he didn’t reach for the files right away, he knew the information they'd list. alexie stood where lukin had left him, broad frame unmoving in the middle of the office, eyes flicking once to the photographs laid out on the desk; natalia first, because of course it was natalia. caught mid-motion, hair pulled back, eyes alert and alive in that way that had once made him believe in a shared future - in the mundane wishes and wants of lazy mornings, finishing work on-time, a recital, a nursery ... things that didn't end in blood.

the second image sat beside it like a deliberate wound. barnes. the winter soldier. a man who had died and come back wrong so many times the word had lost meaning. alexei felt the familiar tightening in his chest, old and unwelcome. grief was there, but something sharper too, edged with something bitter. betrayal did not fade with time, it simply learned to wait.

just as he had.

he exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound controlled. gaze dropping to the desk, to the clean lines of the folders, the careful absence of anything personal. lukin knew better than to clutter the space. sentiment was a liability.

he stepped forward then, fingers closing around the edge of the desk instead of the files. for a brief moment, his grip tightened, an involuntary response, quickly mastered.

' they remember exactly what we are ... they simply chose to walk away from it. '

walk away from him, some traitorous part of his mind supplied. from the system. from the compromises. from the blood that still clung to alexei’s hands whether he acknowledged it or not.

only then did he pick up the photographs. he looked once, not long enough to indulge memory, but long enough to let it burn, and set them back down in the same precise order.

natalia had survived. barnes had survived. they had found a way to live beyond the state, beyond the handlers, beyond him. alexei had not been offered that luxury, or perhaps he had refused it. the distinction no longer mattered.

his eyes lifted to lukin at last. whatever history lay between them remained unspoken, buried beneath rank and function and the machinery of obedience. brothers only in the way shrapnel remembers the bomb.

' what are the parameters - retrieval or elimination? ' alexei asked flatly, his gaze lingering on the photos before he straightened, the hesitation gone, resolve settling into place with practiced ease.