for certain what you'll find, but we need you to salvage as much as you can."

"Mentally and physically, he's still in his early to mid-twenties. He was kept in cryostasis between missions, which means he's only aged a few years since the 1940s."

Brandon nodded at that. Tall order, what they were asking him for. Winnow through the memories and keep all that was desired, while blocking all that might remind him of who and what he was. That meant he'd have to be very, very careful about how he blocked memories. The entire interconnected mess could be dragged down if he wasn't careful, and he'd have to be painstaking in tracing out every single memory, making sure that he only blocked what he was supposed to.

His head was starting to hurt already.

That being said, now he was starting to get the idea of why SHIELD wanted this to happen. Someone that young could be a valuable agent to them, and if they could get him back to normal even when the memories returned, they'd have a very powerful weapon. Part of Brandon had to wonder if he'd be responsible if anything went wrong. If he screwed up and unleashed this Winter Soldier on an unsuspecting world, would it be his fault for what happened next?

He'd never really thought of things like that before. Responsibility over what could go wrong, and the weighing of risks and rewards. Certainly he'd never thought of things quite in these terms before, and he wasn't sure he liked it. But that was his life now, and he'd just have to deal with it.

Focusing back on the man and the problem, Brandon found his mind whirling. Cryostasis, that meant that the periods between missions would be blank spaces... that was actually a good thing. Even better than sleep, because sleep let the mind reorient itself and strengthen connections. This process would leave things fresh in Bucky's mind, which... would make things more vivid and more difficult to deal with, but easier to manipulate.

Even better, that meant he could possibly work 'with the grain' of his mind, give it a nudge to consider those memories- should they resurface- as nightmares and nothing more. That way, even if the memories replayed themselves, Bucky might not realize the truth right away. It wasn't going to be easy, but that would probably be the best way to make the blockages last for as long as possible.

After a few minutes of that quiet contemplation, Brandon looked up at Coulson once more. "Just remember that this is what he is too. And he's going to be pissed once he realizes that someone's messed with his memories."

Considering that Brandon made it a very, very careful point not to speak in anything other than nonthreatening tones, that word stood out like a flare. It was a valid one, though- Brandon didn't want a furious assassin going after him someday.

Coulson nodded at once, confirming. He had no doubt about that. In fact, from any one else, he might have remarked on the depth of that understatement, but Young had been so meticulous in what he said and how he held himself that Coulson took it as an indication he really did have some idea of just how dangerous this could be.

He met Young's gaze over the edge of the holofile between them.

"Are you concerned for your safety?"

Brandon responded by flicking a picture of one of the Winter Soldier's victims over to Coulson, letting that sit for a second. One thing was absolutely certain- this was a trained killer, someone who turned murder into a brutal science. It didn't take much imagination to put Brandon's face beneath all of that blood.

The young man was silent for a few long moments, then he softly admitted, "Yeah, I guess I am. At the same time he realizes that someone's blocked his memories, those memories are going to come back to him. He might revert back, if it happens too soon. Or he might lose control, lash out at whoever he blames for doing it to him. He might start wondering what else I've blocked or taken away from him."

A weak laugh. "You realize you're basically asking me to do some mind-rape, right? To someone who's an assassin and who, whatever he might've been in the 40s, is right now someone who won't hesitate to kill? I think I'd be crazy not to be 'concerned'!"

Coulson's expression didn't change in the slightest as he regarded the picture. Young saw a body, and Coulson sometimes wondered what it said about him that he saw an efficient kill, no collateral damage, no evidence of torture. Which really, only made this man that much more dangerous. He didn't run black ops missions, but he had been Barton's handler and Romanov's, so he knew very intimately what a well-trained assassin was capable of, what a person was like when they were unmade.

The odds might be stacked in their favor, but he was still asking Young to bet his life against a stranger's, at best. At worst...

He blinked, lifted his eyes from the picture.

"You would be," Coulson agreed. "I won't argue that it's a great deal more moral than what was already done, and if you have another suggestion, I'd be happy to hear it." Genuinely. Though he didn't expect there to be one. "I'll protect your identity. That doesn't guarantee your safety, but the risk assessments are enclosed in the file."

Which was no doubt not a comfort in the slightest. But if Young agreed to this, his clearance level went up, and the risks increased with it.

"This can be done." It had been done. "Trust me."

"I know I'm asking you is a lot," He continued. "Frankly, Agent Young, in this particular situation, we don't have options. We need your help." He hesitated briefly, shifted in his chair, and anyone who knew him might have noticed the way his shoulders slouched a fraction lower. "Because, with or without it, he wakes up."

"...what?" That was not news that Brandon wanted to hear. If this had been any other situation, then maybe he'd have more time to consider this. Think of the risks, try to come up with another plan, perhaps work around the memory problem somehow. But if the Winter Soldier was going to be waking up anyway, then the question was what he'd wake up as- the soldier, or the assassin.

This changed everything.

Brandon massaged his temples at that, putting his psychic amplifier on the table before he did so. Shit shit shit, that was not something that he wanted to hear. But... he'd signed up to SHIELD knowing full well that things like this might happen. So it wasn't like he could really complain about this being unfair, right? Sometimes life sucked, the only question was what he was going to do about it.

Risk his life for a stranger, or let the Winter Soldier awaken? Neither were things that he wanted, but of the two... he finally nodded. A little reluctantly, but still. "Okay... I'll do it. But I'll need some very specific things, and if even one of them goes wrong, this could blow up in our faces. Can I count on getting what I need for this?"

He couldn't go into the details under Brandon's security clearance, but the truth was, they had paid a high price in more ways than one. S.H.I.E.L.D. funding only went so far without someone noticing, and while Coulson might have been able to cook the books and hide this transaction, it would have been a temporary solution and the fallout wasn't worth the time it bought. So the Council had been informed, had agreed to the funding, but as far as they were concerned they were buying a weapon that would be put to use.

Fury would never put the Winter Soldier into action, but if S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't use him, S.W.O.R.D. was more than happy to oblige. And that was dangerous not just because of what the Winter Soldier was, but because of the precedent it set for organizations like theirs. It couldn't be allowed to happen.

Asking Young to do this was still overstepping boundaries, but Coulson hadn't been bluffing: they had no other choices. Maybe they could find another psychic to do this, but Young was smart, careful, capable... and trustworthy. It was a rarer combination than one might think.

"I'll take care of it," He promised. Though he'd made a long habit of not promising anything without details and occasionally contracts... this was different.

"We need this done, and we need it done right. What do you need?"

Well, that was that. He was going to have to live with the decision now, which meant that he was now officially on the hook for turning a merciless assassin into a law-abiding citizen for the use of a secret government organization. No pressure, right?

The promise of getting what he needed was good, though. That might just make this work. Brandon took a few deep breaths, contemplating what he'd have to have in order to make this work, and then began rattling them off. "I'll need a room where no one can bother us for a few days. If anything throws off my attention while I'm deep in his mind, one or both of us is going to suffer some pretty major trauma when I'm yanked out."

Probably both, knowing his luck.

Shuddering at the thought, he quickly continued, "He'll need to be kept under for that entire time. Reworking a conscious mind is like trying to do renovations in an earthquake, it's just not gonna happen. Likewise, I'll need like... an IV or something like that. Once I go into his mind, I can't leave it, or his brain will start compiling his memories, and I'll have to start all over again."

Of course, that was just theory, but he was confident that was how it'd work. That's how the minor changes had worked, anyway, and this was going to be something very similar to that, only on a much larger scale. If it wasn't for the long blanks in his memories, Bucky might just be a lost cause. But working with those, Brandon might just have a chance. "The room's gotta be sterile, and the temperature's got to be constant all the time. If I get any stimuli while I'm in his mind, it might cause new mental action, which might throw me off."

...shit, this was a lot more complicated than he thought. But at least now Coulson knew just how delicate a procedure this was? "...and I'll need the complete works of Mozart piped through my headphones. Not so loud I get a headache, but always on, all the time. With all that... I should be able to do this."

Another short pause, and then a weak laugh. "Oh yeah... and someone's going to have to cart me to my room afterward. And have someone check on me every few hours, okay?"

He was drafting plans in head as quickly as Young spoke. The room shouldn't be a problem. There were a lot of rooms like that in this base alone, but they needed one with easy access to medical and a staff doctor to be on-call for the IV and any unexpected circumstances. Somewhere that was hooked into the generators, not the grid, private enough that no one would even knock... Damn. He knew exactly where to put Young and the Winter Soldier. He'd relay it to the Director and arrange it himself.

He would look in himself as well, but it would be a doctor a lot of the time. He couldn't guarantee that all of his time would be his own to oversee a single project, even one like this.

"Alright," He leaned back slightly in his chair. "How much time do you need?"

Huh, it seemed like Agent Coulson had already decided on what he was going to be doing. That was just fine for Brandon- he had more than enough to worry about, he didn't want to bother with all the logistics of how to make this happen.

That question was really the important one, though. How much time did he need? It was a harder question than perhaps Coulson knew. How much time did he need to prepare to delve into a mind twisted by violence and 'reeducation'? How much time did he need to relive memories that no normal person should have to experience? How much time... how much time did he need, to repair his own broken mind well enough to try fixing someone else's?

The young man forced a smile on his face. Nothing for it, really. "I'll be ready when you are."

He could have brought Agent Young in on some of the details of what he needed, but he was still a junior agent and they needed the majority of his focus to be on the task at hand.

What he got was a non-answer if he'd ever heard one, but he supposed that was what he got for asking an ambiguous question. He took in Young's expression, wondering if more or less time would be what he needed. Some people worked better under pressure, some cracked. But if Young thought he was ready...

He checked his watch quickly. "24 hours. I'll meet you here again at the same time tomorrow. You can take the file with you until then, and if you need to contact me," He took a card out of his pocket, blank except a hand-written number. "Use this. Do you have any more questions?"

"No, I think I know everything I need to," he answered with a sober nod, taking the card and pocketing it. Who knew if he'd need to contact the senior agent later on? There was nothing certain in this world of theirs, and just having it felt reassuring. Somehow like a solid promise, that he had one of the highest-ranking SHIELD members watching his back.

As it was, he stood up and offered his hand to the older man, a small smile crossing his face. "I'll be here tomorrow. You can count on me."

Coulson took his hand as he stood, meeting his eyes. "I am counting on you, Agent Young."

He smiled slightly after that, though it was one of those smiles that didn't actually count a facial expression for most people. "I'll see you then."

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[Flashback] SHIELD HQ, New York: Our Secrets Have Secrets

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you didn't see that journal fail shh

SO MUCH FAIL :||||

wanna wrap it here?