A Face of Memory
All characters belong to Marvel Comics
I own nothing.
Darkness. He felt trapped in a labyrinth of dark and twisting nightmares; only the the softness of light that crept over his exposed skin separated him from the shadows. Everything felt cold around him; he sat in the bunker alone in his entanglement of thoughts, pressed the bare planes of his scarred back against the cement wall.
Blood ran down his smooth, clean-shaven jaw, and slowly invaded the indents of his chest pectoral as lines of maroon sloped downward to the compacted area of his abdomen.
It had been three hours since his debriefing of his last mission, and his mind ran blank with endless static, as he roved his daunting, vacant, steel-blue eyes over at the silver tray of food his handlers provided for him.
Inhaling the scents of food, he probed his metal fingers over the blanket tucked underneath his slender and battered frame, his muscles burned of exhaustion and bones throbbed under the iron beaten layers of his skin. He was given freedom, only for a few hours before he will received his orders. For seventy years, he waited and obeyed the orders, never questioning and never looking back once the smoke cleared.
In the darkness of his merger sanity, he found comfort and searched for an escape from the surging impulses of their mind control invading his thoughts and wiping his existence every time he got closer of unmasking his true face.
Within the array of the chaotic thoughts imprisoning his mind, he always seemed to find another face when he peered deeper into the crevices and broke through the stone barricades with the symbol of HYDRA smeared in red, dripping over the cracks. It was just a glimpse that he saw-a preserved image of a man he knew from another lifetime. When he had existence without the strings controlling his mortality.
He could never say the name, sometimes he forced a few words when his throat unclogged, but the identity of the ghost in his thoughts conceived was buried into the abyss of the ice, rage and control.
He wanted to unlock his voice and throw away the muzzle they place over his mouth to keep him silent under their power,but he knew he is a defiant, stubborn and resilient. He stood in darkness of their pits and allowed them to lash pain over his skin and break him until he felt his soul drain out.
They took everything from him...His name, memories and heart and molded him into a monster that is dead to the world and alive for Hydra.
His missions became his existence, his life became their weapon and his dreams faded into configurations of nightmares.
In time you will accept this life, Soldier. You are the face of HYDRA and you always follow our commands.
Now, he sat in the dead silence with lethal patience coursing through his veins. He tilted his head back, allowing his shoulder length dark strands to shroud over his youthful and chiseled face. He twirled a combat knife with his fingers and stared down at the folder on the bedside desk.
Sensing a strange bout of recollection, he tore his blue eyes away and noticed a pen on the cement floor, a shadow of a smirk played on his frozen lips, as he extended his metal arm down, grimacing as he heard the metal plates hiss with movement and grabbed the small writing tool.
Clenching his heavy, chiseled jaw he brought the pen close to his face and studied it with his menacing blue embers. He clicked the pen as a rebellious gleam masked over his harden stare.
Looking at the object clutch in his firm grasp, he felt a little piece of humanity brush over his tortured soul as he opened the folder and grabbed a page. He didn't care about the information printed on the other side, feeling his soul stir when a memory sliced through time, he refused to focus on the mission preparation and dragged the tip of the pen against the paper.
He closed his eyelids shut, blocking off everything around him and searched for a memory underneath weaved webs of HYDRA's control. Allowing his hand to guide him out of the delirium, he grasped the image of the face he kept hidden from his superiors and the volts of electronic pulses raking off his memories when the metal probes rest over his temples and he unleashed his screams of having his soul butchered over and over again until he is an empty, fried husk without a consistence.
Dead.
His eyebrows furrowed into a sullen expression when he saw the face, and he started sketching every detail of the man as the image became clear as he drew a light outline of a sharp and structural face.
"I know you," he whispered, his voice is dark and strained, it had been days since he spoke without wearing the muzzle.
He started with the eyes, the same focused and determined cobalt eyes that held a fierce and noble spirit behind them.
"You have blue eyes." He added the pupils and darkens the irises with only a smudge of white. "You were a good man." He drew in the perfect nose almost like it was carved out of stone and the soft curved shape of the man's lips to match; he remembered how that full, arched mouth always gave a lopsided smirk.
He drew in the thick eyebrows and shaded in all the details that had come to him-the long lashes at the curve of the eyelids, the chiseled definition of a strong jaw and finally the short light hair that was slightly parted with a small curl hanging over his forehead. He finished the drawing, adding lines for a neck and wrote down a few words in Russian and English underneath the sketch.
Я знал его... I knew him
In those long moments, he stared solely at the drawing, before the door opened and the high superior steps inside the room. "Everything is set. We've only got one shot at this mission. The threat must be terminated for HYDRA to thrive." the older, ginger-haired man gave him a hard look. "Do you understand, Soldier?"
"Yes," he nodded slowly, fighting his emotions. "I understand."
"Good," the leader affirmed with a sadistic grin tugging over his withered lips. "All the information on the target is in that folder. Read it and then suit up."
The door slammed rattling the wall; he didn't flinch. Instead he narrowed his eyes down at the folder and scanned over the documents until he froze and flipped over the paper with the drawing.
His molten blue colored eyes grew wide as he blanched against the bed and grabbed his knife-stabbing the blade violently into the center of a pillow, ripping out the feathers.
The face...The man he remembered had a name that will soon be written in blood.
"Steven Grant Rogers..." he growled out his target and curved his lips into a vicious grimace as he ended his words with a heart wrenching snarl emitting from the depths of his raw throat, his metal fingers curled into a tight fist. "You're my mission!"