Chapter Text
Dirk was very young when he arrived at Blackwing.
Well, he wasn’t Dirk then. And he wasn’t really Svlad anymore- that name belonged to a little boy, with a family and a life (Albeit, a very strange one.) All of that was very far removed from the high towers and grey walls of the government facility. Some at Blackwing, with kindly demeanors and open hands, would come to call him Project Icarus- but that, of course, wasn’t a name for a person at all. And there would be other names, barked and spat- but those were lies. Lies. Lies….
And you also couldn’t necessarily say that he “arrived”. Was brought, maybe. Arrived implied a purpose and welcome. And none of that was given by the people who had surrounded him- who still stood around, towering, and blocking the sky as he hopped down from the seat of the government-issued car.
As Dirk would soon learn, words, like people, could lie even as they told the truth. So, really, all he could say was this.
That he was young.
And he was here.
“Here”, he would come to find out, was Blackwing- a government agency who apparently needed help doing “important work”. Dirk’s role in this was ill-defined but seemed to involve trying to solve an endless series of strange puzzles. Memory games, games of chance, confusing patterns and colors and sounds…
At first there were full days where he would be pulled from his bed and brought before new people in lab coats- looking him over in excitement and scribbling away… They would shake his hand and tell him how special he was was, how happy they were to get to work. But no matter what answers he gave or how hard he tried, those days always ended with the smiles dimmed and the scribbling slowed.
He would then be escorted back to his room by the tall, silent, people where he would sit alone, until the next time he was wanted.
Which was becoming less and less.
It’s not that Dirk didn’t want to help with whatever Blackwing was doing. It was just that he couldn’t do what they wanted, didn’t understand what they wanted. The tests often seemed to have no purpose or were administered without explanation- as if he were just supposed to make things happen. And with every wrong answer, every failure, he was simply encouraged to “try harder”, to “take this seriously”.
There was no excitement anymore. The revolving cast of scientists stagnated, until it was just the few, bored or apathetic. They would throw their questions at Dirk and, when he failed to please them, would throw him away, shoved out of sight, like a broken toy.
Or, rather, it was the Tall people who would do the throwing. The ones who had brought him, surrounded him and escorted him- but never spoke with him. They had been pillars, as much a part of the building as people- equally blank and dispassionate, discharging their duty.
The change was slow. But as each frustrated week gave way, the shine of professionalism was dulled. Quick marches turned to shuffles and stern watchfulness to a slouch. But if his guards grew smaller in Dirk’s eyes, it only brought their true faces into view.
The first words any of them spoke were not even to Dirk, but were the result of a day of particularly long tests. Trying to stay awake, at least until he reached the quiet solitude of his room, Dirk had tripped in the hall and would have fallen on his face if one of his guards (One of the usual cast of characters that Dirk was beginning to recognize) hadn’t reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Startled back to alertness, Dirk had turned, intending to say thank you to the man, until he found himself thrust back upright but with almost enough force to make him fall again.
Seeing the stumble, the guard merely dropped into a sneer and muttered, “Little shit.” before they were all walking again and Dirk ushered along between them.
After that, it became common for the formerly quiet escort to be punctuated with impatient shoves or bored grumblings. At first they would just offer complaints about the length of a shift or their higher ups. But it didn’t take long for their charge to become the focus of their ire and their more targeted insults- though their target did his best to just stay silent and small, as if he could escape notice.
(Just let him get to his room. His room where at least if he was alone then no one was yelling at him or pushing him. Where he could reread his few tattered novels and pretend he was outside those walls… Until the next round began.)
Morning, noon and night- almost all of the human interaction he had.
In fact, the only person that Dirk ever spoke to beyond the tests, the only one who seemed to like him, was Riggins.
Riggins was supposed to be the head of Blackwing, but he didn’t treat Dirk like the others did. He spoke to him, calmly and kindly.
In fact, at least once a week or so, there would be a knock on Dirk’s bedroom door and Riggins would poke his head in and smile before inviting himself in for a “chat”. He would sit down right next to Dirk on the cot and pat him on the shoulder, asking how Dirk was and putting the week into context.
He would use big words and look Dirk in the eye, like he was sharing important secrets, like Dirk could understand. And Dirk wanted to do everything, everything and anything, to live up to that image of himself. He wasn’t a freak or a failure. He was special. He was “holistic”....
These chats were the most positive interactions that Dirk received each week and the only times that he could work up the nerve to ask any questions about what his life had become. Riggins never seemed to mind. In fact, he would beam at Dirk and then proceed to answer at length; how important their work was, how he needed to work very hard, and how everything that Dirk was going through served a purpose, would train him so that he would be able to help people.
Glancing over at the book on his nightstand, one of the few novels that came with his room, all about gritty secret agents putting it all on the line for the country they loved…. Dirk straightened his shoulders and tried to look cool, tried to feel brave….
“So…. like a spy?”
Riggins laughed again, his hand heavy on Dirk’s shoulder. “Sure,” he said indulgently, standing up from from the bed. “Like a spy.”