#( alternate universe ) every lie you've ever been sold. the greatest story ever told.

[zapasnoysoldat]

Sometimes I think about how Luka has spent over two decades isolated from the world, hiding who he is, because he wants to be left the fuck alone after everything he's been through. But also because he's genuinely terrified of what could happen if an org like HYDRA or governments like the UN or the USA got their hands on him. He knows he's a weapon of mass destruction. He knows not a single government or intelligence agency or whatever can be trusted. And he'll be damned before he ever lets anyone use him like a weapon again.

[zapasnoysoldat]

Luka has a lot of scars. A lot. During his training with HYDRA pre-serum, they would often deliberately aim to leave scars as reminders of mistakes made. Not to mention Karpov enjoyed inflicting pain on Luka whenever he deemed his performance to be "insufficient". Especially Luka's upper legs and back are littered with scars of cuts, burns, bullets, etc since those scars are easily hidden.

[zapasnoysoldat]

FILE :// 1264LA_WSP . . . . ACCESSING . . . . UNKNOWN ERROR ENCOUNTERED

(in affiliation with @vekovoysoldat)

Luka Aristov was born in December 1964 to Ruslan Aristov, a high ranking HYDRA officer, and an unknown female prisoner in the secret weapons factory Ruslan was in charge of. Luka was raised by his father in a strict, military style way. His father put a lot of pressure on him both physically and mentally, indoctrinating him into HYDRA ideology from an early age and requiring extensive physical training. And while this upbringing did instill certain values in Luka, he never became a true believer like his father. At the age of eighteen, Luka joined the paramilitary branch of HYDRA, as was expected of him.

He quickly rose through the ranks, excelling at several forms of combat, tactics, stealth, and so on. By the age of twenty-five, he was one of HYDRA's top assassins. By 1991, he was under the command of Colonel Vasily Karpov as a candidate for the Winter Soldier Program. Luka and five others were selected to receive the bath of supersoldier serum that had been retrieved from Howard Stark's car. It was a great honor and Luka's father was proud of his son's achievement.

The serum worked and the team began training under The Winter Soldier, also known as Bucky Barnes. During this time, Colonel Karpov began to show special interest in Luka's progress. Under the guise of specialised training and supervision, Luka was subjected to repeated incidents of mental, physical and sexual abuse by Karpov in an attempt to keep him obedient to HYDRA. When Luka addressed this to his father, Ruslan's answer was as simple as it was cruel: he had no right to speak of his superior that way or question his commands.

Throughout the first few missions of the team as supersoldiers, it became apparent that the side effects of the serum were severe. They were stronger, faster and could endure more than the original version of the serum, but there were signs of mental instability. However, of all members, Luka seemed least or even not affected by this. Because of this, it was Luka who was sent to accompany the Winter Soldier on a mission in Vienna in 1993.

During this mission, the Winter Soldier's conditioning began to break. Instead of calling this in, Luka decided to take the man to a safehouse an hour outside the city to disappear from HYDRA's radar. They spent three weeks in the cabin while Bucky slowly began to regain his memories, with Luka there to keep him safe and help him through the worst of it. The two men bonded over their abuse at the hands of Colonel Karpov and the desire to escape him. And so they promised each other that once Bucky had regained his strength, they'd get out together.

It never got to that. After three weeks in hiding, HYDRA tracked them down and raided the cabin. Instead of fighting, Luka froze and gave Bucky up, pretending to have been held captive by the now unstable Winter Soldier. Karpov believed the story, deciding to put Bucky back into cryostasis and let Luka rejoin the team.

About two months later, during a team mission, the five others expressed their intent to kill Karpov and the rest of HYDRA command and assume power. Knowing that it would mean either getting deeper into this organisation or death, Luka made the choice to get out. He disappeared during the mission, managed to go underground and shake of HYDRA's tail. After the failed coup, the others were put into cryostasis and several teams were sent out to locate and retrieve Luka. However, he stayed out of their grasp. To cover up their failure and hide Luka's existence from any rival interested parties, they erased his existence and participation in the Winter Soldier Program from their records. It's this that has allowed him to live undisturbed for over twenty years now. Not even Helmut Zemo was aware of Luka's existence when he executed the other team members in the facility in Siberia.

He's lived a quiet life ever since, moving from country to country every five or so years to hide the fact he does not age or become sick. He prefers to stay away from anything HYDRA, superhero, or spy related, as he knows that he is not just an operative. He is a weapon of mass destruction. Having bested The Winter Soldier in combat three times, he's more than aware of what he's capable of.

But he knows his past will catch up to him, most likely in the shape of one Bucky Barnes...

[zapasnoysoldat]

Luka was trained by the Winter Soldier for several months after receiving the serum. Because of this, he moves and fights in a very similar way: ruthless, efficient and with little to no regard for his own survival.

[zapasnoysoldat]

Despite never being the ideological hardliner his father had wanted him to be, it still took years for Luka to unlearn a lot of the shit HYDRA and his father had been feeding him since he was a child. After a lifetime of obedience, apathy, and totalitarian order, it was hard for him to adjust to the world on his own. Notions of freedom and equality were foreign to him and he spent the first few years researching the truth about HYDRA and history, untangling his mind from their indoctrination.

Figuring out the truth has left him bitter and angry with everything they robbed from him, and even worse, everything they made him complicit in. He's sworn to himself to do anything and everything in his power to destroy HYDRA when given the opportunity, and he will stand by that vow until the day he dies.

[zapasnoysoldat]

The Super Soldier Serum that was stolen from Howard Stark and used in the Winter Soldier program was superior to that given to both Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. It eliminated the need for Vita Radiation and only required an infusion. Once the serum took effect, the subjects were isolated in a cell for 12 hours to go through an agonizing physical transformation. Once they had survived those 12 hours, they possessed abilities equal to and even greater than the previously created Super Soldiers. Luka himself was able to best Bucky Barnes two times during his training within the program.

These abilities include:

Enhanced strength: to early superhuman levels, capable of overpowering even Bucky Barnes with his bionic prosthetic.

Enhanced durability: they can withstand forces that would instantly kill regular humans

Enhanced speed & agility

Enhanced stamina: to the point that they can complete missions of several days without needing sleep or rest

Enhanced reflexes

Enhanced cognitive functions: includes things like enhanced memory, the capacity to process information & learn at a greater speed than regular humans so that they can adapt to any situation, hyperfocus, increased perception, etc.

Regenerative healing factor: while they will not completely heal from injuries by themselves, they require little medical interventions for injuries that aren't directly life-threatening.

Longevity: they age at a very slow rate, to the point that over the past two decades, Luka has only visibly aged a few years.

However, there were also severe side effects. Not only did Stark's serum create better Super Soldiers, the fact it messed with their minds as well trigged a process of increased mental instability in nearly all the subjects that were given the serum. All of the arrogance, hatred, superiority and lust for violence and power that had been present in the subjects was amplified, leading to them becoming uncontrollable. Only Luka was spared this rapid decline, something he attests to the fact he was never a true ideological hardliner like the other Winter Soldiers and thus never slid further down that scale.

This doesn't mean he doesn't feel the effects of the serum on a mental level, though. Since the serum, he's dealt with night terrors, self-destructive behavior, an increased temper, and risk-taking behavior. All things that were already there but became heightened after the serum.

[zapasnoysoldat]

During Luka's third mission under Karpov's command, he was supposed to abduct, torture & kill a target who had vital information on a large NATO military project. And Luka failed. He succeeded in kidnapping the guy but he escaped and Luka had no other option than to kill the man before he could alert others to what had happened.

On his return to Karpov, Luka paid dearly for that mistake. He was isolated and tortured for six full days, which included waterboarding, beatings, mock executions and starvation. He was only released once Karpov felt he had "learned his lesson": that the only acceptable outcomes were success or death. After that, he was only given two days to recover before joining training sessions again. Luka never failed a mission again, regardless of what it cost him.

[zapasnoysoldat]

Luka rarely, if ever, talks about his father or Karpov. Partially because talking about what happened is still a struggle, partially because he refuses to give those bastards any more of his time and energy.

On bad days, being reminded of them and what happened will put him into fight or flight mode immediately. He might take off on his motorcycle for hours, or start baking obsessively. Or he might just punch you in the face for mentioning them.

[zapasnoysoldat]

It took Luka years to find peace with what happened, and how he grew up. His mental health is still a bit rocky and sometimes he still wonders if he even has a right to live after everything. It's not as bad as it used to be, but he's always hyperaware of any change in his mood and thoughts.

[zapasnoysoldat]

According to the autopsy report, Luka's father died after overdosing on sleeping pills and drowning in his bathtub. It was ruled a suicide. It happened four years after Luka escaped HYDRA. And it was not a suicide. Luka tracked him down and killed him in retaliation for a lifetime of abuse.