For Better or for Worse (Stucky)

To Keep You Safe

Of course Steve had to be the one to find it.

They'd been in Siberia for over two weeks and finally, their small team - only Sam, a few selected soldiers and him- had found the exact location of the HYDRA base they'd been looking for. Once they had found a way to get inside, Steve went first, checking that the place really was abandoned and letting Sam know over their headset that they should come join him.

Using the flashlight he held, he walked over to the generator and got the power running, the lights slowly coming back on as the rest of his team entered. Steve turned around to take in the room, looking up at the high circular ceiling, eyes scanning the cold, blank concrete walls that encircled the room. Looking over at Sam and the rest of the men, he told them to split up evenly and go through everything they could find -their goal to find information about more HYDRA members as well as locations-. Though Natasha -who was laying low at the moment- had released the information online, they doubted that this had been everything.

While the others started with cabinets and closets that were scattered all over the outer area of the room, Steve met Sam in the center, both of them looking at the contraption they found there. A bland metal chair with metallic bonds fixed to the armrests on both sides. Next to the chair was a small metal table with seemingly abandoned tools like tweezers, lots of electrical equipment and what looked like a mouth guard. Behind the chair were two six feet high metal rots, holding up a circular device which was split into two semi-circles, reminding Steve of a claw -looking ready to grasp something with the rounded plates that were fixed at either open end-.

„I wonder what that thing does." Sam mumbled as he ran a hand over one of the plates, frowning slightly as he tried to figure it out.
Steve felt a heavy feeling settle into his stomach as he shook his head, feeling like he shouldn't be around that thing. „I'm not sure we want to know." He turned around and decided to look at the files next to a computer nearby, skimming through some uninteresting papers before flipping open a folder and being greeted with a title that made his heart stutter -‚The Winter Soldier'.

Glancing over his shoulder for a second to make sure everyone else was distracted, he started reading through the chronologically sorted files, only understanding bits and parts of everything.
Reports dated in the late 40's, mainly about technological developments with regards to cryosleep, Bucky's arm and other stuff.
Reports dated in the early 50's about psychology, a person named Ivchenko seeming to have played a big part alongside Dr. Zola -just reading the name causing Steve to feel hot anger boiling inside his stomach-.

Some more reports from the mid-50's reminded Steve of what he'd seen in Bucky's notebook, as a listing of words contained some of the ones he'd read there before -making Steve feel highly twitchy-. Though the reports thus far weren't all in English and Steve didn't understand most of what was being said, he did get the gist that a lot of things they'd tried hadn't worked as intended.

That apparently, Bucky had fought back. His Bucky. He wondered what he was doing right now. If he was doing okay back home. All alone. He missed him so much it made his heart ache. Shaking his head slightly, Steve mentally scolded himself to stay focused.

Again, checking that his comrades were busying themselves elsewhere, Steve continued through the file and stopped at a report from 1965, titled Program successful.
The report was very brief, clearly written by someone who was in a rush -seemingly with other thoughts on their mind-. But what caught Steve's attention was the little note at the bottom that sloppily read Winter Soldier, Recording 97.2.

„Sam, gimme a hand, will you?" Steve called out, knowing Sam was definitely better with tech than he was. He watched as Sam jogged over to him, helping him get the old computer started -doing so with surprising ease-.
„What do you need it for? This tech is ancient and with all the paper here, I doubt they'll have anything here that isn't in the paper files." Sam said to him as he pushed the keyboard towards him once he'd checked that it worked.