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He's not allowed to know why. He wonders, but he can't ask. It begins during a routine physical and mechanical assessment. All the specialists are there, faces he only sees once in a while, engineers and techs and some faces he can not recall. They place his left arm over the soldering board and hook the rest of him up to an EKG. The attending officers have rifles slung over their backs and joke about the "ballerinas" recently acquired by the facility while nurses and mechanics attend to his upkeep. The Winter Soldier knew that word, but it was beyond his concern to wonder what exactly his commanders would need with ballerinas.
One of the new faces assessing him is a very old, thin woman with grey hair in a wire-tight bun and an accent from deep Siberia. She runs her papery palms up his limbs and over his joints, examining how his body fit together and, upon finding an error apparent only to her, drives a knuckle into a tender spot, scoffs disappointingly, and notes it on her paper.
The observing officers joke loudly with one another. One tells how the ballerinas in his hometown of Saint Petersburg were notorious sluts. Another notes that these new ones will be as well, after they are broken in. They roar with laughter.
"Hey, babushka," one of the officers had called to the old woman.
The woman lowers her pen and straightens her back before looking up at the officers. She is small but her posture is commanding and she is not afraid of being outnumbered by men with guns. The Winter Soldier admires her.
"Would this one fit into those little pink slippers your girls wear?"
The old woman peers over the rim of her glasses at the Winter Soldier and quickly deems that he had "bad feet."
This meant, he would learn, that his toes were uneven, that the weight of his body was forced mostly through his instep and his first toe, that his arches were poor, and his ankles comparatively weak. It meant that it hurt to walk and up on his toes, balancing on the box of the pointe shoe, his feet strained and creaked and his calves cramped viciously for hours.
It disturbed him, really, to be so suddenly impaired. His body, so finely honed for agility and endurance, struggled even to stand in these stiff satin slippers.
They are beyond uncomfortable, tight across the top of his foot, digging in and rubbing the skin raw, inflexible, secured by satin ribbons woven tightly around his ankles. When not active in the field he's only permitted to wear the medical gowns the nurses provide him. Paper-thin blue cotton shams, wrapped and fastened at his hip with twill tape. They end just above his knee. It used to mean that the guards always mocked his bare legs. Now it means there's no way to hide his new slippers.
He crawls for most of the first day. Nobody tells him he can't. In fact, they like it when he crawls. It's not until the afternoon that two of his handlers grab a fistful of his hair as they're marching by and command him to stand without use of his hands. The Soldier manages with some struggle, rocking from his knees to the en pointe stance. Ankles aligned, stuttering from foot to foot to keep balance. He feels like his knees might collapse.
They mock him, "The girls manage so much better. They can fuck on those things. No matter what you do to them they never even slip."
The Winter Soldier slips, often. On his fifth day in the slippers, two passing officers order him en pointe again. They do this whenever it pleases them. They find his struggling hilarious. He does as he's told and they shove him face first against the concrete wall. Without thinking, the Winter Soldier regains his stance on his toes as he scrabbles at the wall for stability, hoping they forgive his slip. His legs are trembling. The bloody tops of his feet knock into the wall. It was an order. En pointe.
Behind him, one of the officers whistles low at the other, laughing as the Winter Soldier stumbles. He keeps his forehead pressed to the rough concrete, listening intently to keep track of the officers at his back. He doesn't dare look at them, but he can still survey their positions by ear. They like to sneak up on him, though they rarely succeed. One moves right up behind him, pressing him to the wall, a breath away. A hand reaches down to his inner ankle, wrapped in pink ribbons, and strokes up his calf, softly at first, then squeezes like a vice. Pain rockets down into his feet.
"And how are you liking your pretty new shoes, shlyukha?" the hand says at his back.
He doesn't answer. They never want him to answer questions. He's only allowed to answer orders, and orders are never questions.
"He's taken to them quickly," chides the other, "must have been a faggot out on the streets, huh?"
The hand kneads at his hip through the medical gown in slow, firm circles, pressing him flat against the wall and he struggles to stay en pointe. If he falls, he will have disobeyed an order again. There will be punishment.
There is a soft pop in his left foot as his toenail finally gives and slips off. Blood pools in the satin, warm and tacky. The officers don't notice. The Soldier readjusts his hips and spine, trying to take some weight off that slipper, but instead the officers crack him on the back of the head with a baton. He yelps and one of his ankles rolls and collapses, but he manages to remain standing through the burn in his calves. He expects to be struck again for stumbling, but instead the hands return to groping at his legs, kneading at the burning ligaments in his knees, under the hem of the medical gown. Another hand rats in his hair and slams his head forward into the wall.
A warm and sour voice says in his ear, "You were not ordered to move."
"Yes, sir."
"Tell me your orders, Soldier."
"En pointe, sir."
There's a grunt of annoyance and the two officers share a glance. The other one can't keep from chuckling. Who up the chain gets off to this sort of thing?
Having at last grown bored, they throw him to the ground by the hair before continuing down the hall.
From the floor, the Winter Soldier spits blood, wiping his split lip with the back of his flesh and bone hand. After a moment he lets his brow rest on the cool tile floor, curling over his folded knees, letting all the joints in his legs bend in relief. Everything tingles from the waist down and, mercifully, he can't feel his feet anymore.
Mentally, he assesses his body. They're going to ask him to report any damage at the next physical evaluation. If he's discovered hiding injuries he'll be punished, maybe put in restraints, maybe sedated. If they adhere to the regular schedule, he'll receive IV fluids in the evening and an NG tube feeding the next day. Even if they make him stand on the slippers, at least he'll regain some strength.
It goes on for at least two weeks, if the Winter Soldier has not lost any days. He can't be sure. By the second week there are stress fractures in his feet. Four of them, maybe five. One of his toes is dislocated. It's been numb for two days now, but they haven't let him remove the slippers. He's lost at least two toenails, the blood has rusted and dried itchy on the tips of his feet, staining the stretched pink satin of the slippers. The tops of his feet are raw where the edges of the shoes cut into his skin. His knees and ankles never stop burning anymore, and it must be going on four days since they last gave him an IV.
Soon he'll pass out, from the dehydration, from the hypoglycemia. It doesn't matter what. Eventually the alarms will sound and he'll wake up in the medical unit, on the softest bed he's ever known with all the slender tubing running in and out of his arm and down his subclavian vein, an oxygen mask over his mouth and the faceless doctors always touching him somewhere. Maybe then they'll take off the slippers.
That night, after receiving his IV and vitals check, he is curled on the cot in the medical unit when a group of officers pull him out his bunk and shove him to the floor. He hadn't been sleeping. Instead he'd been lying on his side, privately enjoying the quiet. He likes being alone. He is almost never alone when he's out of the ice, and he's never allowed to like things.
Once, it was discovered that the Winter Soldier had been hoarding the food that he was given as reward and they stopped his solid diet for two weeks. Another time, he had expressed a like for having bare feet and he was forced to march without boots in the snow. He's learned. He doesn't tell anyone anymore. They cannot take the quiet from him if no one knows he's awake, secretly indulging in being alone when he should be sleeping.
Maybe they've discovered his deceit, at last. Maybe these officers are here to punish him for lying. He wants to protest, he hadn't really been lying. No one had asked him, so it wasn't really lying. The thought hurts, stuck under his breastbone as he's shoved face-down to the ground by a boot on the back of his head. It's disorientating, and not knowing his surroundings always causes him a dark swell of panic that they've never managed to condition out of him.
"I can't fucking believe it," a voice is saying over him.
"Neither could I when I heard. Had to see for myself."
A third voice he doesn't know, "Seriously? Whose idea was this?"
"I dunno, haven't heard. One of the commanders."
"Can he even stand in them?"
"He can but it's not pretty. Not like the girls."
It's dim in the windowless bunk, but he can make out at least five officers distinctly by ear. Sometimes they sneak each other into the facility after hours. Sometimes, when they're drunk, and the Winter Soldier is out of the ice, they slip past the reinforced iron door to his cell and test exactly how far they can push his pliancy as an asset before he questions orders. He never does.
They will kiss him, grope him. Some do more. He hates it. He hates it because he is only given six hours to sleep a day, six hours when he's left alone and then they come in reeking of vodka and tobacco and take more from him.
Most of them lose their nerve quickly. Some have more nerve than others.
The boot is lifted from the back of his head and one of them orders him to sit up. He does, down on his aching knees surrounded by the group of them.
Someone nudges his shoulder with the muzzle of his service rifle. "Hey, show us, dog. Stand on your toes."
He growls. He doesn't mean to, but it happens, low in the back of his ribs. It's not obvious that they hear him at first, but they all stop jeering and talking over each other at once.
In the field, when they let him out, he makes the calls in a mission. Adaptivity is the most serviceable skill in wetwork and they've honed it in him to the abandon of everything else. He has killed men with his hands, and when they overpower him, with knives, and when they outrun him, with gunfire, and when they never see him, with poisons. He is given the equipment and the manpower to level city blocks if necessary. He has handlers that arm him, handlers that maintain his tactical gear, handlers to monitor his physiology. They all follow his lead. All that work, all those people, just so they can point him in the right direction and tell him to kill. In the field they have many jobs and he has only one.
But when his one use is of no use then they find other uses for him. Things he is not trained for, steps he doesn't know. He's not supposed to be able to feel terror, but it must be something very much like that. That's what it feels like when these officers prod at him, laughing and calling him names, like being cornered, having no recourse.
He doesn't fight back anymore, not since years and years of ice. Lay a hand on an officer and he will be starved and made to sleep outside in the taiga for a week. Cause serious injury to an officer, he will be tied to a carpenter's sawbuck, and they will alternate between putting their cigarettes out on him and dousing him with buckets of melted snow.
If he behaves, though, they have been known to reward him. Officers will bring him sweets from town. Someone will bathe him in warm water and cut his hair. If he behaves himself, sometimes it is worth the lost hours of privacy and sleep.
A gloved hand snakes into his hair and hoists up his head, baring his neck from the wide hem of the medical gown. They laugh at him. The dim overhead lamps are not enough to see by, casting halos around silhouetted figures making it hard to see their features. He tries to pick out recognizable faces, but in the gloom they're indistinguishable.
He growls again and bears his teeth. This time they laugh.
It is clear to them that this is humiliating. They think this is why he snarls at them, but it isn't. It's because they have stolen from him and the injustice of it all stirs something base and feral in his belly.
A slap cracks across his cheek and makes him see stars. The glove leaves the imprint of stitching and stiff leather on his face. The inside of his mouth starts to bleed.
"Fucking animal," one of them curses.
The officers close in around him, and one of them nudges his chin up with the muzzle of his rifle. When he opens his eyes his vision doubles, and he cannot make out the face of the one speaking.
"We gave you an order, dog. Now, see here. All of these men here are tired and cold from this assignment, and we think it's time that you rewarded us. And as I recall, you owe us many favours, eh?"
Owes them favours for treats and warm bathes. But they own him, too. They owe him.
The officer is already unbuttoning his pants. "Open your mouth, dog."
The Winter Soldier does as he's told.
The first of them takes his time, working the Soldier's jaw tingly and numb. He's not gentle, despite this, threading a gloved hand into the Winter Soldier's shaggy hair and directing his cock in with forceful rolls of his hips.
The Winter Soldier closes his eyes and lets his body slip into mechanical recall, working the motions by heart. He opens his throat, moves his tongue, and bobs his head. It's a rhythm like breathing, slowly in, slowly out.
The Winter Soldier doesn't care for it, but after so long, it's become regular, like the doctors, like gunmetal, like the pointe slippers. Not something he likes, but something routine.
Sometimes the Winter Soldier will do things he knows individual officers like, with his tongue or his hands, or even his eyes. Some of them love it when he looks at them, stares them right in the eye as he swallows them down over and over. They're thrilled when he knows what to do without having to be told. They praise him, sometimes reward him, insist that he must enjoy it. But he can't recognize this officer's face, so instead he lets his eyes slid shut and works his jaw numb, pausing briefly to breathe before the hand snared tight in his hair pushes his jaw forward again.
The officer makes an ugly sound when he comes. His hips stutter and he rips a few hairs out of the Winter Soldier's scalp, but it doesn't hurt, not like the throb in his legs and feet hurt.
He's barely had a breath before someone else tugs his neck and pulls his reddened mouth onto another cock.
This second one doesn't take as long. It must be his first time and the thrill of going through with it does enough because the Winter Soldier hardly has to time to do much of anything. He works slowly and softly with his tongue before building momentum and then it's only seconds before it's over. The young officer strokes the Soldier's hair as he comes.
Afterwards, the newcomer is shaking and pale, and looks down at the Soldier like he's about to be sick.
The third and fourth are rougher and after them the Soldier stops counting. His jaw throbs and their hands are all over him, ripping and pulling. He's lost track of the number of bodies, calculations of threat. That would get him killed in the field, but oddly, here, it's a far more palatable method of coping. The less focus spent on his body, the better. The joints in his legs and feet burn without stopping. The tile floor is dirty and hard. A storm is brewing outside, he can hear the wind churning through the vents. Each a little distraction that brings him further away from these men and what they're doing to him.
By the end of it all of them have had a go and the Winter Soldier is breathless and sore. They leave him kneeling on the floor as they gather to leave, shouldering their rifles and pulling their gloves back on. The Soldier slumps his shoulders, his body quivering in pain and rage. He doesn't dare to stand. He doubts he could even manage it. His legs are numb somewhere midway down the calf and everything else burns.
The officers are laughing and joking with one another and voices are starting to echo in his head. It happens when he's been out of the ice too long. Foreign voices, American accents, German words. They all say things that he doesn't understand. They confuse him.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and tries to breathe steady. They've trained him with waterboarding to regulate his breathing. It helps the voices. His scalp is throbbing where gloved hands have been wrenching at his hair.
With his metal hand the Soldier absently feels down his bent leg, kneading the muscle where it goes numb below his knee, slipping over the ribbons on his ankles and the raw abrasion on the tops of his feet.
He gasps as his fingers break a blister on his heel. Absurdly, he feels like he might faint. They've made him weak, the handlers and the officers. They've made him weak with these slippers and the fury of it rages in his chest like a furnace, builds in his lungs like poison. He tightens his hands into trembling fists, tugs at his hair trying to get a response from his body. There's nothing that doesn't hurt.
The officers cackle over him to one another about who got it the best, who the Soldier was most eager for. The first timer is nowhere to be seen.
They owe him.
"There's got to be a reason they've kept him around so long," one jokes while lighting a cigarette. "Maybe it's just because he sucks a good cock after all."
The Winter Soldier reaches up and rips the man's jaw clean off his face.
There is a mighty splintering noise, like a tree branch snapping and the whine of servomotors revving in his arm as he does it. The officer flinches and staggers for a second, sinking to his knees with a gurgle. The nearby soldiers shout and recoil back around him.
At first the guard doesn't seem to know what's been done to him. He keeps trying to speak but his tongue is hanging from the back of his torn red throat and nothing intelligible comes out, only grunts and wet sputters. Blood is pouring steady down the front of his uniform, and oddly, he keeps trying to wipe it away with his hand.
Then, the horror dawns on him all at once, and suddenly the jawless officer's eyes go wide and he wails in agonizing bellows and doesn't stop, pawing at the empty space where his jaw should be, pulling his hands away coated in gore. He starts crying and screams louder and the echo is unbearable.
In the Soldier's hand, the officer's cigarette still smolders, crushed between the lower teeth and the metal plating of the palm. The Soldier regards it, distantly, and gets to his feet.
The group of officers balk, horror-stricken. None of them move, none of them say a word as their fellow officer screams on the floor. The air in the room is suddenly chilly and slimy between them all. In shock. None of this should count. It's unacceptable. The Soldier didn't count. They hadn't really meant it. They hadn't really meant it.
Someone finally shouts and points a sidearm at the Winter Soldier. The rest snap back to the present and follow suit with great panic. One pushback, one unpredicted reaction, one deviation in the programming and suddenly all their rigorous paramilitary training is gone. Suddenly, they're scared boys caught playing with a live grenade. They all scream different orders at him, to get down, to put up his hands, to turn around. A few simply curse in disbelief. One of them must have slipped out because an alarm goes off throughout the halls. Reinforcements will be here in seconds with heavy duty tranquilizers and killswitch words that send him to the ice, so there isn't much time.
The Winter Soldier keeps himself upright, weak and unsteady in the satin slippers but still clutching the officer's amputated jaw.
They all go silent. A few even forget their weapons.
They look at him in horror as he examines it, turning it over in his metal hand. The mandible has been snapped and the marrow steams lightly. Loose raw tissue and yellow pearls of fat hang where the tongue should be. The gums are rapidly turning a sallowy white as the blood drains out of them, running down the Winter Soldier's arm. It looks so mushy and raw in the clutches of his articulated metal limb. An animal in a steel trap.
Extending his index finger, the Winter Soldier experimentally pushes a tooth out from the gums and it drops to the floor with a rattle.
Someone drops their weapon and vomits.
On the floor between him and the officers, the jawless man has lost consciousness and finally stops screaming. The chilly air reeks with his rusty blood.
The Soldier smiles and he doesn't know why. Somehow, he is satisfied with this, and satisfaction is not something he feels anymore. He looks up at them and they each hold their breath.
He casually lobs the officer's lower jaw over at the group of officers. The teeth crack loudly on the tile as it skids and rolls to a stop. One or two of them gasp and they all shuffle back from where it comes to rest.
"That's all," the Soldier informs them. "Now, none of you will ever see me again."
Reinforcements appear in the doorway and dart him with tranquilizers. The darts hit him with their bright orange plumes in his shoulders and abdomen and it's only seconds before he feels the drugs at work, doubling his vision and unwinding his stability. Despite it, he smiles again, because the ache in legs is finally melting away.
For a long time there is nothing. Then, there are brief moments of light and sound. It's like floating, swimming in a world of murky water, light and buoyant. Things come back slowly, like a thaw. The Winter Soldier has lost time, and there's no telling how much. He surfaces in and out of consciousness with irregularity. Voices talk nearby, sounding like they're at the end of a long tunnel. Some of the voices are angry, some are bored, but the meaning of their words escape him.
It's the medical unit, he finally determines during a conscious spell. He can tell from the softness of the bed. There's an oxygen mask strapped over his face and a heart rate monitor beeps over his right shoulder. Occasionally he's aware of the central line they've placed under his collar bone or the IV piercing the back of his hand if the needles get tugged or moved, but mostly they just bring him painkillers and tranquilizers and he feels nothing at all. They'll punish him soon enough.
The next time he is conscious, they cut the slippers off his feet with bandage scissors. They cut them right down the centre, through the ribbons and stiff soles, peeling them off like the rough bark of a nut. Someone gasps at the sight.
The relief is staggering. It shoots up his body in a warm sweep as the pressure and tightness melts away. Blood rushes to numb and twinging parts. He tries to flex his ankles but they are swollen and stiff and the pain cuts the numb haze of high-dose narcotics and the Soldier doesn't try again. The air curls against his clammy feet and he shivers involuntarily.
Someone with latex gloves on scrubs him with disinfectant. Someone gently washes his feet of blood and tapes his broken toes.
Privately, the Winter Soldier is swallowed by a simple thrill of being whole again. No longer will he be crippled or slow or vulnerable. He'd endured, stronger than any of them thought.
They put him under again, and the Winter Soldier doesn't wake up for years.