Who: The Winter Soldier, James Buchanan Barnes & Tony Stark Where: Steve's sweet suite, Avengers Tower When: Post-Havana. Post-this. What: "I want to know what you were made to forget." Be careful what you wish for. Warnings: Some disturbing imagery, because it's the nightmarescape of Bucky's mind. ___
Hours, days after, the image of James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier, was a cobweb of an image in Tony’s mind, gathered at the very corners, existent with or without notice, but then decidedly and starkly there if he cared to look. Steve could take great pains to emphasize Barnes’s importance, the care that must be taken, the endless patience and ever eternal optimism, but Tony had never been cut from that charming, admirable, and utterly naive cloth.
To him, Barnes was an unknown variable, no matter what Cap said, and unknown variables were dangerous in more ways than just physical.
And, well, Cap wouldn’t necessarily approve this if he knew, but damn it all if it wasn’t his building (okay, legally his and Pepper’s building) and he didn’t get a good idea of what lurked within its walls. Or what lurked within the man.
“JARVIS, go dark on Steve's for the next half hour. No one else gets in when I’m down there,” he said, shuddering a final image of their ward (not prisoner, Steve reminded them all, constantly) in question on the close circuit feed and finally deciding to settle his concern (and curiosity) once and for all.
He had been watered and fed, and he had been tended to with exquisite care by Steve -- and when none of this was accompanied by the single expectation (obey) he had come to recognize over the decades through some subverted reflex that could not be wiped, James knew better than to think it came with none at all. There would always be something which was required, even if it was further down the line; and the way Steve looked at him -- him, James, and sometimes beyond, to whatever he thought he could see of Bucky -- he knew it would be a costly thing indeed.
The days immediately following the extraction from Cuba had been spent in near solitude with Steve, within the domain that had been afforded to him. That same reflex that tightly awaited the order to go, kill led him to survey the modest reaches of the quarters, such that he knew exactly how the shadows moved through night when the ceiling lights were switched off and he pretended at sleep. He knew of the people Steve called friend and those he called partner; but after their arrival, he hadn’t really seen anyone, though whether this was because Steve had forbidden it or nobody wanted to step forward, he didn’t know.
The sound of someone who wasn’t Steve approaching was a new one, then, and he was up and on his feet, still and solid and waiting to see who’d finally come to call (and it didn’t escape him that he was alone).
There, center of the room, waiting, silent as a sentinel and positioned so still, his feet could have been forged in stone. If Tony hadn't seen the videos first hand, he would have wondered whether Barnes had stood there like that the whole time.
"Yeah, sorry about the arm still not working. Precautionary measure." One bitterly and fiercely argued, but no, that was the line drawn. Tony tapped out a rhythm against his leg, his toes against the floor, pivoted to and fro on the balls of his feet. Barnes's immutability made him conversely fidget like an antsy boy. Talk about a thousand-yard stare.
Though it was odd to have a thing which was so violently inherent to him now hang lifeless and heavy by his side, James understood the reasoning behind the deactivation. It was a sensible step to take in minimizing the threat he presented. (And perhaps he, in some absurd and sick way, was thankful to be made to feel the prick of frustration when he had to adapt to carrying on one-handed.)
Tony Stark. What wasn’t there to read about him? When reading about himself had led James to reading about Steve and those Steve associated with, the internet had served up an unending wash of information, everything from leaked SHIELD memos about the dangers of wild billionaires taking the fight into their own hands, to grainy videos claiming to be from one frat party or another. It made for varied reading.
"Your house." Your rules.
"Yeah. Well, kinda." Legal owners or no, maybe with the occasional sense of propriety, Tony was beginning to realize that ownership and home were different things. It didn't quite feel like just his home anymore. And that was nice. Team-like. The unexpected warmth this feeling gave him simultaneously inspired reflexive embarrassment. Stark men don't do feelings.
Which was, in part, why he was here now. "I went over the data you pulled from Cuba. That's some nasty work, Barnes." Both the substance and style in which is was delivered, in this case. The sheer obscurity of the outdated format was probably not unlike performing brain surgery with a pair of pliers, but in the end, with a little coaxing and no less that five conversions, the info dump was finally clean and could readily be parsed. "Let's see: subjects conditioned via repeated neural stimulation and experimental cocktails to suppress certain functions of the hippocampus. Memories. Funny, though. Recent research has shown that long-term memories may be stored in the cerebral cortex. Ergo, left alone long enough, those memories could rise to the surface. Sound familiar?"
Whatever was focused about James’ gaze upon Stark slipped into something looser, as if he were trying to withdraw from the situation despite not having moved a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to think about conditioning, but that he had never done so during his time as subject, and hearing words like the ones Tony was dropping into the air like bullets was distinctly uncomfortable. Never mind that they made sense; he just didn’t want to think about them.
"No. What’s your point?"
"Maybe you forgot." Tony shrugged, curling an arm around himself -- there might have been a permanent indentation of the arc reactor on the inside of his right forearm had Extremis not happened -- and tapping his chin with left hand in thought. His gaze was rapt upon Barnes, as if he were the most intriguing puzzle. In a way, he kind of was, a Frankenstein of science and consequences and improbabilities. Steve’s friend, Bucky.
"See, I think you know more than you think you know, but more importantly, more than what you don’t think you know. Each time the slate was wiped clean, those memories didn’t just go away, they were just pushed down lower."
The way images he thought were fragments of memory -- stirred up from down lower by whatever process was unfolding in his mind, unaltered for the longest stretch of time since… since before -- kept plaguing him, unannounced and sporadic, James did not doubt that Stark was onto something. But why would he even care? He wasn’t sure Steve could embody true altruism, and if he doubted Steve Rogers could possess such a degree of unselfishness, this man, this stranger, certainly couldn’t.
"You want something," was more question than statement for all that it was delivered in a flat tone.
He met that depthless gaze straight on. "I want to know what you were made to forget." And then, as if unable to help himself, he turned on a heel and slowly meandered steps to the wall, turned, and retread his path in a meandering tick more than intent.
"My team, Steve’s team, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to completely obliterate an infestation. At best, a monumentally herculean task and at worst, impossible." But it was telling, maybe for all of them, that they couldn’t not try. Defend, and if not, avenge and all that. “The more we can know about HYDRA, the better our chances are. They had a 70-year jump on us. I’d like to know if they did something in the past that may come and kick us in the balls down the line."
James wanted to say: yes, I want that too, yes, I want to see them destroyed.
He wasn't so sure he wanted to learn all that he'd been made to forget, but perhaps the goal -- end HYDRA -- could not be reached without whatever was locked away in the recesses of his mind.
"How?"
"Your HYDRA overlords had a pretty sweet schematic of the device that had been used to scrub your brain pan." It had been at once truly impressive and deeply disturbing to know how mind-blowingly (so to speak) advanced HYDRA’s technology was when it came to human engineering, even as they had relied on computers that could now serve as armored tanks.
But never let it be said that Tony Stark couldn’t make any gadget, device, or machine better. What he retrieved from his pocket could have been mistaken for a hands-free Bluetooth phone: small, to be fitted around the ear pressed against the temple, innocuous. He rattled it within his fist like a pair of lucky dice and then held out his palm to Barnes. It was highly experimental still, as the first prototype of these things were wont to be, but Tony didn’t think he’d have to get Barnes to sign a liability waiver.
"Some reverse-engineering and consultation with a few trusted neurologists later," over the course of several nights, because he didn’t sleep much these days, "and we may have a way of stimulating the brain to shake a few of those cobwebs free, if you’re willing."
Strangely (or perhaps it wasn’t strange at all), the next words out of his mouth, immediate for all that they were dragged down by hesitation: “Does Steve know?” Because Steve ought to know, he thought, or was this man whose name was formerly plastered up and down the side of this building able to override whatever Steve did or did not want to do? If Steve had let Tony in here unsupervised, he must’ve had some idea of what the other man was going to propose.
The next matter was that of the troubling concept of will -- whatever it was (maybe it was the low-grade revulsion coating the back of his throat as he stared at the gadget, or the piercing curiosity over whether such a tiny thing would do what the giant machines he wasn’t supposed to think about?), he had it now, that’s what Steve was so keen to get him to understand. He had it now; it was meant to be used. And he wanted to know.
Without a word, James finally broke his motionless stance to take the device from Tony’s hand. "It’s a good thing I brought my mouth guard," was an ugly joke, a terribly unfunny one, muttered around what felt like a mouthful of stone as he fitted it around his head.
"Steve wants you to do what you think is right. But it's your choice. Yeah, you get that now." Their goals were ultimately aligned it was true. It was just that Steve was content to let Barnes set his own pace, perhaps out of fear that any perceived undue influence would shatter his friend irrevocably. Tony...well, Tony always kept an eye to the ever-descending future. He saw the patterns of events as they circled within his mind, the way a traffic like on 1st and 3rd resulted in a snarling mess of gridlock at 57th and 9th. The curtain would close whether or not the actors had hit all their marks.
In the end, he was gratified, but not surprised to see Barnes take the device. "This one should be a little more gentle." Though perhaps it was arguably more painful to dredge up old memories than to forget them. "Maybe you should sit."
Even if he’d known about it, James would not be able to comprehend the scale of Stark’s broad-sightedness. Things were more severely blinkered for him; the angles were not for him to stare across. Just recognizing the angles was goddamn hard enough -- which was where, perhaps, this device -- and Tony Stark -- could help.
There was something almost obedient about the way he dropped down into the nearest chair, cybernetic arm loose by his side as his other arm was leveled across the armrest, fingers firm around the base.
"-- a little."
Once Barnes maneuvered himself into position, never reminding Tony more of a machine than the seamless glide of movement into ready, waiting, bracing position, Tony felt the possibilities come alive and it was impossible to keep still.
"I’ve been told it’s a more delicate, less-assured mission to bring back memories than to forget them. We’re feeling around in the dark and gently coaxing here -- just...try to relax. I’m going to start with a very low level of neural stimulation, see how that feels." It was telling that there was no external power switch to the device, as Tony mentally stretched forward into the wires and circuits and closed the loop.
'Low level' was more than enough stimulation to be appreciated by a mind whose resistance to such techniques had been whittled down over the decades. This was not the searing affront of Control, but it was enough of an intrusion -- of energy, of presence -- for James to recognize it.
He couldn’t suppress the twist of fear in his gut.
"Get on with it."
"A man after his own heart." Tony could appreciate the sentiment. He just really, really hoped this didn't go pear-shaped. Or that Steve would kill him. But Stark’s lived by the creed that it was almost always better to beg forgiveness.
"Then tell me when to stop."
As the power increased, he tracked the flow of energy from device to mind and then, for the first time, didn't let go. There was now a current of energy that fed into the closed system of the human brain, and he was there, and the human mind was the most complex system ever created, making the mad, frenetic rush of New York City at rush hour seem like a serene, pastoral daydream. The call and feedback of the nervous system, airbreatheheartbeatcirculationdigestbilehormonesimmunityattackerprocessingolfactoryopticalauditorytemperature, would have easily overwhelmed were it not for the steady precision of the device’s energy cutting through the myriad of functions and seeping into the cerebral cortex.
More delicate, less assured -- certainly this wasn’t Control’s brutally efficient wipe, the thing that robbed him of Bucky Barnes’ memories and the Soldier’s recollection of previous missions, nor was it the hours upon hours of programming that he’d read about during his one-man rampage through whatever he could find on HYDRA’s techniques. To retract memories from whatever they had made of his mind in seventy years was a task he did not know how to undertake: what phrases sprang to his lips when he was around Steve, were they his, or were they quotes he’d read which had been uttered by Bucky and then parroted back? did he really like eggs sunny side up, or had saying it felt good and so he’d stuck to the belief that yeah, Bucky liked his eggs sunny side up, his orange juice fresh and thick with pulp on mornings after he’d jitterbugged the night away --
Would Stark see this? Know this? What was it that he wanted?
"How about a game of word association?" Quite without realizing it, Tony had come to stand as still as Barnes had been, with the frenzy of activity now existing purely within his mind. At first -- at first, the jumbled mass of messages, of a body living and breathing, was just noise. The stirrings of a headache crept along his temples, hinting at the fatigue hovering nearby. Just so much noise, but he’d become masterful at pinpointing the signal he wanted. "Captain America."
"Steve." Steve chasing him across the United States. Mission. Mission mission mission mission mission the man on the bridge the man on the bridge is Steve. Five foot and too few inches, that’s what he’d read, that’s what he knew, the chest infections and the weak heart and his grip as he dislocated his arm on the ship and he’d taken the mission and made it his own because let’s hear it for Captain America! and the cheer went up like a roar in a winter that was not so bitter in that moment even though they’d pumped him full of something in that freezing cell and left him, waiting to see if he’d die, that little Austrian or maybe he was Swiss he could never tell the difference coming to prod at him, just like -- Control, no don’t think about Control, it’s against the rules; Steve, he told himself, and muttered the name again, as if it was something to anchor himself to. (He’d like that. Steve wanted to save him.)
The flare of images sprang to life like a strip of film reel. It had startled him at first, a hazy cloud of Steve Rogers as Tony could only image before (weak, asthmatic, vulnerable). Strange, familiar faces -- Howling Commandos, he would later identify -- flickered too quickly, and then that dark flash, gleaming metal and darkness -- "HYDRA."
It was in him to react with hostility as Stark was given unfiltered, if staggering, access to things that should have been personal -- but no, nothing here was personal, and he was laid bare, as he always was to HYDRA and Control. They knew him like a soldier knew his most trusted gun; they knew how to pull him apart and put him together again for the next mission, the next kill. HYDRA. Pierce. The chair. The mission and the bridge and the room where the devochki were taught how to kill before they were ten years old, their satin slippered feet silent like his were on the concrete as he set up to aimfirekillmissioncompletereturn--
A kaleidoscope of people and places swirled by, impossible to process all of them at once, but the sheer number, and -- distinct, Tony knew that landscape, it was burned into the edges of his soul, he could still taste the grit of sand at the back of his throat -- "Afghanistan." More statement than query. "What--" No, he shook his head. "You've mowed down nearly the entire Eastern seaboard. Do you know what HYDRA is doing across the world?"
"Only briefed on mission specifics," came with a sharp inhale, the headache blossoming in Tony's skull mirrored in his own, sharp and tight behind the eyes. Nothing more than mission specifics. But Stark would be able to see the flashes of thought: the fragmented snapshots of what he supposed was his memory as he regained consciousness in one base or another. Afghanistan. Germany, Austria, the United States. A flicker of his own reflection in a mirror, youngsters pale and uniformed with weapons no eye could see being pitched against him. A woman's red hair.
Tony closed his eyes and bit back a grunt. The halo-like ache feathered around his head began to coalesce into pounding spikes with each hazy, dream-like (nightmare) image. His fingers moved to his temples, pressing against bone as if he could hold everything back, but his left arm was beginning to feel numb, heavy. Germany, Austria, of course -- but how long after? What roaches remained after the war? "--SHIELD. How much did you know about SHIELD?"
SHIELD was the prompt, and his focus swiftly hooked itself in, the redhead sharpening into Natasha Romanoff, who was flanked by Steve, who stood across from Nick Fury, a bleeding, broken figure in an overturned vehicle. The man Steve and Natasha’d worked with -- Rumlow -- in SHIELD insignia as he gave a HYDRA salute in the tenuous moments before they’d shocked the Winter Soldier back into submission. Pierce, again. Your work has been a gift. Pierce, Rumlow. "They --" not we, he thought, hand tightening against the armrest (something creaked); "were inside it. Since the beginning. Series of accidents." He knew because he’d read it. He knew because he’d even been there for some of those so-called accidents.
He dropped his left hand by his side. Dead weight. The pain was no longer something he could easily ignore with each wave coming on stronger, but Tony was used to pain. He clenched his teeth, bore down on the feeling, and asked, "Who?"
Nick Fury: not so much an accident as a declaration of all-out war. And the others? He’d never known the double agents, because he didn’t need to know their identities so long as they played their part to perfection. But the members of SHIELD who were loyal to their mission?
Two targets, level six. They already cost me Zola. No, that was Pierce about Steve and Romanoff. Who’d come before? Focus, goddamnit. Zola. Zola, the Swiss scientist -- James had read all he could about him on the internet, because the round little face in the faded photographs leaked online made something ring in recognition. Had Bucky known him…? Maybe. Zola. Zola Zola Zola in Austria and his snidely clinical voice and no, I can’t talk about Control and overhearing the scientists and their excitement about the technology recovered from the bottom of the ocean and maybe Stark could be brought into the fold after those Japanese cities were flattened --
"Wait." He opened his eyes and stared at Barnes, oriented himself in the physical reality of the here and now. His head pounded and his heart pounded. A thin film of sweat coated his brow, the lingering taste of copper skirted the back of his throat. Somewhere he was vaguely aware of feeling nauseous. "Da--Stark. Howard Stark?"
James thought he only knew Howard Stark’s face from his research on Steve -- because where Steve was mentioned, so too were the Avengers, and there would always be someone to compare Tony Stark to his father in the soundbites and articles and leaked memos. A dead genius. Steve had known him too.
He missed Tony’s gaze, the pallor that suddenly clung to him, his own eyes directed at the floor as his head hung over his knees. "What about him?"
"Did HYDRA try to turn him?" There was no question of Howard Stark's patriotism, not in Tony's mind. The man lived and breathed capitalism, had proudly bore the Made in the USA label, and always liked to remind Tony that the greatest generation did not include him.
"Maybe," was a sullen, unsatisfactory answer: he didn’t know, these weren’t specifics made clear to him, they were only pieces overheard by the Soldier when his masters talked over him, as if he was nothing more than a lifeless statue. "SHIELD took in Zola, makes sense to flip things."
Tony frowned. Satisfaction fell well short. "What's Control?" he asked suddenly. The repetition of it. Red flag. Think about it.
Uncomfortable, hearing it spoken aloud. Perspiration beaded across his brow, allowed to sting in the corner of his eyes as he straightened in the chair, the headache thickening. "No." A poorly defined face on a screen and a clinical voice issuing orders. Wipe him. "I don’t want to."
"Why?"
"No." The cybernetic arm hung heavy and still, but the nerves that traveled across flesh to metal burned. "Can’t. Something else."
Fine. New tactic. Tony found himself pressed against the wall opposite, leaning heavy against it. How didn't matter, the support was needed, a cool, steadying surface. "Amin Zola. He’s there. Did you know him? Try. Concentrate."
"Austria. Prison camp. I -- Bucky was there, so was he." Which is where Steve found Bucky Barnes again, denied water for well over a week. "Smart bastard, getting into SHIELD like that."
"I can't even begin to know what SHIELD was thinking. That's not the Howard Stark and Peggy Carter I knew." Absent, loveless fathering aside, he always had a role model for a strong work ethic, for making sure your ducks were all in a row, for those lines you simply do not cross. "Zola should have been tossed somewhere deep and dark, and they should have thrown away the key." Instead, they nurtured the seeds of their own destruction. Human experimentation. Assassinations. But was what Control?
Tony could try, push, just a little. He wanted to. I could do it, I feel it, I could--
No. That was a line.
Tony’s words were, after a prolonged moment of silence punctuated by a heavy series of breaths (in and out, then again, chest aching), met with a shrug. The Howard Stark and Peggy Carter that Tony knew were beyond him: Carter languished in a home somewhere, and Stark had met his end in a neatly executed car crash. He didn’t pretend to know or understand SHIELD’s ways, being far more acquainted with HYDRA’s despite being kept in the dark to their true motives for well over a lifetime.
"Anything else?"
Just two images, the elder Carter, long-lived, a full life, and now her mind was succumbing and -- Tony looked up at him, color draining from his face.
No. That had been an accident. But for one horrifying moment, he was seeing it in progress, vividly. As if he were there. "My father died in a car accident." Accidents. Executions. No.
"What?" was a pointless thing to say when his own mind was already reeling in response to Tony’s words. Stark. A car accident in a world where HYDRA fabricated mishaps for their own gain. And if Howard Stark had been approached, only to give a rebuttal, then HYDRA would have been quick to rectify the situation.
His feet silent on the concrete as he set up to aimfirekillmissioncompletereturn.
"A car accident." He could feel the pressure building up inside his head: Tony.
"Stop it," he hissed at the sudden assault of memories. It had been his father's favorite car, the one that went with him and his mother. He had bitterly thought it was fitting that Howard could die surrounded by all the things in the world he loved and -- "My mother was with him."
He had often thought about it, tortured himself with it in the way only an engineer could -- the angles, the velocity, the moisture on the asphalt, calculations of how much alcohol had been in Howard's blood. What had his mother been doing that left her neck broken at that angle? But he could have never thought, never thought this.
The stirrings of an old forgotten friend rose up within him -- the sharp compression in his chest, the heart pounding so fast he thought it would burst, he couldn't breathe, his vision narrowed and shifted askew.
No. He didn't do this anymore. Stop. Command sent. The cessation was almost as painful as the feeling itself. He peeled his hand from where he had clutched at his chest.
The speed at which James cut short the high-speed train of thoughts spoke of an obedience that was, by now, reflex (command given and obeyed)… but even in the sudden silence, the nausea remained, creeping up his throat and filling his mouth with bitterness.
Tony was suffering. The final impression of the other man in his mind was one of suffocating shock, and as he cast his eyes up to look at him, he could see the truth of it: despair, which would surely be followed by rage. A human set of reactions. Tony would have every right to lash out against him; he found himself bracing for it, even as he reached up, fumbling with his one good hand to disconnect the device around his head.
He began to laugh. A small chuckle at first, but then it only increased in pitch as he dropped his head against the wall too hard, barely felt, and glanced up at the uniform ceiling panels and recessed lighting. His shoulders trembled, and feeling was returning back to his hand again, and his fingers were reflexively unclenching and clenching into fists and his vision threatened to blur over but he viciously snuffed out that feeling as fingers would a flame.
"Well, Sergeant Barnes," he heard himself say, winded, once hysterical laughter tapered off, "Yes, I guess that would be all."
He pushed off from the wall -- god, his head, whose bright idea was this? -- stumbled forward a few steps, and then felt it. That helpless anger. He straightened, the world was still blurry at the edges and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears as he launched himself at Barnes, one fist thrown back to deliver a sharp punch to his face.
James knew enough to know (if not fully understand) that grief and anger were predictably potent at making people act unpredictably. The memories which Tony had seen were ones he didn’t fully recognize as his own, nor as being real; there was so much that he doubted, so much he could not convince himself was grounded in reality. The fate of Howard and Maria Stark being sealed by the squeeze of his finger on the trigger: was that real? or was it yet another thing he’d read and his mind, under this new pressure, had now cobbled together some half-fabricated image that fed into Tony’s own doubts and fears?
…. and so hysteria followed hard (supposed) truths and was succeeded by violence. James was on his feet by the time Tony took those first few staggering steps away from the wall… and then, there he was, the Soldier, that numbing presence in the peripheries of his vision, pushing in and sharply, keenly alert.
He knew exactly where the punch was going to land, and when.
No, let him have this one.
And the Soldier did.
(Steve could have displaced him -- easily, given his current state. A naked human fist, however, was a brush of pressure; the skin over his cheek would split and then heal again in a matter of hours, and in a day or so there would be nothing left.)
Tony probably broke a few bones in his hand (immovable object, meet pathetic show of very stoppable force, oh how he wish he could call the suit), the crunch of bone against tendon grinding beneath skin felt like relief, even as the force of his swing had him staggering against and practically hanging off Barnes like he was a fucking stone gargoyle. Super soldier, now featured in the Programmable Killer Assassin model, yet still retained its classic feature of being utterly aggravating simply by breathing.
He glared at Barnes, this close, saw that hollow-eyed gaze and felt both foolish and furious at once. "They really carved you out."
And that was all he could say, voice thickened. He released himself from Barnes, suddenly feeling the new pains in his hand, focused and held onto that bright blossom as an anchor.
On his way out, his foot came down on the device left abandoned on the floor, one swift smash to reduce everything to useless pieces. “We’re done here. You should probably stick with Steve.” And stay away from him.
The combination of confusion and potential guilt would have been overwhelming if it wasn’t for the moderating influence of the Soldier, his indifference emanating into a recipient who was, in that moment, very willing. That his cheek now stung from the blow was sensory input that could be pushed away and ignored; something else hurt, something beyond the center of his chest, something that Bucky would have had and James almost did. But the Soldier wasn’t meant to feel, wasn’t meant to care, and James was feeling far too much right now.
Where was Control to order an immediate wipe in order to revoke the troubling emotions? Tony was stricken and James didn’t know what to do.
His "okay" was stilted, hitting the air only by the time Tony was through the door. He wanted to say I’m sorry for what you think I remember doing or I’m sorry I can’t make more sense or even fuck you for even looking, but instead, the steadying, icy presence muffled his words and kept him otherwise silent.
He could do silent. Until you desecrated it, silence did not judge.