Soldier Boy was a hard monument of sharp edges and blunt walls ever since you knew him, around ‘45 when he was this tall, shiny figure in boys’ rooms and patriots’ kitchens. It’s probably why the whiplash hits so hard through all those golden years, where he slips blood in every conversation, and all of them are afraid of him, everyone who doesn't know him, admires him, hero of heroes.

In Nicaragua, 1984, he's the ghost of a god with a bloodied shield used as an ax to your teammate's head, you see Noir's brains tainting the dusty battlefield and suddenly there’s no enemies and no allies. They took you out too, because they knew you wouldn't turn on him, not on your leader — you were the only one who never left Vought Tower with a split lip from his fist, and he saw you as his — equal, in some hidden form.

Amongst the brawl of the sudden battle, tables turned, you feel your teammate's blade to your back and the confusion seeps into you, not being as quick to respond with violence as Soldier Boy was, and his hand on your back to push you roughly out of his wrath was the sole perpetrator of his favor. The rest was a blur of forty, lonely years — betrayed and abandoned, he was left in Soviet hell, tortured and ripped to the seams, and you were left, point blank. Both of you had been casted aside by Vought and Payback, to be replaced by shinier figures of new ages, to appeal to ungrateful masses, he got caught and you got lost somewhere between Nicaragua and Russia, a neutralized threat.

Nothing's new and nothing's forgotten when a group of supe-killers brought you back from the dead, and Soldier Boy with them, both of you frozen in time, feelings hardened.

“Forty years is a hell of a long time to leave a man behind.” The first words Soldier Boy speaks to you, are serious and low, when he takes a long stride to you, dead men on the floor and The Boys, who seem to be waiting for you both, behind him. He looks just the same, and he would've never let 'em have you, had the roles be reversed.