Fairytale Romance

Real fairytales, the old ones with truth in their bones and the shadows of madness in their blood, are not happy stories. This is the tale of a Girl and her Soldier.

The first thing –Jamie? Iacov? Sjaak? Does it matter? – he does upon waking and remembering everything is stumble into the bathroom to take a piss and stare at himself in the full length mirror. He's always looked much the same, though as Diego and Giacomo he was darker skinned and as Seamus and Jaakko his hair was fairer. The really glaring difference that sets who he is now apart from all his previous lifetimes is the metal arm and complete absence of scars, bar the ones where said arm attaches around his shoulder. Even Jamie, who had never picked up a weapon in his life, had scars: chickenpox scars, scars from accidents, mishaps and hard living. But now his skin is clean and unmarred, the injuries he'd picked up as Bucky in the Second World War smoothed away by years of super-soldier serum in his veins. Fifteen years and forty-eight days out of the past sixty-nine years are all he's been out of cryo, but despite getting beaten up by Steve and falling in the Potomac shortly before Ileana got her hands on him he still looks far healthier now than he had been in Brooklyn, the last time he was young.

Apart from the deep, puckered scar tissue around his left shoulder; thick lines that follow his ribs and collarbone. That those haven't healed like all the others is deeply suspicious, now that he has the lucidity to properly think about it. Everything else healed, including that time he got impaled through the stomach by a metal girder when an explosive charge went off too early and he got thrown twenty feet through the air. What did Zola do and how, to so thoroughly stymie his body's unnatural healing ability?

Is there something under the scars that is preventing him from healing fully?

He is still staring at himself in the mirror, trying to decide whether or not that thought is sensible wariness or merely irrational paranoia, when there is a knock on the door and Ileana's voice reaches his ears:

"Soldat meu?"

He can't help the fond, soft smile that spreads across his face. No matter the lifetime or the name, he has always been and will always be Ileana's soldier. Soldat is as good a name as any to go by for the time being. This particular body might have always been James Buchanan Barnes, but he remembers being far too many different people to be 'Bucky' anymore. Iacov doesn't really fit either and nor do any of his other past identities, not even the long-lived ones.

"I'm fine, doll," he says absently; "just thinking about having a shave." He's always liked how he looked without facial hair better than the alternatives.

There is a soft huff from the other side of the door and Soldat can almost see his darling girl rolling her eyes at him. "Well get on with it then; I'm cooking dinner and your bunicut has been waiting impatiently for the chance to talk to you."

Soldat blinks and chuckles as he remembers his encounter with his Gramps while not entirely in his right mind. He'd been far too impressed by the old man's dramatic flair and titles, but at least Gramps didn't know that. Unless Ileana had translated the Gaelic for him since then.

He needs to shave and leave the bathroom; has Ileana found clothing for him beyond the pyjama trousers he is currently wearing? It seems the kind of thing she'd do, especially since Soldat's probably been unconscious for several days. He also really needs to find out how it was that she is still alive and if it has anything to do with his unexpected serial reincarnations over the past five and a half hundred years. Hopefully she hasn't sold her soul or anything.

Tony Stark knows exactly where the Winter Soldier is, because the Winter Soldier is James Buchanan Barnes, aka Steve Rogers' old friend Bucky, aka Ileana's Iacov. He heard the Manhunt alert –and disabled it two days later when Ileana showed up on the camera feeds– and arranged for her to be given the keys for the apartment he owned in Columbia Heights, DC. He'd even shipped half her wardrobe there, along with a selection of clothing JARVIS assured him would fit her boytoy.

Since he wasn't sure if Barnes had any clothing preferences beyond mercenary chic or forties suits, Tony had included a selection of both along with a broad range of sturdy modern casual. He'd probably gone a bit overboard by Pepper's standards, but Ileana wouldn't mind and it wasn't like it mattered; it was only money. He had plenty of it. Hell, Stark Industries owned a good portion of its success to Ileana, so it was as much her money as it was his. Which reminded him; she needed a new identity. She was still officially Elena Castel, daughter of Anna Castel, but her passport said she was fifty nine and she only looked seventeen.

Hm. Ileana was probably going to want to marry her Soldier at once, so she needed to be at least eighteen; twenty-one would be better though, as that way she'd be past her majority and considered fully adult which was important since this new identity didn't technically have parents. That worked; he could put her new birthday in nineteen ninety-three, five years after he fiddled her indentured servitude agreement. That way 'Elena' could plausibly have met someone and gotten pregnant. Calling up the documents for 'Anna' and 'Elena', Tony grinned mischievously as he noticed that 'Elena' had no father listed on her birth certificate. That meant he could perfectly feasibly put his father on it, making Ileana officially his niece. Not that he didn't trust Pepper completely and think she made a fantastic CEO, but Ileana had been watching over SI for almost as long as it had existed and had raised Tony from birth; she really was the best person to own the company and would make a point of finding and funding new up-and-coming young genii to keep it on the cutting edge should anything happen to him.

Besides, it wasn't like Tony was ever going to have kids, not at his age. Or at least, he didn't think he was because Pepper had never even hinted at wanting kids and as the love of his life it was her call, not his. He was pretty sure Pepper would make a great mom despite his own misgivings about his suitability as a father. But that wasn't the issue right now; the issue was setting Ileana up as his niece and making the back-story plausible.

Well, Ileana was terrifyingly polyglot, so a mother who travelled constantly was perfectly possible and Europe had become a Union in '93, so Elena the theoretical single parent could quite plausibly have travelled all over with minimal passport records. Adding in how much money Howard had thrown at her for basically raising Tony, Ileana probably had travelled all over Europe, Africa and Asia around then; she could certainly have afforded it and some of his letters in that period had rather exotic stamps on them. Better to have her 'born' in the States though; that way she wouldn't have to apply for citizenship again.

So, theoretical Elena raised theoretical baby Ileana while wandering all over the planet before coming back to the States in 2010, when theoretical Ileana would have been sixteen or seventeen. Moves to the ranch, gets some homeschooling –which Ileana had done and there were records for, as she'd been 'catching up' as she did every other decade or so– and living off her money until she meets…

Crap, he needed to create a cover identity for Barnes as well. Because there was no way he'd be able to resurrect the original identity of James Buchanan Barnes without people noticing. Damn. Oh well, he could be just plain 'James Barnes', born in '87 since he looked late twenties and an army vet. Creating a fake classified military history was easy peasy, as was adding him to a list of MIA soldiers who had escaped captivity in Afghanistan back in 2011, with the addendum of him missing over half his left arm and being the only survivor of his unit. Next were documents of a military pension –which Tony would be funding, technically– a PTSD diagnosis and retirement to civilian life, leading to meeting Ileana in '12 and getting a 'Stark Industries prototype prosthetic' towards the end of last year.

On a side-note, he really wants to have a close look at that metal arm because he is pretty sure he can do better. Certainly that tacky communist star had to go, like, yesterday and HYDRA has probably booby-trapped the thing to hell and back because they are assholes like that. Ileana texted him a few days ago to let him know she wanted him to look at her Soldier discreetly, in case of implants and shit like that, so Tony was actually going to get a chance to ogle the arm provided Barnes cooperated.

Tony isn't sure how he feels about the fact that, according to the HYDRA documents JARVIS had taken off the web, Barnes had arranged his parents' car accident. Yes, Maria was never his mother, not really, and Howard had forgotten he even had a son half the time, but losing them had still hurt. It would have hurt worse had Ileana not broken into the lab two days later and hugged him until he broke down and cried, but just because he'd gotten over their deaths didn't mean he was happy about them having been murdered. By a brainwashed super-soldier no less; not that he blames Barnes, exactly, but he's probably not going to be very friendly despite the man being the love of Ileana's life.

He's sure he'll get over it eventually, but the first few meetings are going to be tense. Tony expects he'll put his foot in his mouth a few times and get defensive about it then feel stupid and guilty later. Ileana will smooth things over though, so he can focus on the important things –like making sure that arm isn't going to explode– and it will get better.

The Ultron Project he's been working on for the past two years is coming along very nicely though, so well in fact that full implementation will probably take less than a year. Once Ileana and her boy-toy are dealt with and HYDRA is no longer flailing around trying to hide from the public eye, he can finally get on with actually building Ultron and making sure it works the way the simulations say it will.

Soldat had been directed to the closet attached to the apartment's bedroom for a change of clothing, but having opened out the wardrobe doors now finds himself in a bit of a predicament.

There are too many clothes.

Yes, the entire left-hand side of the closet is filled with women's clothing, but the sheer range and scale of the outfits on display is giving him a bit of a headache, mostly because despite his total lack of experience in matters of haute couture he can tell the combined contents of this wardrobe cost more than most people make in their entire lives.

From left to right there are fabulous evening gowns, slinky cocktail dresses, individually tailored suits that range from austerely professional through snappy all the way to sexy via at least two dozen different jacket cuts, trouser styles and skirt lengths, more than thirty different varieties of shirt and blouse in a mixture of colours and materials, a few sets of protective clothing of the kind worn in factories or on industrial sites and a further five feet of what the Asset part of his brain has dubbed 'urban camouflage': jeans, jackets, tops in a variety of fashionable labels and a range of casual skirts. Boardroom to high school campus, there is an outfit for every occasion and shoes to match every outfit. There is even a rack of scarves, shawls and headscarves, another of gloves and a shelf loaded with hatboxes.

Ileana had mentioned a 'lord' she served; whoever he was he was definitely keeping her in a manner Soldat could never hope to match. Then again, going by the other side of the wardrobe it looked like said 'lord' was intending to keep him in that kind of style as well, which was deeply weird and vaguely disturbing. Just looking at the content told him that much.

From right to left, his side of the closet is divided very neatly into thirds. The first third is suits: snappy, impeccably tailored tuxedos, stylish office wear, night-on-the-town suits, casual suits in a range of colours and weights and even subdued, blend-into-the-background suits that would enable him to melt into the masses in any city street. There are shirts to go with every suit and three –three! – racks of ties to go with the shirts. There are even waistcoats. But each suit also has a harness to go beneath the jacket, ranging from simple ones you can add a shoulder holster and maybe a pair of knives on up to the one that goes with the heaviest charcoal grey suit that you could fit a respectable armoury into. There're even a few sets of knives –both ceramic and steel– to choose from and two locked cases containing handguns in a range of sizes and holsters to match.

Soldat wonders if Ileana's 'lord' wants him as a bodyguard, a hitman or a spy. That there are at least two dozen different pairs of shoes to go with the suits is the least of his problems.

The next third of the closet is filled with the kind of clothing he's been wearing for most of this lifetime, all in sturdy fabrics in various dull colours and a wide range of weights: army-style trousers, plain, sleeveless vests, jackets and shirts. But there're also tac vests and several different kinds of body armour, each clearly labelled, a selection of coats you could hide an armoury under and a rack of gloves, ranging from skin-tone latex through silk up to sturdy leather in a range of styles and colours: driving gloves, gloves for using fiddly tools, gloves for handling explosives and more besides.

There're even boots. Fabulously sturdy boots that he is going to wear regardless of what this guy's motives are, because Soldat knows the value of good boots and has killed for good boots in several of his lifetimes. Anybody who buys him boots like these has earned the right to have Soldat listen to his sales pitch.

The final third of the wardrobe is more Urban Camouflage, but for men: jeans, shirts, vests, jackets, jumpers, slacks, shorts, coats and several racks of fashion accessories, from ties to handkerchiefs to headscarves to leather cuffs to even more gloves. The shoes at this end are more eclectic, including sneakers, running shoes, sandals and even cowboy boots, but Soldat can see how the various pieces fit together into outfits. Most of the outfits will even allow him to hide weapons inside them.

Ileana had mentioned to him that he'd been mostly unconscious for eight days. In that time a man whom he has never met has bought for him enough clothing to see him through several lifetimes, some chosen to match what Ileana already owns but partly picked out based on his own history as Bucky Barnes and HYDRA's Asset. There is no doubt in Soldat's mind that Ileana's 'lord' knows he is a professional killer, but the man is giving him the choice to carry concealed anyway. This man he's never met and doesn't even know the name of, who has done all this of his own initiative because Ileana wouldn't ever ask.

Whoever this guy is, Soldat needs to meet him. Because people don't do this kind of thing for total strangers, not even when there are a million strings attached. People only offer these kind of options to people they trust, people they love. If this guy loves his Ileana, is crazy enough about her to buy clothes for a guy who's been in the news for attempting to murder Captain America, then Soldat needs to do a threat assessment. This man is as rich as sin and men like that are rarely good people.

Howard was decent though.

Date: February 12th, 1991. Mission: death of Howard and Maria Stark. Caveat: must appear accidental.

Date: February 16th, 1991. Mission: complete. Method: small explosive charges planted around brake cable ends and activated while vehicle was in motion. Seatbelts also sabotaged. Primary target initially survived crash; terminated by Asset with a glass fragment severing the carotid artery.

Soldat swallows hard, metal hand twitching. Bucky had gotten on well with Howard after getting away from Zola the first time; the industrialist had been a real stand-up guy and good at what he did. The Asset hadn't even recognised him. Then again, The Asset hadn't recognised Stevie either, not really.

Walking away from the crashed car, Howard's blood all over his hands and arms and splattered across his mask–

Soldat turns and dashes back to the bathroom so he can be sick in the toilet.

After throwing up bile for several minutes until he can forcibly calm his stomach and wash the taste of stomach acid out of his mouth, Soldat returns to the bedroom to grab some trousers out of the 'combat' section, a good shirt out of the 'smart' section –plus a weapons harness and some ceramic knives– and a brown leather jacket out of the 'urban camouflage' section. Then he investigates the chest of drawers and finds that yes, it does contain underwear. Boxers, socks and vests alongside thermals for cold weather and an entire drawer filled with different sets of pyjamas. Who needs fourteen different pairs of pyjamas?

Dressed comfortably and fully armed, Soldat picks up one of the pairs of good boots and then leaves the bedroom. The wooden floors and plush carpets suggest that wearing shoes inside is Not Done, so he'll stick to socks for the time being. It certainly isn't cold enough for footwear indoors to be necessary.

He needs to eat and something smells fantastic, so Soldat follows his nose to the kitchen. The scene awaiting him is both reassuringly familiar and jarringly alien, so much so that it is not until he hears the creak of the doorframe that he realises that he's bracing his left hand against it so hard he's bending the wood under his fingertips.

Ileana is standing at the stove in an embroidered, short-sleeved cotton blouse and a calf-length skirt under a pink apron decorated with white polka-dots. He's watched her cook so many times –she's magnificent in the kitchen– and the clothing is almost familiar but not quite. That she's standing at a stove rather than cooking over a fireplace is the biggest change, as is the way her hair is tightly braided and wrapped around her head, baring the nape of her neck to his gaze.

When he was Iacov, in his first lifetime, unmarried girls did not tie up their hair like that. They might braid it and bundle it back, but never baring the back of their necks. Soldat had never considered why that might be before; he'd also never realised that the back of a girl's neck could look so indecent and alluring. There are tiny curls there, too short to tame and taunting him by their very existence.

The other anachronism in the room is his Gramps, who is wearing a black leather duster coat over an equally black shirt and pair of slacks and lounging across one of the kitchen chairs as though the slim, pale wooden construct is an opulent throne. The former Prince of Wallachia only has socks on his feet –dark red socks with black dragons on them– and is watching Ileana cook with the same intensity he always used to watch Bucky's mother and grandmother when they prepared meals. Bucky had never quite understood that, but Soldat does now: There is something precious and intimate about having somebody feed you when you can remember hundreds of meals eaten on the move, poor-tasting, barely nutritious and usually cold. Army food is the lowest a meal can get yet still be considered semi-edible and Soldat remembers more campaigns than he cares to think about. Memories of a meal prepared in a house, especially for him? Those are far rarer and infinitely more precious.

But having Ileana and Gramps in the same space is jarring because they fit not at all and far too well. In his first lifetime Iacov was vaguely familiar with his Voivode and witnessed the man's decision to destroy his chances of heaven in order to save his people. He knew a stern, brilliant and selfless general who intimidated and inspired him. Bucky on the other hand remembers a kind, firm grandparent who told fantastic, disturbing and hilarious stories and had a wonderful laugh.

That Iacov's Prince and Bucky's Gramps are the same person is slightly dizzying, as it makes Soldat realise that Ileana and his Gramps are contemporaries and probably know each-other very well. Wallachia wasn't all that big after all and the two immortals probably couldn't avoid meeting. Though Soldat still doesn't know how or why his Ileana managed to become deathless. Was it something to do with how she was resurrected? Is it his fault?

"Iacov?" Soldat blinks, then notices Ileana eyeballing him over her shoulder.

"Call me Soldat, please, dragă," he says, releasing the doorframe and letting himself collapse into the nearest chair before sliding it sideways so the wall is behind him and he has clear lines of sight across the room and out the tall windows. "I've gone by far too many different names over the years but I've been a soldier as almost all of them."

"Soldat's not a very friendly name though," Ileana points out, her cheeks pinking ever so slightly at his casual usage of an endearment as she turns back to the meal she is preparing.

"Pick a variant you like then, Liebling," Soldat says, shrugging. "Just not of James, please: who I am now is not any of the people I've been before, not really." Once he's comfortable in his own skin again he'll pick a James-variant he likes, but right now he feels too fractured for any of them to sit right.

"Solly? No, that isn't you at all… hmm… something more Slavic I think… Solya? Datya? Dasha?"

Soldat had not been expecting his lady-love to go for Russian, or even to know Russian. Clearly he has missed a lot. "Dasha," he decides.

"As you wish, Datochka." Soldat twitched at the way her tone caressed the playful diminutive; across the table Gramps snorted.

"Is there a joke I missed?" Soldat asks cautiously.

"Movie quote," the former prince of Wallachia tells him with a smile. "A classic too; we can watch it after dinner."

HYDRA had kept their Asset up to date by getting him out of storage once a year for an intensive ten-day catch-up on new technology, weaponry, combat styles and changes to global politics. That last one had been heavily biased of course, but it did mean that Soldat knew how to work a television, video recorder, DVD player and even a touch-screen tablet. He could also fly most military and civilian aircraft, use any weapon made in the past hundred years, hack into security cameras and had considerable experience in forensics. He hadn't seen a movie since before the Second World War though.

"That smells really, really good geliefde," Soldat says, looking across at Ileana again.

"Beef bourguignon," she tells him, glancing over her shoulder to smile shyly at him from under her lashes. "You woke up French the day before I went shopping."

That explains why the smell is vaguely familiar as well as mouth-wateringly delicious. "How much longer?" Soldat asks plaintively as his stomach rumbles loudly.

Ileana grins. "Not long; you could lay the table."

Laying the table means opening every single drawer and cupboard in the search for cutlery, crockery and table linen, which does indeed pass the time despite Gramps' refusal to help out. By the time Ileana is turning off the stove Soldat has readied the table with a creamy linen tablecloth and matching napkins, sleek stainless steel cutlery and hand painted plates with subtle and elegant art deco designs around the rims; this is something he hasn't done since he was Bucky but that doesn't mean he's forgotten how.

"So, explanations?" Soldat asks once he's finished his first helping and been served a second one.

"Sorry?" Ileana asks.

"How am I alive, let alone remembering an additional eleven lifetimes when I know I sold myself body and soul to save you from the Răutate that our boyar handed you over to," Soldat clarifies. "I know it brought you back; I wasn't expecting you to turn out to be immortal though. Is that my fault?" He'd asked that she live after all; had he destroyed her chances of heaven and prevented her from ever dying?

Gramps snorts and pushes his cleared plate aside. "Iacov, do you remember the tale of the Girl and her Soldier?"

Soldat tilts his head on one side in between mouthfuls. "Of course I do; you told it nearly every time you visited us in Brooklyn. What's that got to-" the penny drops; Soldat's eyes widen.

"That's about me?"

Gramps guffaws, bracing one palm on the tabletop so he doesn't fall out of his chair. "A little slow today, grandson?"

Soldat doesn't answer, his mind whirling as madly as any fairground ride. He knows the story by heart –he's heard it enough times and repeated it to a variety of audiences– but realising that it's about him and Ileana is just…

Fairytales aren't supposed to be real! And on that note:

"Ileana, you sold yourself into indentured servitude on the off chance you might find me again? How could you be so reckless!"

"You were dead!" Ileana screams back, not giving an inch. "You sold your soul for me! What kind of woman would I be to just let that lie! I couldn't! So I did what I had to, to win you a chance of freedom! I knew you'd probably hate me for it afterwards but it was worth it!"

Soldat gapes. "Nigh on five hundred and forty years of suffering and forced obedience? I'm not worth that, schatje!"

"I'd do it all again, twice as long even!" Ileana retorts sharply, rising to her feet. "You damned yourself to an eternity of oblivion and what's a little pain compared to that?"

"Ileana," Soldat can't help the tears welling up at that declaration, but his point has to be made, "doll, it made you kill people." Ileana had always been the light of his life, the kindness and the gentle hope that there was more to life than death and slaughter. She had been pure and innocent in a way that had nothing to do with being virginal and chaste. But the Darkness had taken that away from her, turned her into a murderer and she thought it was worth it? He wasn't worth that.

He regrets his words as soon as they pass his lips; his darling love abruptly closes her eyes tight and bows her head, breathing heavily through her nose. Soldat deliberately remains in his seat, not wanting to loom over her or indeed do anything she might consider threatening. More threatening. Ach, he's really messing this up.

"Many are dead because of me," Ileana admits tightly, "some through mischance and many deliberately slain, but their souls were free to pass into the afterlife their lives had earned them. You were not so free and I cannot regret it." Her shoulders hitch; "even though the Darkness bound your heart as tightly as he bound my will."

"Ileana?" Soldat can tell he's opened a real can of worms here but isn't sure how to reassure his beloved that he's not angry with her, not really: he's just really upset about what she's suffered through on his behalf.

"The Darkness bound your heart, Iacov, so you couldn't ever love anyone else like you loved me," Ileana says sadly, tears sliding down her face and dripping from her cheeks. "Now I've found you and you remember yourself you are no longer bound to an eternity of oblivion; that was the deal. You'll live out this lifetime and when you die, it will be for the last time: you'll be able to move on."

"But what about you, älskling?" Soldat begs, his left hand fisted in his lap to prevent him from breaking the table by accident. He doesn't care that he's essentially been cursed to never move on from Ileana; she is still the best thing that has ever happened to him, even eleven lifetimes later. He chose to love her, still desperately wants to marry her and actually feels pretty bad about those lifetimes he was married in; the first time it was to protect his best friend's wife and children and in later ones out of social pressure. Even though he never loved those women like he does Ileana, it was still a betrayal of everything she means to him. Some of his past incarnations might have descendants alive today.

"Now you have found me I am no longer immune to death and my eyes no longer kill," she says quietly, "but I will remain bound to serve in obedience and pain unless you wed me. Do not do so out of duty, please?" Her voice cracks on that final plea and Soldat almost knocks the kitchen table over as he leaps out of his chair and snatches her up off her feet into a fierce embrace.

"Whoever said anything about duty, kulta? You're mine, you've always and only been mine and I'm not about to let you get away from me! I've never wanted to be in love with anyone else and that's not about to change! I just hate to see you hurt, gra' mo chroi, and I know that since the Darkness stole you from my arms you have done nothing but suffer and grieve, bound in a cage and all alone.

"I never wanted that for you, chérie," he mutters into her hair, pressing kisses all over the top of her head and keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her. "Yes, I have been hurt, and died, and gone to war more times than I care to remember, but I was always among friends. I had family around me. All those lifetimes and I was never without comrades and support until I fell off that damn train and that handful of years pales into insignificance compared to what you've gone though; ljubímaja, I'm so, so sorry I didn't find you sooner."

His darling beloved laughs at him, though the sound is more of a hiccupping sob than an expression of genuine amusement. "Dasha, you didn't even know I existed. How were you supposed to find me?"

"Feelings aren't logical, cariño," he mock-reprimands her, leaning against the kitchen counter so he can shift her into a more comfortable position without putting her down. "I've lived long lifetimes and short ones, but for most of all of them I had people around me who loved me. Who loved you?"

Ileana twists slightly in his grasp, burying her face in the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. He can feel her tears soaking into his shirt as she weeps soundlessly, shudders wracking her body. She never used to cry like this; when he was Iacov her grief was always loud and fierce, no matter how short-lived. That she has been forced to learn to silence herself hurts his heart.

Gramps is no longer in the kitchen; Soldat seems to remember him leaving hastily via the balcony door right at the beginning of the fight. He always did that back when Bucky had been a kid in Brooklyn too, on those rare occasions when Bucky's parents set each-other off and had a row. Bucky had also done his best to make himself scarce when that happened; his mother had been terrifying when she let loose.

Soldat rocks gently back and forth, pressing kisses to as much of his beloved as he can reach. Knowing what he does now, he can guess that the 'lord' she mentioned earlier is the one whom she is sworn to obey. At least he seems to appreciate her service; now that he understands the situation better, Soldat knows that all the pretty clothing in the world can't make up for the fact that Ileana has no freedom. A gilded cage is still a cage.

But Ileana is here with him and her master is nowhere to be seen, so perhaps the unknown man prefers to keep her at a distance. It is only since meeting him that her eyes have stopped being lethal and Soldat knows that most people are far more afraid of dying than is really sensible.

Having died many times, Soldat knows that it is not that big a deal. It's what comes after death that matters. Ileana however has been denied that; he cannot imagine what it must be like to see your life looming over you with no end in sight, knowing all the while that you are utterly enslaved to the whims of another. Even as HYDRA's Asset, he could still choose to disobey. Yes, it always got him The Chair, but it was no less a choice for that.

Ileana had always been a free spirit, careful in making choices that she would not regret, but the Darkness had taken her freedom as a ransom for Soldat's soul. Over five centuries of slavery so absolute she physically could not disobey? That is Hell. It makes his soul scream in terror just thinking about it. What has been done to her that she could not prevent? What has she been made complicit in by past masters? Absolute power corrupts absolutely and many, many generations of men have held absolute power over his beloved.

Soldat wishes very much that this was something he could do something about. Comforting Ileana while she cries doesn't seem nearly enough.

Vlad Draculea, Son of the Dragon, whose nickname that had nothing to do with his transformation into a creature of the night –his father had been called Vlad the Dragon and had thoroughly earned the epithet– had very sensibly fled the kitchen as soon as tempers started fraying. He'd watched young Iacov grow up and knew Ileana better than anybody else alive –except possibly her little lord– and getting between them was something only a fool would do. Vlad liked to think he wasn't a fool, which was why he was perched on the balcony railing despite it being ten o'clock at night. It was pleasantly reminiscent of visiting Mike and Dot in Brooklyn all those years ago, where he had on occasion taken refuge on the fire escape due to his son and daughter-in-law having a spat. It wasn't raining and it wouldn't have made any difference if it was; their relationship drama wasn't his business.

What saddened the former prince was how events had conspired to delay the meeting between his grandson and Pale Ileana. Once Iacov was of age to marry Vlad had gone looking for her in Europe, but war had immediately broken out and he'd been delayed by the need to help his countrymen, only discovering several years later that her boyar's castle was one and the same with the one that Howard Stark had been in the newspapers for transporting to America and rebuilding. Realising that Ileana had been right there in New York all along was irony at its finest and Vlad had hurried back across the Atlantic as fast as he was able but he'd been too late: his grandson had already been drafted into the escalating conflict.

Vlad had immediately sought out Ileana himself and told her everything, but she had been stymied by her then-lord's extensive and specific demands on her time. She hadn't been allowed to attend the World Exposition, hadn't been allowed to join Howard in Europe and had been forced mourn privately, helpless and grief-stricken, when news filtered back of Iacov's demise in early 1945.

There hadn't been much Vlad could do to alert his grandson of Ileana's existence from a continent away, but she had been featured on the front page of Time magazine towards the end of 1943 and he had ensured several copies were posted to the newly-formed Howling Commandos. It had been somewhat heartbreaking when Iacov's belongings were returned to his son and they discovered that front cover and the related article carefully preserved alongside a risqué pin-up sketch that was very definitely of Ileana. Vlad suspected Iacov hadn't yet connected Pale Ileana to Anna Castel, Chairwoman of Stark Industries and role model to all those ladies on the home front who had to step into the shoes of their menfolk to support the war effort. Admittedly Anna Castel had been a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed brunette with fashionable curls, but it wasn't like Ileana had bothered to do anything to disguise the shape of her face or her build.

Iacov would find out about Ileana being Anna though, probably rather soon, and it was going to be highly amusing. Vlad hoped he was present when it happened and that he had time to snap a photograph of his grandson's expression.

Soldat wound up carrying Ileana into the bedroom and sitting them both down on the bed, because the bed was the only furniture for sitting on in the entire apartment other than the kitchen chairs. Clearly this isn't where Ileana usually lives.

That is actually a relief; Soldat has a feeling he'd been on ice under the now-destroyed Triskelion building for the better part of twenty years and the chance to get a bit of distance between him and it will be very welcome. He's pretty sure HYDRA won't be looking for him anywhere nearby –they will expect him to run as far and fast as possible after going rogue– but that's no reason to tempt fate.

Putting his former captors out of his mind for the time being, Soldat ponders the best way to ask his fiancée of five-centuries-and-change to marry him without triggering any more unhappy issues. He'd rather like to marry her right now –by the Orthodox traditions of their first lifetime it is 'becoming one flesh' that counts as marriage rather than any ceremony– but she very definitely needs time to recover from her crying jag and all the memories and insecurities he has accidentally unearthed. He recognises he's probably not going to be able to avoid that happening again –he's sure she'll be accidentally triggering him too– but so long as he can make it clear to her that he would much rather they face those problems together…

For the time being though, it's really swell to have a pretty dame in his lap he can cuddle. It's been so long since he's been able to snuggle with someone that Soldat is loathe to do anything to curtail this opportunity. Ileana isn't crying anymore but she seems disinclined to let go of him and he's perfectly fine with that. He's got his best –and only– girl in his arms and neither of them have anywhere else to be.

Realising that Ileana is falling asleep on him just gives him an excuse to slip out of his weapons harness –which he stashes under the edge of the bed where he can reach it– and wrap himself around her more closely. She pushes him off pretty quickly and staggers over to the closet to change out of her clothes, but once wearing pyjamas she comes straight back to bed and flops down in the warm spot on the left-hand side of the bed, cozying right up to him. Soldat instantly strips out of most of the rest of his clothing and joins her under the blankets, draping himself across her back so that he can reach over her and down to his discarded weapons in case of an emergency.

Despite his having spent over a week unconscious already, sleep takes Soldat swiftly.

"Tony, off."

Soldat opens his eyes and automatically catches the elbow being poked into his ribs. "Who's Tony?"

Ileana glances back over her shoulder at him, eyes bleary and hair coming loose from her braids. "He's m'lord. Raised him from birth; too kind for his own good and far too clever by half. He's clingy as anything and a bit silly about money too. Get off: I want a shower."

Soldat rolls over onto his back to Ileana can get away, mentally re-evaluating his position on Ileana's master. The situation is clearly not as serious at it initially appeared; whoever 'Tony' is, Ileana sees him as family. Considering that she called him 'too kind for his own good', that sentiment is probably reciprocated.

Richer than sin, too clever by half and called Tony... Soldat sits bolt upright, all his muscles tensing and his left hand fisting so tightly in the sheets that his metal fingers rip holes in the cotton.

Tony Stark?!

Wait, if Ileana raised Tony does that mean that she used to work for Howard? It does. Howard was Ileana's previous master. How did that happen? Howard can't have inherited her; he was a self-made billionaire. He had to have acquired her somehow, been made the heir of the man who owned her previously.

Bucky remembers a newspaper article back in '37, where Stark made the headlines for buying up a castle in Romania, shipping it back to the States and rebuilding it brick-for-brick on his estate in the Appalachians. Had that been the castle, the one he and Ileana had grown up in the shadows of all those centuries ago?

Soldat killed Howard. He's not sure if Ileana realises this or even how attached she was to Howard in the first place, but he's pretty sure Tony Stark isn't going to be very happy with him about that. Although judging by the closet, the infamous Iron Man already knows Soldat is a highly trained killer and the former Winter Soldier. There's a difference between knowing somebody is an assassin and realising they've killed your parents though.

Soldat groans, rubbing his eyes with the back of his right hand. He's going to have to meet Tony Stark, the sooner the better. Probably gonna need to apologise too, and then ask nicely for the man to keep Soldat under the radar while he gets his head on straight. Iron Man works with Captain America (you just couldn't leave the war behind, could you Stevie?) so that might be tricky. Thing is, Soldat's sick of fighting. He was sick of fighting two lifetimes back. Steve's a damned idealist, a true believer in Truth, Justice and America, but even as Bucky Soldat had hated war. War was just about killing people who disagreed with you. In his first year on the front before Steve showed up he'd seen most of his unit slaughtered and killed a whole lot of people in return, most of whom were just following orders like he was and trying to survive. It made him sick then and if anything that feeling's gotten worse.

He remembers a whole lot more war now after all; several centuries of it.

If Soldat never has to shoot anyone ever again it'll be a damned relief, but he doesn't think it'll go down like that. HYDRA will want their Asset back; Steve will expect Soldat to still be Bucky and willing to follow him into fights, watching his six; as soon as his identity gets out the government will want his 'unique skills' at their disposal. Yeah, all of that? So not happening. He'll vanish into rural Siberia first and take Ileana with him. They both know how to live out there after all.

Tony Stark has enough money and influence to make governments sit up and take notice; if Soldat can get Stark on his side then getting himself a civilian job will be so much easier. Though before Soldat does that he'll probably need a civilian education, because he has very few transferable skills: precise and in-depth knowledge of anatomy, considerable toxicology experience, a keen understanding of physics, fluent a dozen languages though in half of them his vocabulary is distinctly archaic…

Actually he might not be as disadvantaged as he thought he was. It's just the socio-cultural stuff that's going to hobble him, because while HYDRA introduced him to social media as a means of gaining information on a target, a lot of it read like a foreign language. He has no context for the references, doesn't recognise the quotes and hasn't seen the TV series. He doesn't even know what's been on the news.

Integrating into twenty-first century civilian culture will probably be the hardest Mission he's ever undertaken. Hopefully Ileana will help him out there; which reminds him, he needs to ask her what she wants to do now she's found him.

He's pretty sure 'getting married' is as high on her list as it is on his though. It's the only thing on his list he is absolutely certain of, so the sooner the better. Seeing Stark will probably have to come first though, as beyond his being Ileana's master Soldat would really like to know what, exactly, is going on inside his metal arm. HYDRA has never given him anything that didn't have two-dozen choke-chains attached and this is unlikely to be an exception. If Tony is anything like Howard, Soldat won't be kept waiting very long for answers.

Translations

Soldat meu = my soldier (Romanian);

Bunicut = grandfather (informal) (Romanian);

Voivode = prince/warlord (Romanian);

Dragă = darling (f) (Romanian);

Liebling = darling (German);

Datochka = very informal, cutsey Russian diminutive of Dasha;

Geliefde = beloved (Dutch);

Răutate = evil (Romanian);

Schatje = little darling (Dutch);

Älskling = love, darling (Swedish);

Kulta = darling, treasure (Finnish);

gra' mo chroi = love of my heart (Gaelic);

chérie = darling, dearest (f) (French);

ljubímaja = love, beloved (f) (Russian);

cariño = love (Spanish).

So maybe our Soldier has a bit of a one-track mind where his Girl is concerned…