Chapter Text
Jensen supremely did not enjoy being frozen. The very first time his CO Clay was standing by the door trying not to look concerned while a group of Army scientists explained the likelihood of damage to higher brain functions. The Soldier just walked into his own personal ice box without hesitation next to him. That had calmed Jensen down until he heard the team lead say, “There’s only a 60% chance of something important actually being damaged.” He saw Clay’s eyes widen right before he was flash frozen.
Defrosting took a bit longer, but once he came around he started cursing up a blue streak about the whole 60% thing and tried to get up out of the gurney. A warm hand pushed him back and he heard Clay say, “Don’t worry kid, I broke the guy's face right after they put you out.”
Jensen groaned as he relaxed on the stiff bed, “Please tell me you took pictures.”
His CO chuckled and ruffled his hair. “No, not personally,” Clay said as he held out his glasses, “but there are plenty in the incident report”.
“Tubular,” he replied and gave a weak thumbs up. He took a moment to look around the room. Next to him the Soldier was already up and fully dressed. Jensen snorted, “That was just a power nap for you, wasn’t it? That why they call you the Winter Soldier? Freakin’ iceman.”
The next time he woke up he had the misfortune of meeting Alexander Pierce. A misfortune shared by all. Pierce didn’t like him. Jensen didn’t like Pierce. Pierce wanted Clay to listen to him. Clay could not stand Pierce so that was pretty much out the window. The Soldier just bounced back and forth between orders from Jensen and Pierce like that little ball in pong.
As a result the mission was almost botched and Winter Soldier went AWOL. In spite of all of that, it was in fact it was Jensen that managed to rerail the derailed mission (something he argued loudly and Clay argued even louder). Despite that, Pierce blamed him. He and Soldier were popsicled again and Clay promised to get him out. Jensen gave him a smirk before one last thumbs up.
The third time he woke up was easier than the previous times. Jensen cracked his neck loudly as he adjusted to the whole not being frozen. The usual entourage of doctors was missing and he was still hooked up to various tubes. As he started to worry about the changes in procedure someone heaved the door to his fridge open.
“Clay? When the hell did you get old?”
“We’ve been lied to,” he said instead of responding, “Get dressed. We need to get out of here before they notice you’re awake.”
Turned out Clay and team ‘Merica were keeping a lot of secrets. Well, he’d known that for a while they weren’t totally honest, after all why have a sarcastic, asthmatic with astigmatism trained up from birth to go on black ops missions. If you’re gonna do that you do that with someone in perfect health. Or someone without the need to make inappropriate jokes while they are going after a warlord in some other unintelligibly named country. Looking back he should have been fired after miming sodomizing og toy dinosaurs before going after a South American drug lord. Even the Soldier had given him a weird look and his only expressions were dead eyes or an ‘I’m going to kill you slowly death’ glare.
They were in a cabin in the middle of the top left corner of Minnesota when Clay finally let him speak. Rather he was talking at the side of his face shortly after leaving New York but Clay didn’t so much as twitch an eye until they hit Anoka. At which point he pulled over and pulled a massive stack of files out a bag of holding and dropped it on Jensen’s lap. He read in silence with an occasional, “Seriously?!?” outburst. His CO (or maybe former CO the situation was still confusing) sat him down in a surprisingly comfy three room cabin that was generator powered.
“So,” Jensen started slowly looking at the file before him, “I’m a clone. A clone of Captain fucking America?” As a result of this wording Jensen was temporarily distracted from his existential crisis by a very explicit and exact image. Which in itself made him doubt his apparent clone daddy.
“I knew it for a while. You look just like him kid.”Clay put his boots up on the oak slab coffee table. He passed Jensen a beer before starting up again. “You’re two inches shorter and missing a third of the muscle mass but it’s a more than casual resemblance. So no shaving that stupid beard of yours, it could draw to much attention.”
“And this is a problem because…?” Jensen took a swig of the beer.
“Five days ago all S.H.E.I.L.D. and other parts of the government revealed to be fully infiltrated by Hydra. Which means we were working for Hydra.”
“Dude, that sucks,” Jensen lowered his beer, “Still don’t know why we’re in Minnesota.”
Clay took a deep exhausted breath, “Because part of everyone finding out S.H.E.I.L.D. was part of Hydra was an agent releasing all of their, and by extension Hydra’s documents to the public.”
“Ah?”
“That includes the files related to you and the failed Steve Rogers clones,” Clay said slowly.
“Ah.”
Clay sighed, “It should take them a while to find that little nugget but I wasn’t going to wait around for some idiot to find you on ice.”
“Clay, I didn’t know you cared,” Jensen overdramatically put a hand over his heart.
“I do,” he took a long drink, “About them. You would have talked the poor sap to death.”
Clay got him a fake I.D. and a tech support job a few hours outside St. Louis. It was mind numbing and he imagined thousands of ways to make a spoon a weapon against himself or others. Still he wasn’t working for a super secret evil organization so that was a plus. Also it helped him adapt to modern technology. After the self imposed boot camp in the cabin Jensen agreed with Clay, the fastest way to get back to proficiency in computers was working with them every day. Even if he had to deal with idiots. Every morning, despite Clay’s insistence of varying routines, he got coffee at the same little shop on his way to work. It wasn’t a problem until red headed chick started showing up at The Grind. As a testament to his lack of observation he didn’t notice she was a problem until she had his face pressed up against a brick wall.
“Owwwww, face,” he whined as she pushed his head harder against the brick.
She had one of his arms twisted up against his back to the point he could almost touch his ear. He could have attempted an escape but she had grabbed him in less than five seconds and held on with the casual control of an expert. Sure, he could have gotten out. That would have only meant the next hold would be twice as painful. He’d learned that after mouthing off to Clay before sparring. She began searching through his pockets and bag with her free hand. Jensen tried his best not to fidget under her hand.
“Relax,” she said in a bored tone, “I’m just checking for some ID.”
He snorted, “Well you could have just asked for a name.”
There was a pause, Jensen was sure she was glaring at him. “Yeah I’ll just check for myself.”
He groaned against the brick. She pulled his wallet out of his messenger bag and stared flipping through his cards. Clay was gonna yell at him after he killed him. He was supposed to vary his route. He was supposed to be aware of suspicious characters. Instead Clay would call him lazy since he just wanted to live like he wasn’t wanted by 800 questionably legal agencies. It was really stupid. But it had been a nice few weeks, even if he had wanted to maim idiots.
“Hmm,” the woman shifted behind him, “yep, found you. I have someone who wants to meet you.”
“Ah shi-“ Jensen managed to get out before he was tazed in the back of the head. Oh yeah, that was the promising start to the conversation.