Author's Note: This is just an idea I had recently; it's not the kind of thing I usually do. Let me know if you enjoyed it by leaving me a review! Thanks for reading.
Dedicated to Firestar'sniece
. . .
"From the ashes a fire shall be woken, / A light from the shadows shall spring; / Renewed shall be blade that was broken, / The crownless again shall be king"
—J.R.R. Tolkien
. . .
Coldness. Darkness. Deadness. These were all that the soul of the Winter Soldier knew as it languished in its void. It did not have purpose, it did not register any feeling, and it did not stir from its frozen state of near-nonexistence. There was nothing to think about and no one to care for. There was only the cold, the dark, and the dead.
But the soul was not truly dead as those who had imprisoned it supposed. When they had unleased their relentless winter on it, when they had beaten it down so that it could not rise, when they had snuffed out all its light and locked it in this despair, they had thought its survival impossible. Surely they had crushed the soul into nothingness! Surely it was permanently eradicated! Surely the worthless weight had finally been cut away, making the Soldier into a highly evolved, unbeatable weapon in the fist of Hydra.
For to man as man, they would readily say good riddance. The inferior, including both the unenlightened of the population and the weakness, or perhaps "mannishness", of each man individually must be purged.
And so they thought it had been. But they were not entirely correct, for though in a sense the soul was dead, in another it was not. On its own, it was surely lifeless, yet resurrection was not beyond hope. Among the ashes of the Soldier's soul, the kindling for a tiny flame still lingered, waiting for some distant light or warmth to bring it to life once again.
Yet this light—this hope of revival—was not a conscious prayer. The soul had no hope because it had nothing. There was nothing.
Until there was a speck of light.
. . .
"Bucky?" the Captain asked, his expression one of utter disbelief as he surveyed the newly revealed face of the Soldier.
What was it about that name, what was it about the way the target had said it that made the Soldier's mind glitch? It was not like a memory, but rather like the memory of a memory, and although the object of this elusive memory seemed unattainable, the Soldier somehow knew it was—or had been—important. This man had been important. To him.
The realization made the Soldier hesitate.
. . .
A tiny point of light, like the evening star on a clear night, appeared in the abyss around the Soldier's soul. The soul was incased in solid ice, but the star was visible through it all, and for the first time in years and years, the soul had a conscious thought. It wondered what that light was, and it longed to reach it, though it did not know why.
The soul then made its first active struggle. The icy prison which held it captive was thick and strong and seemingly immovable—seemingly. But as the soul pushed and kicked and turned, trying to free itself from the terrible bonds of nothingness, the fetters slowly began to give way. The soul pushed harder, new life and warmth filling its veins as the star seemed to shine brighter from behind the darkness.
At last, the soul broke through the frozen chains and rushed forward to meet the star. But it crashed head-on into a fence of iron bars, all cold to the touch and spanning so high that their tops could not be seen. The soul, in a mad eagerness to escape, grabbed the bars and shook them with all its might, shouting in vain agony, but the prison would not yield.
The soul reached through the bars, groping for the distant point of light and weeping as it failed to touch the warm, friendly star.
. . .
"But I knew him," the Soldier insisted, his brow wrinkling as his mind raced in confusion. Why was that man's face causing him so much turmoil? He had no idea, but he did know that he ought to know and ought to care.
"Prep him," Pierce instructed the handlers in the room.
"He's been out of cryofreeze too long," one protested.
"Then wipe him and start over."
. . .
The Soldier's soul was thrown back from the bars as a shaft of deathly white lightning shot at it from the darkness ahead. It encompassed the soul and squeezed it like a boa constrictor, draining the life out of it with each second of torment. The soul screamed and screamed, but in the void there was no one to hear it.
The lightning continued so long that the soul's consciousness soon died away, leaving only a mindless shell behind. Then the electricity turned to ice, still wrapping around its victim like a serpent. The star winked out of the sky, leaving the soul as it had been before.
Trapped in coldness, darkness, and deadness.
But it wasn't irrevocably dead.
. . .
"People are gonna die, Buck," the Captain said, facing the Soldier directly. "I can't let that happen." The Soldier's expression did not change, and why should it? This mission would soon be complete, and this man's pathetic attempts to arouse mercy or pity from the Soldier would accomplish nothing.
"Please don't make me do this," the target begged, his voice breaking a bit and his eyes full of emotion. But the Soldier did not care.
He fought his foe without hesitation or emotion. Nothing made him stop, not even being choked out of consciousness. When he awakened, he fired his gun several times into the Captain, severely wounded him and making the mission nearly complete. However, it seemed that the man had possessed a mission of his own, for after inserting a chip into a computer, the hellicarrier began taking fire and falling apart.
A massive piece of debris came out of nowhere and crashed on top of the Soldier, pinning him to the metal floor like a nail in a coffin. He would surely die here as the hellicarrier plummeted to the earth below. He would die and his mission would be unfinished. But then he was surprised—nay, amazed. He saw the Captain's battered figure stumbling towards him, the man's face and expression causing some strange glitch in the Soldier's mind.
A glitch. Had this happened before?
. . .
Amid the cold, the dark, and the death, a faint ray of starlight appeared. The Soldier's soul saw it, even from inside its bonds of ice, and it found that it wanted to meet that light. It needed to meet that light.
So it struggled. As it fought, it seemed that two things were happening at once. The star was getting brighter and warmer, but at the same time, the darkness and ice were also fighting back with ferocious vengeance. The snake-like fetters of winter constricted tighter and tighter, threatening to crush every last remnant of existence the soul still possessed. But just as the soul began to run out of strength, a miracle happened.
The star's warm stream of light began melting the ice.
The darkness protested, thrashing the soul about with desperate hatred, but now that the soul had seen the ice's failings, it pressed on with renewed vigor, fighting through the haze of nothingness and crawling towards the light.
The soul found again the iron fence, the solid barrier and supposedly impenetrable defense against escape. The soul screamed with a scream that only a light-starved captive can utter, and with every singly drop of its will, it disregarded any pain and apparent lack of success as it slammed itself into the bars over and over and over.
. . .
"You name is James Buchanan Barnes," the Captain stated defiantly.
"Shut up!" the Soldier yelled, punching the target's face as hard as he could.
The man collapsed backwards, but with some hidden and seemingly unquenchable strength, he rose back to his feet and ripped off his helmet, looking the Soldier in the eye. That face…the Soldier had seen that face somewhere. The glitch from before was now more than that—it was flat out confusion and turmoil.
"I'm not gonna fight you," the target insisted, dropping his shield to legitimize his words. "You're my friend."
The Soldier hesitated. That hesitation was against everything his training instincts had told him, and he knew it. The torture and brainwashing and years of being in ice all shouted together, demanding this man's blood. The Soldier was so lost, so unable to think, that he let his rage be focused on his target. He had to finish the assignment.
With a growl of rage, the Soldier launched himself forward and tackled the Captain. "You're my mission," he seethed in anger. Then he let the blows fly, punching the target as many times as his muscles could manage. "You're. My. Mission!"
The Soldier hesitated again, though this time it was to gather his strength for a final blow. He didn't need to listen to glitches or memories or emotions. He was the Winter Soldier; his resilience to such things was what made him indestructible. And now he would prove it by ending this worthless excuse for a soldier that lay defeated before him.
. . .
The soul faltered, collapsing in a wasted, mangled heap before the iron bars. There was no way out; the light was impossible to reach. It must only be an illusion put there to torment the soul, to remind it that it could never be free or warm or glad again. Hope itself was just a lie, and in reality, one must either embrace the coldness, darkness, and deadness of the world or else waste existence chasing the futile illusion.
There could be no light; it must be a lie.
But it wasn't.
. . .
"Then finish it," the Captain said in the moment before the blow fell, "Because I'm with you 'til the end of the line."
. . .
The star suddenly blazed forth with such a fury that the soul, which was used to ages of darkness and cold, was dazzled by the light. The whole length of that cursed iron fence was made visible in the flash, and the soul saw with disbelief that beyond it, there was a tall mountain which led directly up to the star.
Armed with new life, warmth, and hope beyond hope, the soul arose from the dust and leapt forward with a cry of defiance, crashing into the iron with great force. Instead of being flung back onto the frozen ground of the abyss, the soul was astonished to fall forward. The sound of a massive clash resounded through the darkness, and as the light prevailed, the soul saw that the fence was in ruins, smoldering as though burned. Burned by the star's light.
The soul shakily moved forward over the rubble, running blindly towards the light. Nothing else mattered, and no call of the defeated darkness could deter it. It pressed on, eager for the star as one is for water in a dry and weary land.
. . .
This was no longer a glitch. This was not hesitation. This was transformation. When the Soldier looked into the Captain's face, his resolve was snapped in half like a twig, and his soul opened his eyes to the friendship—the goodness—displayed by the man before him. The floor fell away and the Captain—no, it was a man named Steve—plummeted toward the water. But that wouldn't stop the Soldier; not by a longshot.
He dove into the murky river and swam underneath the tumultuous currents, reaching out and grabbing Steve's hand as the limp body sunk down. With his good arm, the Soldier paddled upward, finally breaking the surface and angling to the shore. His hand was firmly on Steve's uniform, holding him securely in a strong grip. He dragged the man to the river bank and laid him down, looking over him with a curious eye.
Who was this Steve? The Soldier still didn't know; he realized that he possessed memories of that information somewhere in his head, but he didn't yet know how to see them. However, there was something he did know. This man was the star his soul had seen, or perhaps he was a mirror or image-bearer of that light. Steve had reflected the light and awakened the Soldier's soul, rousing its need and hunger for the light.
That desire and thirst was still not quenched, and as the Soldier turned away, he was determined to seek the source of the light he so desperately needed.