This is inspired by the expression that sebstan makes that time he says "but I knew him".

Now, I spent the better part of three days taking bits out and adding things until I felt like I was at a natural stopping point, so if things seem a little less than smooth, sorry, it's still not perfect but I've hit a wall here.

If I could name this something longer, it would be 'and the thought escapes, like the breath from a dying man, and flits away on the breeze', except it doesn't bloody fit so I'm sulking.

Disclaimer: don't own shit, love.

"The man on the bridge. Who was he?"

Blue suit, pale blonde hair, broad shoulders which for some reason he thinks should be smaller. Weaker? It isn't just a target thing, he doesn't think, wanting someone to be weaker so the takedown is faster.

A pressing need to know digs insistent knuckles into his psyche.

It's almost...a memory?

Except he doesn't remember anything. He never remembers. He isn't meant to, he knows that. He is never meant to.

"You met him earlier this week, on another assignment."

He remembers that.

But...

"I knew him." He frowns, twisting his face in confusion. He feels like he does when he first wakes up after a particularly long session of cryo, all sleepy and dull, dimmed from his rest. Slow, and too warm, like he is being dragged through molten glass.

He does know the man, or did, at least, before Pierce turned him to the work he is doing now.

He can just begin to grasp the image of a sickly, pale boy, with a wide grin and weak lungs.

Pierce is talking in the background, and he forces part of himself to listen, whilst desperately trying to make sense of the flickering half-images in his mind.

"Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century. But I need you to do it one more time. Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos."

He feels the traces of a sarcastic comment someone would have made, had he been there. A comforting, teasing shove at his shoulder, familiar, alien, phantom touches from a best friend he doesn't, can't, remember. He forces the reaction away, hides the flinch under the pretence of looking up at Pierce and rolling his metal shoulder slightly.

He shouldn't remember, he isn't allowed.

"Tomorrow morning we're giving it a push. But you don't do your part; I can't do mine."

And his part is killing the man he knew? He only just remembers what this man was to him, he can't think about the consequences of that, of how it will affect him and his job.

And how it will affect the other man.

Dead.

He doesn't...he doesn't want to. But he never protests. He can't.

"And HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves."

He knows that he's giving up, caving, blinkering himself and letting them mold him like he only ever has. Like he only ever will.

So he presses his lips together and makes a little helpless face and tries to discard the thought of the man he is only beginning to remember. He bathes in the scant few memories he has been granted, before they are gone, because he knows from the familiar frown on Pierce's face that he will be wiped soon, scraping away his memory with lightning and electricity, promptly scouring, scrubbing, scraping away his renewed sense of self and past and friend.

But he can't help but try again, to try and appeal to his creator's compassion; he can't help but feel he owes it to the self he used to have, the man he used to be, and the man he used to know.

"But I knew him."