redplanetblueplanet:
“I understand,” M’gann said simply. She said nothing of the tiny sealed capsule she kept deep in the tissue of her jaw. It was Batman technology. No chance it would break open without her willing it. But M’gann often thought of it. Her ‘No Way Out’ pill. Certainly a big deal, but not worth mentioning. “You took it out yourself, though?” M’gann puzzled. “Would your handlers have killed you, then? That seems rather, well, wasteful doesn’t feel at all like the right word.” She made a face. “You’re here now, anyway. No one’s going to harm you.” Her shoulders slumped. “I only wonder how long they’ll keep you down here.”
The poor thing was only a child. “Well, I’ll have to write you a ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ parody for the last ten years, then.” M’gann smiled softly at him, and reached into her pocket for a Ziploc bag of trail mix. “Here. You should have a snack while we chat. Do you remember your life before they took you?” Perhaps they could reconnect him with his family. Even to let him touch the soil of the land he was stolen from could do him good.
...
“No, that was all Mr. Barnes. I told him where it was, when I came to. Figured that was a mess that was...best left unavoided.” For all of them. It had been for selfish reasons, certainly, as well as thinking of the hell that would’ve rained down on the heroes that had taken him in as well. The situation was complicated and muddy, beginning right then and there with his decision to tell Mr. Barnes where the tracker was. “I think they sent it off, somewhere, to throw the trail.” Which would’ve infuriated Mr. Colt and the rest of his handlers, a thought that had RJ’s jaw tensing slightly just at the image that came to mind. “It’s my assumption that they would’ve, yeah. It was a failed mission, and they don’t have time for failures. Can’t train out failure, there’s no room for it.” From what he’d been told by his handlers and the others that had trained him, there hadn’t been much of a life at all for RJ before Hydra - worthless, discarded like trash, this being his chance to be worthwhile and to amount to something. So - he shook his head once, maybe a little sharply. “Not much, no. Hard to distiguish what’s real from what the fabricated. Makes it difficult.”










