1522/Korenizatsiya

Korenizatsiya
Date of Scene:	18 July 2017
Location:	A Hydra Facility, Location Undisclosed
Synopsis:	Sam Winchester faces the questioning of the Winter Soldier's Hydra handlers.
Cast of Characters:	Claire Temple, Sam Winchester, Winter Soldier
Tinyplot:	Tayaniye

---

Claire Temple has posed:
The past three days are textbook processing of fresh intakes.

A full medical diagnostic begins first -- what comes with a significant skip in memory, a few hours' missing time.

The rest is that cell. Dark, faceless, cold, and claustrophobic, closing cement on all sides, something cloying-sweet in the air -- humidity on the walls. He is not given food. He is not given water. He is not allowed sleep in these days, and attempts come with due, painful corrections. He is only allowed to exist in the cell. Exist because they permit him the privilege.

It is rote to someone like Sam, trained by a marine father: they mean to break. Not rigourously. Not by lifting a single finger. It is the way of wolves leisurely pursuing prey to its own exhaustion. It is waiting for the weakness of flesh to run its course and give up.

Deep into the third day -- though could it be longer? it is hard to tell, stripped of any way to count it in the lonely dark -- his jailors unlock the cell door. It happens in seconds. One empty-faced man points a rifle. The second advances to crack the stock of his weapon against Winchester's head.

When awakening comes -- fast for him, as always -- it is into a new room. Just as cold. Just as faceless. Just as dark.

Attempts at movement come quickly fettered. Forced into a steel chair bolted down -- the bolts shine new, recently installed -- and latched with cuffs at the wrists, ankles, and collared around the throat.

He's also not alone.

A man sits across from him, and his seating arrangement is much more comfortable, reclined back with one long leg crossed over the other as he thumbs through a report in hand. His foot swivels back and forth, and the light catches the fresh shine of his shoe.

It is hard to see him, catch the details of his face; he sits just past the yellowy reach of distant lamp light, swathed in shadow. He looks up, visibly so, the lenses of his eyes mirroring that same light. "Mr. Winchester," he greets, his voice thin and dry as paper, though the syllables run, a slow, sharp drag. His Slavic accent is thick, hanging on his syllables like oil. "Samoshka. How are you feeling?"

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam Winchester is concerned by that skipped memory.

He's been wandering around his cell. Feeling walls. He's gotten painful corrections several times, trying to sleep. At one point he flipped the cot to see if he could make use of its components to get out, since they weren't going to let him sleep on it. He couldn't, and he ended up simply setting the thing back where it belonged and going to sit in a corner, elbows on knees, hands between them, head up.

He's said...nothing. Not since that first abortive attempt to talk to James Barnes. His father would have been irritated with him for running his mouth as much as he did, really, even though he had said very little. Once he sits down, once he's ascertained there's no escape, he doesn't move. He jerks himself awake when he finds himself nodding off, not really wanting to invite more punishment.

The two men arriving should produce a scramble up, an attempt to escape, but there's a rifle pointed at him and he is aware there is a small military force here. The blow comes to the head and he grunts, goes over.

He does, however, attempt to move in this new place, grunting and growling as he tries to pull, futilely, at the cuffs. Sheer animal desperation before he settles down, gives it up, notes the bolts, allows it as useless.

His father would stay silent, but Sam is just not in the mood to provoke. He is not his father, and his impulse is to try to think his way out of this, to use his words, to see what information he can glean. And really, it's a simple, polite question.

"Pretty much like ass," is his honest and straightforward report.

Claire Temple has posed:
The remark earns a dry, splintery laugh, like the sound is painfully grinding its way up his throat.

"You are funny," decides the man. "I like funny things. It keeps you young. Keeps you strong."

The low-ceilinged room amplifies the flint-snap pop of a lighter, and bright, white fire briefly lights the dark. He cups his fingers around the flame, and the light momentarily flares hints of his features: the sharp point of his jaw, old, ancient scars that run through his lips, his hook of a nose. He lights a cigarette and breathes it in like air.

He exhales a deep, patient, leisurely breath of smoke. His chair creaks with a dismissive shifting of weight, an unconcerned man leaning back, all the time in the world. He does not speak immediately, but his eyes are on Sam; they feel like a branding in the dark. Staring at the imprisoned Winchester, bound and yoked, and considering him in a full, head-to-toe gestalt. His heel on the ground swivels his chair back and forth, almost playful.

"The answer is far, far better than the..." he swivels his hand, cigarette smoking from his fingers, "typical noncombatants. You've got a strong back to you. You keep your head high. I want us to have a conversation. I would like it to happen while you have some dignity."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam Winchester notes every detail. As if it weren't already pretty clear, what little the lighter illuminates, along with that grinding laugh, warns the young man that this is not someone who he should be dicking around with. He needs to tread very carefully if he's going to survive and eventually get out of here. If he's even going to //hope// for those things.

James Barnes couldn't. Realistically, he may be fucked with a capital F. But Dean's still out there, and his check-in calls are definitely way late...unless Dean has lost reception in Virginia, which sometimes happens, or is having problems of his own.

So he says nothing as he's evaluated, hazel eyes wary, jaw strong and stubborn. When the Scarred Man tells him that he'd like to have a conversation, while he has some dignity-- indicating that Sam can expect to lose some more of it soon, or all of it-- he chooses to keep his tone polite, sober, and modulated. He'd like to hold on to his dignity as long as he can too, and that means not throwing it away himself. Dean would be railing, cursing by now, spitting insults and defiance.

Winchester the Younger thinks that would be terrible strategy in this instance. And it would, in fact, be a release of some dignity, a loss of control before he's forced to lose control.

"What would you like to talk about?"

Claire Temple has posed:
The man pauses, however briefly, with the transparent humour of someone rarely given such ready cooperation.

He opens his mouth enough to tongue a thoughtful line up and down his top palate, lips curling at the corners. He hums amusement, and returns the cigarette to his mouth, letting it hang and cinder peacefully away.

"You, Samoshka," says the man affectionately. "Just you. And all of you. Zimniy Soldat has told us some things, if you can kindly confirm. So skip all the vitals. I already know about your family -- that brother of yours. I'm not interested in that. Tell me what happened to make you so special."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Ah ha. Samoshka is not a greeting in the man's language. It's a name he's being given. Some derivative of his own name.

The moment his brother is mentioned his mouth twitches in anger. His jaw tightens. His back firms. His hazel eyes darken with worry. Everything to do with Dean invokes protective instincts, and, in his current circumstances...fear.

He does his very best not to show it, even as he betrays this in 1000 different ways. But then...perhaps it's already known.

He clears his throat. "I'm not particularly special," he says. "I'm just a guy with a weird job."

The thing is, he pretty much believes that, even as his mind flashes to all the weirdness. The telekinesis, which his throbbing head isn't particularly interested in letting him access, even if it would help. The visions, which have been darkly silent while he's sat there in the cold and the dark. He thinks of it enough to worry about it, because he remembers 'Zimniy Soldat' talking to him about it too. It's enough to provide a little skip at the end of his phrase, a little waver, a little real, honest uncertainty.

He doesn't really know, himself, what's happening to him. But towards the end of his statement, he realizes abruptly that's what they mean. And it worries him.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Sam barely finishes his sentence before a sudden hammerblow pounds into his left temple, hard enough to leave his head ringing -- his vision bursting with stars.

It comes from behind him.

It fogs his vision long enough to preclude a good look at whoever it was hit him, but he can still hear. Whoever it is moved in silence to strike, but lets him hear their steps loud and clear as they circle around him subsequent to the blow. Slowly, they draw to a stop beside the man in his chair.

His swimming vision finally clears enough to reveal the tall figure of a woman, blonde and blue-eyed, her lithe form wrapped up in a cinched military surplus coat and high boots, her head lifted to an arrogant angle. She regards him with a gaze heavy with disgust.

"He asked you," she warns, Russia thick on her tongue, "a question."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam's head snaps sideways, and he cries out with the force of the blow. It simply hurts too much even for a stoic grunt, compounded, as it is, with the blows he's already taken. He pants for a moment as he tries to get his bearings again. By the time he can hear again, he's being reprimanded for failing to answer the question correctly. He looks blearily up at the Russian woman, eyes her warily, eyes the Scarred Man warily. Scarred Man and the Ice Queen.

"He asked me," he growls, pain thick on //his// tongue, "a //question// I //don't really know the answer to.//"

Or is it just that he hasn't admitted the answer to it, to himself? His heart pounds, and he struggles to pull himself upright again, at the very least.

The rage that lives inside him, always, so carefully controlled, kept on such a long fuse, such a tight leash, rears and roars, sparking in his eye, rattling his strategy, causing him to snap the words in a way that he knows isn't entirely wise.

Claire Temple has posed:
That crack of knuckles against skull ricochets across every wall.

It does not flicker an eye on him, watching the violence in the way someone would enjoy the slow sip of some sweet draught.

"Now look what you've done," admonishes the man in the chair, taking his cigarette from his lips to better express his displeasure. His voice drips with melancholy. "You've gone and roughened Stasya's hands. I prefer them to stay soft."

He makes a noise in consideration to Sam's pained justification. He deliberates it with the slow slide of his tongue along his teeth. Then he rejects it, leaning back, bringing his cigarette back to his lips.

"Not good enough. Leytenánt, help him find the words."

Winter Soldier has posed:
"Of course you do, Misha," the woman answers without turning her head or looking at the man. Her voice is calm and clinical, her face unreadable and immutable as an etching in steel.

Beyond that brief statement, she simply waits. Her stance is wide and steady, the stance of someone who has spent a lifetime in the military, and her hands are folded neatly before her. She waits up until the man speaks again.

"Polkóvnik," she acknowledges, with grace.

With equal grace, she steps forward. Her second step lands the point of her heel directly into Sam's right instep with a pointed grind. She fists her left hand into his hair, yanking his head back, and she produces a mask that she presses down on the lower half of Sam's face. It starts to suffocate him.

It would take a while, normally, for the lack of oxygen to become painful -- for the panic to mount up to unthinking, animal levels. So she helps it along by ramming her fist into his midsection.

Just before he would pass out, however, she will remove the mask again. Her timing speaks of a great deal of practice.

Sam Winchester has posed:
His tormenters have names. Stasya. Misha. Sam files them away, for all the good it does him. He listens to the Scarred Man's--to Misha's-- verdict, and tries to brace himself against what's coming, tensing muscles, even as adrenaline floods him.

He's not prepared for what comes.

The stomp to his instep forces him to open his mouth in a gasp for pain, and by the time he's registered that his head is being yanked back and he's suffocating. He can't even flail, though his hands open wide in the cuffs, his feet kick what tiny little distance is allowed by cold steel. His head, caught by the long and currently filthy hair in a hard, harsh grip, tries desperately to rip itself away from her and her mask, but it's all catching up with him now. Pain, hunger, lack of sleep, and now lack of //air//.

The moment it's returned he gasps and coughs, already desperate to not have to go through that again, shaking from head to toe. Sweat has popped out of every pore, and it starts streaming down his face and into his eyes.

He remembers the Winter Soldier's question. How? How was Sam Winchester tracking the untrackable?

"Visions," he gasps out, unable to hold on to what seems like such a ridiculous, useless piece of information. It seems so paltry. "I tracked the Winter Soldier through precognitive visions."

He coughs and groans a few more times, sucking down yet another sweet-painful breath, body canting forward as a wave of dizziness threatens to overtake him.

He tenses. Not 100% sure what's happening to him himself, not entirely sure //how// or //why// it's happening, riding only on trial, error, and dire, uncertain theory, Sam Winchester has no idea if he's delivered enough to stop Stasya from suffocating him again, or if he'd best buckle up for another ride on that train.

Claire Temple has posed:
The woman conducts her patient violence.

And the man lets her. He sits back and witnesses it all with a deliberate silence that verges on reverence. He is just a shape in the dark, silent, still, and smoking, but there is no denying the slow, needle-push of his constant gaze.

He breathes so slowly in bowed respect. He drinks every moment she denies Winchester air.

That gasping, windy explanation comes met with a sudden, raucous bark of a laugh.

"Miracles!" he exclaims, with an up-reach of both roughened hands as if to beseech God above. "Ephphatha, he said! And Jesus touched his tongue and the mute man spoke. Stasya, how I worship your hands."

Flicking aside his finished cigarette, he claps both palms excitedly down onto his knees. "Samoshka, don't stop there. Tell me what you've seen. What you see. Tell me everything. Everything you do. Everything you are."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The men speak. The woman, for her part, keeps her own counsel. She circles away again, rote steps in a dance she knows well, coming to a gentle stop off to one side. Ready for round two, should it be needed.

Her only concession to the admiration of her superior for her work is half a fleeting smile.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam feels cold, suddenly. Not emotionally cold, but physically cold. Perhaps it's the sweat cooling on his skin. Perhaps it's something in that laugh, that cry of Ephphatha, of the mute man speaking. Perhaps it's the terrible calculus of wetting cracked, dry lips, of wanting water terribly while trying to balance information against his air supply.

How many times before he starts screaming? Probably, truthfully, just one more. He feels a little like howling //now//, and nothing's even happening to him right this second. How many times could he go through that before he wound up stark, raving insane?

He thinks about Dean, in the dark, alone under the waves. Did they suffocate him too? Did they do it with water? Did they beat him and deprive him? What did they want out of him? Did they want anything? Or did they just want to hurt a human? Did Dean have even small bits of information to trade for air?

There is other information he might want to hold on to. Might want to save his strength for. Other probes the Soldier made, trying, now, he sees, to make Sam slip up and tell him before it got this far. Maybe because it was expedient, faster. Maybe because part of James was trying to spare him. He doesn't know. He didn't give it up then, and here he is now. Information about himself is meaningless. Worthless. As inconsequential as he, himself is.

Yet he feels more dignity slipping away even as Stasya steps away from him, even as a shiver rips across him, steals his breath for a moment. He draws another shaky one and finds he can't look at Misha. It's important to them. Maybe he should hold on to it. But he finds no fight for it, not for this, even as doubts assail him. "Usually I see when someone is about to die. I can force details. I learned how to expand it a little, how to tell when someone was about to be //taken//, too, but...I had to know to focus on it. I started focusing hard on the Winter Soldier, and got more visions of him, but they were still unpredictable. Enough to help, a little, but unpredictable."

Why? Why do they want to know about this? "Hurts, but I can. It's mutable, the future, but I can sense that shift too. Hurts when it starts, hurts when it stops, but not while it's happening. Telekinesis too, but not much control and not very powerful. That hurts too. Hurts my head, leaves me hungry after."

Why? Why does this man insist on calling him Samoshka? What does Samoshka mean? It maybe sounds like a nickname for a child.

"It's only been going on for about a year, a little less. I don't-- I don't know-- why it's happening." He doesn't know, but he suspects some of it. "It shouldn't //be// happening."

Claire Temple has posed:
And questions are met with answers.

The man plants his thick, heavy hands on his knees and bends forward in his chair, pulling out of the shadow enough that light sits like oil over his pale, shining eyes. They reflect black and hungry. Starved.

His mouth crooks the more Sam reveals: every fact is gorged. Precognition. Telekinesis. Both unravelled by force of will.

His smile grows by the second. It opens up his face like the slice of a blade, wider, manic, until he breaks into a pleased gout of laughter. Barely able to contain this joy, and near giddy with it, he leans back and stomps both feet amiably to the floor. "It won't always hurt, Samoshka. I can promise you that," comes the man's promise, with an affable push of his hand into his lapel to retrieve another cigarette. He lights this one too. "And, da ladno, even if it does..."

He sniffs and dismisses that.

Of course, the answers come to an end -- and especially one that professes Sam not knowing why it's happening. The man makes a windy sound, air huffed out sadly through his nose, cigarette smoking dully away. A patient chide for bad boys.

His eyes roll over to entreat Stasya -- just when Sam slips in that last sentence. It shouldn't be happening.

The man in the chair goes very still. That teasing, tolerant play exits him like air sucked out of a room. He does not even breathe.

Then he stands, like a blade pulling free from a scabbard, and soundlessly steps forward. The little light casts him in half-shadow, but what can be seen are his sharp, strong features, the scars of war running his roughened skin, and the sick, hollow shine of one visible, pale eye.

"It shouldn't be happening," he repeats, in a twisted, simpering tone, making mock of Sam's words. His one eye in the light burns with offence. "They give you gifts, and you /doubt/. No, Samuil. I can teach you the things that shouldn't happen. That girl you fuck, Miss Burkle. It is nothing for me to find her too. I'll try her for myself. I'll let the dog fuck her in front of you, and you can tell me what shouldn't /be/ happening. Now you TELL me!"

Winter Soldier has posed:
The woman blinks with placid readiness as she is looked to by her superior. Her posture alters just slightly, a liquid readiness loosening her stance, prepared to step forward and encourage more verbosity at the man's first request--

--and Sam says something he should not. The woman's eyes widen infinitesimally with obvious awareness of what comes next.

It is her turn to watch, rapt, as the man finally unfolds to a stand. Her blue eyes follow every step. Her demeanor only suffers a pause at his final threats. Her face goes unreadable as smooth marble.

Then she laughs, a hard bitter derision to her voice. "The dog," she sneers, her tone caught halfway between scorn and something even uglier, "does do what he is told admirably well."

Sam Winchester has posed:
It won't always hurt?

That statement frightens Sam more than anything else that's happened here, and he doesn't even know why...

Until the manic man in the chair draws his shining blade and tells him he already knows all about Fred. He pales, white as snow, looking sick, knowing it //is// nothing for them to find her, take her. She's been through enough. Five years. Acorn tacos. Explosive collars. And whatever horrors happen in Hell dimensions to girls wearing explosive collars, which he can imagine are on par with the ones mere men are proposing right here in this freezing room. He can see it very vividly as Stasya coldly informs him that the dog is well-trained, the threat being carried out, and he actually rears and recoils back in the chair, moving as much as it allows. That comment speaks to that being rather a common thing that they do, both in the words and the horrible /tone/ behind it, and when he hears that he looks even more ill...

And hastens to speak, /panting/ in his haste to speak, ashamed of his haste to speak but doing nothing to quell it. Pleading for her safety, in his haste to speak. It matters, it clearly matters to them, it's clearly not information he should be divulging, and yet he can no more stop himself from divulging it than a baby in a crib can stop himself from screaming when Mommy goes up in sudden flame and heat, when the scents in the air turn to char and terror alike, when he finally catches the scent of his mother's blood, thick on his own forehead.

"The demon! The demon that killed my mother, my late fiancee. The demon with yellow eyes. He-- I think he did something! I don't know what! I was just a baby! Maybe the way he killed them mattered. On the ceiling, sliced across the gut, burst into flames when you look up and see them. Maybe a ritual! I don't know! I couldn't find anything, anything that made it make any sense! The powers started after he killed Jess, so I have to think he activated them somehow, but I never even saw him in my adult life. I don't know for sure, I don't //know//, I promise I don't know! We don't even know which demon he is! We just call him Yellow Eyes!"

That method has been spoken of in occult channels, of other psychic children...some dozen or more. Some of them speak of the yellow eyes, too. And, some, of the method of becoming stronger still.

He's panting by the time it's done, the whites of his eyes showing, staring desperately at Misha. That particular pressure point is as raw as exposed skin.

Claire Temple has posed:
Like the off-switch of a light, his demeanour changes. That sick, hungry, ugly burn in his eye, that promising flare of the tips of his teeth, the wringing fury in his fisted hands --

-- lets go, and the man holsters himself, taking out his cigarette to tap its ashes and let go a low laugh that vents curling smoke. It blows nauseously over Sam's face for how close the man leans in.

The answer given seems to do the trick. Because his pale eye winks. "You are a good boy, Samoshka," he praises, with the fondness one speaks down to a stupid animal that offered its paw. He reaches out to swipe one rough finger along Sam's brow, helpfully catching a bead of sweat before it runs down into his eyes. He wipes it unimportantly away between his fingertips, then terminates the touch with a placid pat of his knuckles to the younger Winchester's jaw. "That's all I wanted to know."

With that, he stands and turns, putting his back on Sam. As if the man shacked to the chair no longer matters in his world.

His stride pauses only before the woman, and his sharp profile softens as he runs her body up and down with his low-lidded eyes. He catches her briefly, lightly, by the chin. "Nastenka," he tells her sweetly, couched in that single word a familiar request.

Then he steps away and disappears into shadow. There is the grind of an unlocking door, and then the call of his voice. "Be polite to my woman, Samoshka. She will see you through the rest. Maybe we will speak again. Try to save some dignity for me."