stevegrogers | inbox.

About the assassins training?

Yeah.
We were trained in the same place.

You were trained to be an assassin then?
With Natasha?

Yeah. Though not at the same time- different decades.

You any good at keeping secrets?

[Look, lying to Captain America is hard, even over text.]

[ the different decades response made him feel a dozen times better because things made a little more sense there. if it had been at the same time, it would have meant more messiness with timelines. ]

I'm better at keeping secrets than I probably should be.

Okay.
It's complicated, but I wont bore you with the science, at least.

[It takes her a few minutes to be able to figure out how to say it. This is a terrible idea, but one science experiment to another, and he's Captain America.]

When I was eight I was put into this experimental science program. About a year and a half later, Natasha rescued me. Except it wasn't a rescue.

Somehow some very bad people managed to ensure that Fury would send Natasha. It was just another stage of their project. That night linked us together, her mind into mine. Neither of us noticed at first, and SHIELD keeps me imprisoned until I escape, but when I meet her again it gets worse. Her skills, her memories.

We broke the link, but I still remember it all
So. Yeah.

[ Not that he would probably understand too much of the science part anyway. Science tended to be more of Tony's forte. ]

That's really -
So, is that how you fight and handle yourself like Natasha?
Because you still have her memories?

When you two were linked - did you experience everything together?
Or did it not go that far?

There's some weirdness to it. Pieces that are more muscle memory but pretty much, yeah.

It actually took me a bit to figure it out once we broke the link. Before it was just like her reactions became my reactions. I didn't even really think about it, it'd just happen.

[At that question it takes a bit before she responds.]

Not at first.
And not together.
But the stronger the link got the more I could pick up from her. So by the end-- yes.

And she also has your memories? It went both ways there?

That had to be really hard. Must have made you feel like you're not your own person.

[ Something he related to more than most, clearly. He knew exactly how it felt to be made it something else and paraded around for it. ]

The classified information she knew - do you know that too?

Not at first. Tony described it as a .. viking mind meld?
Where Spock was in control and Kirk didn't know what was happening?
But we were able to control it, briefly. It's how we figured out how to stop it. They wiped my memories when I was nine, so I couldn't remember it, but Natasha was able to find it. Some code they hid in my memory.

It wasn't easy. And Natasha's so good at everything and most of the time I still feel like an orphan from Brooklyn. So I just try to do the best that I can with what I have. Help people.

[It actually seems like he does understand, and that's a weird feeling for her, honestly. She doesn't talk about the identity issues, about feeling like she somehow doesn't live up to the memories in her head.]

Yeah. That was what they wanted. The whole idea behind the program was having people linked to intelligence agencies and heads of state and then they could have the world at their mercy, ruin anyone that wasn't part of their plan.

[ In a way, what she went through reminded him a little of his own experience and then Bucky's. A blending of sorts of the very worst parts but HYDRA tended to have that kind of influence. ]

But you got your memories back from when they wiped you?

Was it kind of like a password? A sequence?

I understand what it feels like to not live up to an image others have set for you.

[ The mantle of Captain America always rested far too heavily on his shoulders but he tried so hard to maintain the image others expected of him. ]

It'd make hiding anything really hard. Anytime you mess with someone's mind, it's really volatile.

Not quite, it's still mostly pieces and fragments. I remember things about the lab I grew up in, and the place they trained me, the cinnamon from my mother's tea... But I'm not sure I'll ever get all of it back.

[Her life is such a mess that words like "the lab I grew up in" don't even seem strange.]

A sequence. Natasha turned it into something we could use against it.

I can't imagine what that's like. I mean, I did see the exhibit once. But I think you're pretty great, shield or not.

[The text might not communicate it well, but she is sympathetic, can see the weight that he carries.]

Volatile is definitely a word for it. They wanted an army of puppet soldiers with the ability to crumble nations.

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