ten_fwd | First Entrance

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First Entrance

He'd been to visit Peggy when he got the call from Director Fury to check in. He was making it a routine, every Tuesday afternoon when he wasn't on a mission. Then it became every Tuesday afternoon and every Saturday morning. It's funny how long it took him to work up the nerve to see her, and now it's all he can do to stay away. She's still his best gal.

He parks his bike in his usual spot in the underground garage next to the Triskelion, shoulders the bag with his gear in it, and starts walking to the elevators. He's wondering what kind of mission Fury's sending him on this time when the sun catches his eyes ... wait, where's that coming from?

He blinks hard, and when he opens his eyes ... this is not the elevator. This isn't the garage, heck, this isn't even D.C. He's in a room, some kind of restaurant or bar. People are milling about, some in uniform and others in civvies, and outside the windows ... jeepers, that's a lot of stars.

His hand tightens on the strap of his bag and he plants his feet shoulder's width apart, jaw set. He isn't sure what kind of trick this is, but if he doesn't get answers soon he's going to start demanding them.

[ooc: Hello! Steve is pre-Winter Soldier, but only just, and he has entered the room in civvies. Slacks, button-up, leather jacket, boots, his usual affair. His cowl is in the bag, along with his shield and a few other things, but by all accounts he looks like an average guy. Well, an average tall, strong guy. Any takers welcome!]

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"Okay," she replies, knowing something is up as he swings her down, just as gently as he picked her up. This is a girl who doesn't understand Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and who has no memories of life outside HYDRA and the war--mostly because she hasn't really had a life outside those circumstances. But that doesn't mean she can't tell something's wrong.

"Does it upset you if I talk about it?" Maybe, if he's from after her, he knows how the war ends. Maybe he's upset that America lost. She doesn't know and doesn't want to go looking yet.

He sets her down on an empty tabletop so her legs are swinging over the edge, and bends to her level. He's quiet as he does so, wheels grinding as he tries to work out how to proceed. "Do you know who I am?"

Simple, direct questions seem like his best option.

"Steven Grant Rogers, you said earlier," she replies. Luckily for her--unluckily for this conversation, and perhaps painfully for Steve--her father has kept the problem of Captain America, at least in name, out of his daughter's earshot. The man is fully convinced he'll be no match for the Red Skull. And he talks about arrogance.

"From Washington, formerly New...York."

Sinthia pauses, considering Steve as if he's in a whole new light just then. She's not a stupid child--but it's quite a leap to make it from Random American who was involved with the war to Captain America. But still. This is looking like a conversation she did not expect to have at all. Much less right now.

He watches her eyes, noticing the slight dilation of her pupils during that pause. Realization. Nat's taught him a lot about reading verbal tells, but he usually knows what it means when someone breaks out into a sweat, or their eyes change shape.

He clenches his jaw once, twice. "Do you know who Captain America is?"

A funny thing happens while he's watching her; most people reach out, try to touch something steady to reassure themselves. Sinthia doesn't. Her hands fold into her lap and she looks nowhere but at Steve, but she isn't reading his mind. She isn't reading anyone, not even the stray passing thoughts, and that is not an easy task to manage. And no, she doesn't know who Captain America is, but she can fit the puzzle pieces together with amazing acccuracy.

"You're him, aren't you."

She really should kill him now.

Her whole manner has quieted down, and that tells Steve one of two things: either she's scared, or a threat. He doesn't answer her question. Like he said, she's a smart kid, and he's intelligent enough not to play his whole hand.

"I fought in that war, probably against your father," he says, without a clue just who exactly her father could be. But if he was in that factory, or close to the Red Skull, Steve may have fought him numerous times. "The factory you talked about? I was there. The men that were being held were prisoners of war. Some were being tortured. Do you understand that?"

He never raises his voice. He's imploring, trying his best to divine whether she's been raised to be his enemy, or if she's just too young to understand what's happening.

"They were our enemies," she says softly. "They would have killed us if our positions were reversed." She specifically means her, because that is always what her father's told her; if she doesn't kill them--whoever they may be--first, they will kill her. Or potentially worse.

"Don't lie. If you're Captain America, you're definitely against my father."

"I'm not lying, Sinthia," he says. On that, he's very firm. He hasn't fed her a single untruth or treated her like anything less than a person since she approached him. "You are not my enemy. The men with guns and tanks who were trying to take away the lives and freedom of the men and women I fought beside, they were my enemies. I wanted surrender, not death."

"Yes," she says quietly, after a long pause of silence, "You are my enemy."

She's always been his, even if he doesn't know it. It's a strange, sad life to have the constant knowledge of enemies and assets, usefulness and efficacy and war. But there's nothing that could rewrite it for her. "You want Johann dead. Why wouldn't you want me dead too?"

He can honestly say that she's stunned him. He's fought a lot of different people, even done some things he wasn't all that proud of, but to hurt a child? To even threaten her? It goes against his grain, and he can feel a prickling sensation start at the back of his neck, warning him that if she really is his enemy, sent here to exploit a weakness, she's already got the upper hand.

"Johann Schmidt?" he asks, bitter incredulity invading his voice. "Johann Schmidt was a murderer, responsible for the torture and senseless killings of hundreds, even thousands, of innocent people. He believed that humankind was inferior, that the whole world should be filled with people just like him. He was a blood-thirsty lunatic, Sinthia. Stopping him meant stopping the war, because if someone didn't do it the killing and fighting would never have stopped until he'd destroyed every last living thing."

He shifts carefully. "Look around this ship. What do you see? Do you see people deserving to die? Because I don't think you do, and that's why I would never harm a hair on your head."

She wasn't precisely sent anywhere; as a weapon she's only in the preliminary stages, still exploring the extent of her abilities and still learning to squish down that last flaring flicker of regret that most of them cause in her. It's only that impulse that will, eventually, be her saving grace but it coming into play is a long way off. For now she's like a new kind of bomb with a new kind of fuse, one no one can time exactly or predict what damage it could do.

But Sinthia listens to Steve rail against her father--and in part of her mind she knows everything he says is true. She's certainly listened to the man himself long enough to know his predilections. But she's never known anyone with softer opinions, with more regard for humanity, because no one dares argue with Johann in his own organization. It produces a kind of...detached, uncomfortable feeling. One like she's been pulled out of all her moorings and is watching her worldview be played with and rearranged like a piece of clay. And after he's done, when she finally has words that don't sound wrong in her head, she answers.

"Johann Schmidt is my father."

That's the only thing Sinthia can answer to, because she doesn't know what she sees yet. She sees people not like her, who don't know anything about her or what to do with what she can be. She also doesn't know how to begin processing someone saying they'd never harm a hair on her head, because that's simply never been in the cards in her life. Ever.

For the second time in as many minutes, she completely stuns him. He draws back, but only by an inch, recoiling in surprise. It's the last thing he could have expected. The last thing he would ever have thought possible.

Now that it's said, he can see something of a resemblance in her features, her dark hair, her eyes, but it's still too hard to really believe.

"What?"

"Johann Schmidt is my father," she repeats, just as clearly as she can.

"If you think he's that bad, what could you think of me?" she asks. She's accepted the possibility--likely the fact, in her mind--that at just about any moment he'll probably try to capture her. Maybe interrogate her before he figures out what to do with her. She's expecting that.

It's a very, very good thing Steve can't hear what's going on in her head right now.

It takes another few seconds for the words to really sink in, but once they do he's hit with a tidal wave of conflicting emotions.

"I think you're a kid who was given the short end of the stick," he says, painfully honest. Delicacy and polite untruths don't play into Steve's wheelhouse. "The war I fought against your father does not fall on your shoulders, just because you're his blood. I don't like bullies, Sinthia. People who try to push other people around and force them to do whatever they want. I believe everyone makes their own destiny."

She blinks. Partly because she doesn't understand the metaphor--what stick is he talking about? Does he have one hidden somewhere?--and partly because she can't tell who she should believe.

Steve is the easy, obvious choice. He's going against everything she's been told for her entire life. "But isn't that what the Allies are doing too?" she asks.

He purses his lips. "Maybe as far as Germany is concerned, but we didn't start the war, and it wasn't until after Hitler's Nazis started making claims to other countries that the Allies got involved. We weren't the aggressors."

Germany, Japan, all hit them when they were weak, poor, and starving.

"So that makes it okay for you to kill us all?" she says.

Her brow furrows as she shakes her head. "How do I know if you're telling the truth or just trying to lie to me?"

Frankly, she doesn't. Steve's already told her that he doesn't want to kill anyone, but she keeps circling back. He can't blame her, maybe she's seen some things she'd rather not talk about, but he also doesn't know if he can get through to her. When things are so deeply entrenched, no amount of charisma can make your words heard.

"No, it's not," he says quietly. "I want the dying to stop. Nobody should have to get the telegram telling them their loved ones are dead. Doesn't matter which side they're fighting on. I promise you, Sinthia, I'm not lying to you. But whether or not you believe me is up to you."

Oh, she's seen--and done--worse than what Steve probably wants to think about, and the plain fact is she knows it. Somewhere, deep in her that she doesn't talk or think about and tries not to show, she knows they're on the wrong side of the war. And she's always been told the Americans will want her dead the minute they learn her skills.

"I don't know which one of you to believe," she says quietly, face still pinched in concentration. "I know it's not good things they tell me to do, but...they said it would be okay in the end. that it would end the war quicker." And now Steve's telling her something different.

So she's one of Schmidt's experiments, then. God, he wonders how old she was when the scoundrel started testing on her. What kind of things has he trained her to do? What kind of person has he encouraged her to become? Steve feels a knot in his stomach, and for a quick moment he has to look down, gather himself, and fight the repugnance he feels. For Schmidt, not for the kid.

"Did they tell you how it would end the war?" he asks. "By making peace, or by destroying all opposition? Sometimes, the important thing isn't how fast or how slow something happens, but how the most good is done when it's through, how both sides win and lose, and how proud you can be with your part in it all."

"No," she says softly, looking down to her lap. There's this irrevocable feeling that she's done something awful and now she has to pay the price, only she hasn't even done a quarter of what her father wants. She wonders if Steve knows about her, and what she can do, and he's just trying to make her admit it.

It makes her feel even more lost, because she wishes she could, but she doesn't know what happens yet.

"He tells me I should be proud all the time. Because I'm different." And superior. But she won't get into that.

You are deluded, Captain.
You pretend to be a simple soldier.
But in reality you are just afraid to admit,
...that we have left humanity behind.

He clenches his jaw, fingers pressed into the table. He doesn't want to upset her, but he can hear it in her voice and see it in the way she avoids his eyes. It isn't her fault. Even though he doesn't know anything about her or what she's done, in this moment he couldn't be more sure of anything. It isn't her fault.

"Sinthia -- I'm from 2014," he says carefully. "Do you understand what that means?"

"You know how the war ends," she says, not lifting her head but to look sideways, away from Steve.

"You know what happens." Whether she lives or dies, who wins, what the world is like afterwards. "Don't you?"

He isn't going to lie to her.

"Yes," he says quietly. "But it also means the fight is over. You and me don't have to be on opposite sides here."

He really doesn't want to hurt her, or see her hurt anybody else. If he can help her understand that, maybe everything will be OK. It still leaves the question of why they sent him here, and sent her after him, but he's taking this one problem at a time.

"Do we lose?" she asks, as if she's fully invested as one of HYDRA, even though she's never expressed desire, particularly, to be one of them. Sinthia's never expressed the desire to not be, either, though to herself she thinks that even if it was an option it would be extremely foolish given her parentage.

She won't look at him, studying her shoes or the floor instead, or even the pores on the backs of her hands, stalling for time to think and finding herself tired of the exhaustive process.

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