courtings | open post (steve rogers)

He waited a moment until Steve was looking through the files again before he checked out the device. It looked the same as the one that he'd had previously. He took a breath and pressed it to the back of his skull, that point where he'd dug the last implant out of his head when Soleil had wanted him dead.

He made a soft noise of pain when it activated, firing the implant into his head, but it wasn't that bad. He could deal. His fingers came away bloody.

Still nothing that was active.

He jumped when Steve spoke again, and slid off his chair to take a look at the file. "Yeah, yeah this is it. We're looking for backup systems. Or I am."

Hearing that small noise from Lawrence (enhanced senses was one of the many perks that came with being a super soldier), Steve glanced up, but he wasn't able to determine what had caused it until he walked closer.

That was when he saw the blood, and the fact that Lawrence was remaining casual about the whole thing only made it stranger. Steve tensed and reared up, taking the file into his hands again.

"What did you do?" he asked, and while he was worried because that was his first instinct when someone was bleeding, he was also waiting for something to go sideways here.

He smiled at Steve, a beatific expression. It felt like it could just be a matter of time. She had to be out there, watching and waiting for him. She was too clever to be taken down by smoke and mirrors and flashing lights. He knew she was. "Nothing that I haven't done before," he said with a shrug. "Don't worry. It's just a small wound. Head wounds always bleed like crazy. At least I didn't have to stick a knife into my head this time."

"Are you insane?" Steve asked with a frown, a kneejerk reaction as he moved closer and then circled around to get a better look at the wound.

That device that Steve had found had been inserted there, and while Lawrence had said that brain implants were used to interface with the system, Steve hadn't expected it to be quite that barbaric.

"Seems like you could have figured out a cleaner way to do that," he said after a pause, tone uncertain. "So what are you able to see?"

"Debatable," Lawrence said cheerfully. He felt sane enough, albeit not quite on the same level as most people. He'd got very very good at fooling people. "I had to cut the last one out myself."

He reached back, pulling the majority of the device away. "It's just a chip. The rest of the device is bio-linked to me. It'll heal eventually." It didn't seem that important, not in comparison to finding Soleil. He pointed out a few lines of code. "Well, there looks to be the main structure of the programming still in tact. They had wipe codes but they didn't destroy the hard copies and Soleil is so smart. Clever girl, I think she backed herself up."

It was still unsettling the way that Lawrence spoke about this Soleil, but Steve was doing his best to ignore that at least until he found out what he needed to know. Desperation had driven him pretty far to bring him here, though while Lawrence did seem to be pretty far off the deep end, he hadn't yet found any proof that he'd hurt or killed people.

Steve hoped he hadn't, he didn't really want this to end up even more complicated than it was already, though he was also prepared to do what was necessary when push came to shove.

"Guess that's a good sign," he said with a nod. "Does that mean you can run some searches?"

Sanity, in his opinion, was purely subjective. Just because they didn't understand what he did in Soleil's service, just because they'd never understood the things that went on in his head. He reached back to rub the wounded spot again, as if he could somehow make it work faster, instead of slowly encouraging cell growth.

"The best sign. She might still be alive." Somewhere. Maybe hibernating. Was that the right term? He wasn't sure. It didn't matter.

"Yeah, I'll do what I can. What do you want me to look for?"

Steve didn't know if it would be good or bad for an AI that powerful to still be alive. He didn't know enough about the situation, but Lawrence definitely seemed happy about it. If all he planned was for them to live out their days together in some odd kind of romance, then Steve couldn't say he minded.

Especially if it got him the information he needed. He hesitated on saying the words, as if speaking them out loud would somehow do harm. But if Steve had been struggling to find Bucky, it wouldn't be very easy for Lawrence to track him down either. Chances were he wouldn't even care enough to look beyond this.

"Search for Winter Soldier," he said eventually. "Let me know if you come up with anything." Steve stood, very still, and waited for the results.

Winter Soldier. That sounded ominous. He wasn't familiar with the term but it was certainly interesting. "Alright, I can do that. Give me a few minutes. There's a lot of files to check." He was fairly certain that the Burn hadn't had anything to do with something called Winter Soldier. He'd known pretty much everything that was going on.

Still, it didn't hurt to look.

The files from the bunker yielded nothing, except the knowledge that they were pretty much intact. Research files, videos, all of it.

Searching wider though, through the pathways that Soleil had created and had left open for him to follow... He hummed softly. "Does 'Hydra' mean anything to you?" he asked. It was just a name, a logo, something dredged up from the deepest encrypted files Soleil had skimmed from various agencies for fun.

Steve did his best to remain patient as Lawrence performed the search. He realized that these things took time, but he had never been very good at sitting around and waiting for a computer to do work for him.

The other methods he'd used hadn't turned up anything, though, and so this was what he had to rely on for now. He wasn't happy about it, but he had to put up with it. For the sake of his friend.

The moment that HYDRA was mentioned, Steve's shoulders tensed and he moved toward Lawrence, nodding firmly.

"Yes, yes it does. What do you have on them?" He tried to keep his tone from being too demanding, but he needed this information, he needed some kind of lead. Anything.

It was a damn sight faster than going through records by hand, but to be fair, Lawrence had been brought up with computers his entire life. He was probably biased. He was biased about a lot of things that involved computers.

So, HYDRA were something connected to this. Good to know. They seemed like the type who could get in the way of Soleil which wasn't something he could allow.

"Whole bunch of stuff got dumped online a couple of months ago. Interesting stuff. But she had found some stuff before that. And... huh, some of them were playing a few sides. Politicians, scientists. Oh, he is in so much trouble if I ever find him. Uh... they have bases. Not these ones but... a lot of places."

Oh, Steve knew all about how that information was leaked, as Natasha had been the one responsible. It was a bold move, and one that they were all trying to clean up even now, but he was proud of her for it. It had been the right thing to do.

"Who's in trouble?" That sounded far too much like a threat. "And do you have any locations for these bases? That might be a place I can start."

Steve was assuming a lot, but if Bucky was off the chain and out on his own, then chances were that he wanted some kind of revenge, or at least to stop HYDRA from doing to anyone else what they'd done to him. Steve hoped he was in at least a good enough state of mind to manage that. In which case, if Steve could figure out which bases had been targeted, it would give him a trail to follow.

Well, he wasn't going to turn his nose up at free intelligence like this. If someone had released it onto the net, he was going to take it. He set it to download every scrap that he could find.

"Mmm, a politician," Lawrence explained. "British Government. He pledged himself to Soleil but apparently he was working for this HYDRA group. I'm really not fond of people who try to use Soleil like that." So this politician had better watch his back. Assuming he was even still alive after the Day of Glory.

"I am pulling them up now. It's more vague locations than pinpoint accuracy. Soleil she noticed electricity sinks and black spots where those things should not be. Sort of like this place."

That was the problem with people who were loyal to HYDRA. They'd done a near-perfect job of blending in, of acting like they were just like everyone else, when in actuality they were just snakes. Steve could understand Lawrence's anger in that moment.

Much as he might want to tell him that it would be wrong to take the life of even someone like that, Steve didn't have much mercy when it came to members of HYDRA, and so he remained quiet. The guilt balled up in him, but he let out out in a heavy sigh.

"Even just a vague area to work in is better than nothing," he pointed out. If (and once again, that was a big if) Bucky was systematically taking out these bases of operations, then it would probably be pretty obvious, just so long as Steve knew where to look.

He'd sort of been expecting a protest at that. It was almost a relief when one didn't come. He didn't want to get bogged down in minutiae like how bad murder was. It was all a matter of perspective anyway.

The correct perspective was, of course, his.

"You are going to be doing a lot of travelling," Lawrence said. "They have bases all over the world. Not that they could completely hide their trail, because Soleil is about a million times smarter than them, but they did a reasonable job, I suppose." He paused for a moment, looking at the list of GPS coordinates he'd found.

"They're gonna Burn."

Steve couldn't say he'd never killed people, but he had never done it for the sort of petty, personal reasons that Lawrence cited. He'd always tried to fight for some cause that was larger than himself, although he had to admit, if faced with the people who had come up with the idea of the Winter Soldier, he'd be hard pressed not to put them down.

A lot of traveling, he could have guessed that. "I'll figure it out, I just need the locations. Can you print it out or something? Or email it to me?" Whatever would get him the information, he didn't particularly care how it happened.

Lawrence sounded more and more deranged the more time that Steve spent around him, but he couldn't outright ignore the things he was saying.

"Pretty sure they already have, with everything that happened in DC a few years back." He said it with a casual lilt to his voice, something he was getting better at all the time.

What cause was greater or larger than setting the human race on a better path with someone who was so far above them they could barely understand it? Also it was kind of fun. More fun than he'd ever expected it to be.

"I'll print it. Don't think it's the sort of information you want tracked across the internet. It would suck if they found out you were coming for them." Not a threat, just a statement of fact. He wanted them gone as well.

He tilted his head back to look at Steve, smiling slightly. "Not enough if they're still out there with bases. Someone forgot to salt the earth they grew from."

Steve preferred that it be printed too, so that he could write all over the pages and take notes. The fact that Lawrence seemed to be on his side when it came to wanting HYDRA gone was a good sign, at least.

"Yeah. Cut off one head, two more grow back. But that just means you've gotta start cutting them off quicker."

Nothing was eternal, which meant that they could put an end to HYDRA eventually. It was going to take some persistence, but that might as well be Steve's middle name. If he could find Bucky, if they could work at this together, they'd be unstoppable. Wishful thinking, maybe, but that didn't stop Steve.

"Anyway," he said, "I appreciate it."

"Actually, that means you need to start cauterising the stumps," Lawrence said thoughtfully when he sent them to the printer. "That's what Hercules did in the myth. The Hydra was immortal so long as it retained one head, so he cauterised the necks so they couldn't grow back, and dipped his sword and arrows in its blood to finally kill it."

Oh god, he was starting to sound like Selwyn. There was a depressing thought. He'd never understand what Ivan had seen in the guy.

He smiled at Steve and nodded, then reached over to retrieve the print outs. "Not a problem. They sound like bad news. World would be better off without them."

Cauterize the stumps? Would referring to the ancient myth actually help in this case? Steve figured it was at least worth considering. He could translate that to making sure that each branch of HYDRA they took out actually stayed down, and its own blood would be Bucky himself, wouldn't it?

Persistence would get him HYDRA's eventual fall, and Steve wouldn't rest until he achieved that goal. It went hand-in-hand with finding and rehabilitating Bucky, so two birds, one stone.

He took the printed papers and nodded firmly. "Yeah, believe me, we would be. This could be the key to that, so I appreciate it." Steve had gotten what he came here for, but could he just leave Lawrence here? "What about you, what's next?"

Edited (sorry, submitted early!) 2014-06-11 16:17 (UTC)

Legends and myths usually had something in them when you got down to the basics, it just depended on you looking at things a certain way. If someone was dumb enough to call themselves HYDRA, then you might as well burn them until they couldn't get back up, maybe drop a great big rock on them for good measure.

Who better to do that than the Sun herself?

He leaned back in his chair, resting one foot against the desk. "Good luck with it. Maybe I'll forward you information if I find anything." Keep him out of the way and doing something useful. "I am going to stay here for a while, see what I can recover. If Soleil is still alive. Europe's gonna take a while to recover from this."

Steve remained uncertain about leaving Lawrence here on his own. He still didn't trust him, how could he? He had all the markers of being involved in something not too far from HYDRA itself, but Steve owed him one.

More than that, he didn't exactly have time to waste on watching a kid who may or may not be a problem later. Steve could always do a little more research into Lawrence some other time, when all of his effort wasn't focused on Bucky.

"Sure, send it along. And I guess... I hope for your sake, she's still around." Steve just hoped that Soleil wouldn't then be used as some kind of weapon, but Lawrence seemed to care about her too much for that.

"I should be able to find my way back out," he said as he backed away from the console.

open post (steve rogers)

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