𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 | 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬

If You Were Gone

He never questioned the orders he got.

He never questioned their "upgrades" and the need to "fix" his body.

He couldn't really remember if it was always that way. He just remembered that it was always the same vicious cycle. He slept — in coldness and darkness — and then he woke up to a new world, new technology, and new faces...but always under the same rule of thumb. Listen to the orders and execute them. And his track record was spotless.

Listen, execute, then sleep again.

This time, he'd been awake for a while. He wanted to believe this was the longest he stayed out of the cold and darkness and he was grateful for it. Yes, it was possible to feel the slightest gratitude that he wasn't subjected to one of the methods of torture. HYDRA wasn't known for its leniency with torment.

In all his time awake, he remembered each and every single one of his orders and it was easy as to why he would remember them all. Nine out of ten times the orders were the same: assassination. So when he was tasked with one order that was very different from all the others, he paid extra attention. Silently, of course.

He remembered the target vividly.

She was young in comparison to most of the other targets he was tasked with. And the reason he really remembered her is because the order was not to kill her but to watch her. Apparently, HYDRA made the mistake of trying to kill her a few times before he was assigned to her. Now that they had all the information they needed, the order was to "be a shadow." Just sit, watch the target and report back. No interaction, no interference. Just watch. So he did just that.

He watched her go to and from the same building. She lived with another agent and when that other agent wasn't around, the girl moved through the New York streets like a brand new tourist. He caught her visiting some older woman and a young boy on occasions. All in all, she seemed pretty average. There wasn't much to report back except that she worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., which they already knew, and that sometimes she would meet with a CIA agent.

Then, there were rare moments where he would watch her sit in the park and stare out at nothing in particular. She sat by herself, without her agent friends, and without anyone else. Her young face seemed laced with a deep torment. If he had to describe it, she seemed like she was trapped. She watched everyone at the park go to and from, buy nonsense snacks, laugh with their friends, and she just sat there. On her own. She did that for hours. And then just like that, she would take a deep breath then put on a smile when she got up and walked away. She was resigned. Tormented, trapped, and resigned. He recognized those feelings all too well because they were exactly what he learned to live with ages ago.

Sometimes she was based overseas, sometimes down South, sometimes right in New York. It never made sense. She didn't make sense. She wasn't in a high power role, she didn't have any money and she didn't have any connections. For a long time, he didn't understand why she was of HYDRA's interest...until he saw the blue flame in her eyes. He learned that she had special powers, not like her agent friend born with them, but instead powers that had been given to her. He never got an explanation about what those powers were but it had to be what made the woman valuable in HYDRA's mind. What was also strange is how much they doddled in just...taking her. There was no mistake that HYDRA wanted her and yet all they ordered him to do was watch her. It didn't make any sense. It wouldn't be the first nor the last that they kidnapped someone for their skills. So it all just went back to the same question: what was so special about her?

To this day, he still didn't understand.

~ 0 ~

What Sam heard was beyond his wildest dreams. He told Chloe that he would listen to anything she had to say, and he did. He just never imagined what he would hear from someone who looked so normal.