After seeing The Winter Soldier last Thursday this kind of just came pouring out.
Again, spoilers for the second Captain America film, so I would suggest seeing the movie first. Well, I suggest seeing the movie in general, but you may be spoiled for some things if you read this before seeing it.
I don't own a thing Marvel related beyond a few pairs of socks, comic books, and a few DVDs - certainly not the rights to anything.
Enjoy!
She remembers him young and bright and brave.
The man in his flag's colors as he leaps, away from her. She remembers him as a voice that saves the world when it dies...
Peggy wakes much as she has for the past several years.
The sun is bright where it shines through her window, and she smiles to see another day dawning
She had dreamed another memory. After seventy years the images, faded as they were to her waking mind, are still clear and crisp and vivid in her sleep.
Today will be a good day, she can feel it.
And she is right.
Lunch-time brings another memory, brought to life.
She can hardly believe her eyes. He's returned to her. He's well, and whole, and alive, and the sheer elation that floods her is like nothing she has ever felt before.
Like her very dreams come to life again, and she's young again, with her entire life ahead of her.
She tells him of her life after him, and he smiles at her, happy for her.
He is everything her memories recall, and everything her dreams tell her.
Today was a very good day, indeed.
She dreams of the past, and the day is forgotten...
Peggy wakes much as she has for the past several years...
But she'll never remember him as the man who returned.
-()-
He can't remember the man. Not as the man would like him to.
But then, he really doesn't remember much anyway. Memories are a burden to him: what use does a weapon have for memories of warmth and quiet and care?
It is another day in the life of the Soldier.
He wakes, and is told where to go, who to kill, everything he needs to know but nothing more.
He never questions this.
He never questions, or even notices for that matter, that what he does is not normal, is not human. He doesn't think far enough beyond his orders most days to even see himself as human.
He is the Soldier. He is the mission, and nothing more.
It's only when his mission drags on for longer than necessary that he begins to think.
In those moments he remembers.
It's never much.
He is able to think far enough outside the mission parameters to see himself, and every time he hates it.
They left enough of who he used to be. He's certain it's because those qualities they preserved were valuable to them.
He had to have learned how to shoot, to fight, to kill somewhere.
The memories of learning are tied to feelings... faces...
And this man before him, bearing a star for his defense, has a face from his memories.
He ignores it.
This man is in the way of his mission, and he never fails.
The man says something, a name...
He ignores it.
The pain on his face is enough for the Soldier to remember, to dwell on.
He cannot help but remember more with the memories clawing from the dark, forgotten places.
The face is clearer, his memories stronger, when they debrief him.
But it doesn't matter, because nothing will be left afterwards...
But he remembers the determined eyes, the bright spirit that would. not. DIE no matter what he uses to kill it.
He's sent out again.
The memories shift beneath the surface. He ignores them.
He is cold, unfeeling duty. The Soldier, and nothing more.
Failure is impossible.
For him, dying is not the stopping of breath and blood. That is for others less than the Soldier.
The mission is incomplete, and so he lives even if he is helpless and at his mission's mercy.
The man, inexplicably, decides to save him.
This time the man refuses to fight back.
His words are lies. The Soldier has no past, no future. He is only the present, frozen in that moment between.
He cannot have memories...
The Soldier can't afford to ignore the words, not when they bring the rush of feeling, of faces he cannot know, of everything climbing up from a past that does not, cannot, exist.
The memories match the face in front of him.
Then the face is getting smaller, fading, and that's familiar too.
He knows him. Knew him...
The Soldier has no past, no memories, no faces he knows, no feelings.
If he has all of those... is he still the Soldier?
He remembers a man who fights for everyone else, fights for the Soldier who would destroy him, but won't fight for himself. Who would even do that?
Who is this man who claims memories that can't exist?
Who would die for nothing more than those memories?
And what does it mean that the Soldier doesn't want the man to be lying?