He swallows thickly, not sure what to do or think. He has an out. Dolemeck just gave him a magnificent one, a way to bow out and never bring up the whole truth again with a simple deflection of 'I'm not ready'. It's tempting. It's horrifically tempting to just abandon thinking and the past and fall headlong into this, this love, this moment, a world he finally has a tiny bit of control over.
But it would be lying. Lying by omission is still lying. So he takes a deep breath and tries to find a starting point. He won't lie to Dolemeck. He cares too much to do that. "The mines in Pevek were a cover. They - you know about Captain America, how he was given the super soldier serum and changed? The government was trying to recreate it, but everyone kept dying in the trial runs of the serums they came up with. So they took people who wouldn't be missed, trumped up charges to put them away in places like the mining camp, and then picked off people from that to try the latest attempt at a serum on. If it poisoned everybody and ten people were suddenly dead, it was a mining accident or disease caused by living in close quarters. It helped uranium was in the mines and that was legendary in how toxic it was.
I was picked as one of the people they were going to do a trial run on. It didn't work, obviously. But my mutations all got revealed at once, and they thought that meant it had worked. So they were going to send me to European Russia, to be trained. I don't know what they were going to do to me. I didn't have anywhere to run to and they promised me my family would be compensated. I was stupid. They could've had horrible plans and I just went along with it, got on the train like an obedient little olovyannyy soldatik."
Give him a moment. There's a lot of memories that stall him, make him have to take steadying breaths. He realizes belatedly his voice has gotten quiet and he's shaking slightly - he remembers the pain, writhing on the floor, things thrown about in a telekinetic maelstrom, telepathically crying out while his healing factor fought at the poison burning him from the inside out. The floor was cold, uneven wood. He thinks he'll remember that kind of tiny detail for life.
no subject
But it would be lying. Lying by omission is still lying. So he takes a deep breath and tries to find a starting point. He won't lie to Dolemeck. He cares too much to do that. "The mines in Pevek were a cover. They - you know about Captain America, how he was given the super soldier serum and changed? The government was trying to recreate it, but everyone kept dying in the trial runs of the serums they came up with. So they took people who wouldn't be missed, trumped up charges to put them away in places like the mining camp, and then picked off people from that to try the latest attempt at a serum on. If it poisoned everybody and ten people were suddenly dead, it was a mining accident or disease caused by living in close quarters. It helped uranium was in the mines and that was legendary in how toxic it was.
I was picked as one of the people they were going to do a trial run on. It didn't work, obviously. But my mutations all got revealed at once, and they thought that meant it had worked. So they were going to send me to European Russia, to be trained. I don't know what they were going to do to me. I didn't have anywhere to run to and they promised me my family would be compensated. I was stupid. They could've had horrible plans and I just went along with it, got on the train like an obedient little olovyannyy soldatik."
Give him a moment. There's a lot of memories that stall him, make him have to take steadying breaths. He realizes belatedly his voice has gotten quiet and he's shaking slightly - he remembers the pain, writhing on the floor, things thrown about in a telekinetic maelstrom, telepathically crying out while his healing factor fought at the poison burning him from the inside out. The floor was cold, uneven wood. He thinks he'll remember that kind of tiny detail for life.
He falls silent, lost for a bit in the memory.