First they shave your head. They want to study your brain as they fry it, and they think the results will be more clear without a tangled mass of hair in the way. Your left arm was broken, but it has already healed in however long you've been here. Your arm was what drew their attention to the possibility of the machine.

You've lost-there is something you're supposed to say, something you used to say that you've already lost.

Name, rank, number?

You don't know. You think you lost it early on.

What you have left is the cold (biting deep beneath your skin, burrowing into fracture and former fracture, something which has never left you) and the fall (fear, desperation, you can't catch the words but someone reaching out desperate for you to accept-except the wind like a knife cutting along stealing everything, even your will to reach out in return, then stealing you too-watching you fall like they've lost something irreplaceable).

Your mind is muddled as you watch locks of dark hair fall like memories. They don't care about the mess, letting hair scatter across your shoulders, your legs where they fold under you over freezing metal grating. Years of life disappear, the time since the last time someone strapped you down to a table and muttered and dictated in another tongue, since they found out-

-what was your secret? Your hair does not curl fashionably past your shoulders anymore (maintained with someone's help because you had them and not much else, give me a hand, -), was cut military short until-until you let it grow again, because it was already known.

The buzzer clicks on and they shave you down, tabula rasa they say, they praise. You will shape the world, they say, and the electricity arcs through you.

You are the Winter Soldier, someone says, lips curling in a way that should set your hackles up and draw your fist up, but it is cold enough that the pipes froze, maybe even burst, your focus is the hot water that won't be coming, won't gently revive.

(You're worried-it's too cold, will - be warm enough, the cold a knife in lungs that were never strong enough for, you're not sure if another winter of pneumonia could be survived-but it's distorted, quieted by the echo of electricity in muscle and bone. You're so cold.)

We have a mission for you, someone says.

You strip down under watchful eyes-eyes that track along muscle and scar and the hair dusting your body, eyes that measure your dexterity and ease of motion and tick boxes on the paperwork on casually wielded clipboards-and dress in solemn, silent black. You strap holsters down, accept a spare magazine and pistol, cradle the rifle as you test its weight, test the slide as you load it.

A van that blends into the grayed snow drops you a block off the building you are ordered to climb. You take the fire escape, silent except the layers of your pants sliding against each other as you climb. Several stories up you find a window you can prise open, slip through. You've left tracks so far in the snow and move inside to end their trail.

The warmth is familiar, like a touch of comfort, a broad bony hand rising from beneath warm blankets to gently pat your cold cheek (geez it's morning why're you so cold, come on under the blankets-)

You don't let anyone see you. You move through halls with flickering lights, heavy with stale air and with carpets stained by unknown legions of feet. You slip back onto the fire escape at the top floor and make your way onto the roof.

You lay down the coat that concealed your weaponry on the roof and set up the rifle. In case your nest is found before the snow is buried or melts, you can at least blur the impression you leave.

You settle your breathing and into place and wait.

The air is still until it's not, but you are as steady as your breathing. You have made shots such as these before, this is no novelty to correcting in compensation for the wind, the night, the cold, the stiffening of joints that have been in place for hours.

A laughing man bumps into his companion, arm curling around her. Pink mist floats momentarily and settles in the polluted snow as the man falls and the woman begins to scream.

The air is cold and the wind and distance smother whatever words rose up.

You pocket the shell and pack up your nest, abandon it. The rifle settles easily over your back and returns to hiding beneath the coat. Only when you are back in the van, surrounded by silent men who confirmed your kill, do you realize your hand is clenching open and closed, like you're trying to reach out across an abyss.

They have you strip down again, after the van, leave you standing in the cold air as they watch and decide: to the cell, or to the chair? They're ready to order you into a chair that is not a chair when someone reaches for you, as if to guide, and your hand snaps out.

There is blood on your knuckles, your cheek, in your eyes, when they force you down, strap you down into the machine. This is not an alleyway, there is no hand reaching up for yours, you think desperately, and then there is only electricity in its place.

They are testing you against another subject, a tall man. He is strong but so are you. And you know how to fight in a way that he does not understand, grappling and with no particular pride about moves he condemns as dirty.

You pin him securely, and when the order comes, you release him and stand at attention. There is blood down your legs and they stare in angered condemnation. (It's not a big deal, I've done about as bad to the sheets. If it's that bad I'll wash 'em myself, and there must be something left over from my ma.) Fix this, the men with clipboards hiss at each other. The lone woman who stands with them is quiet, considering.

I have an idea, she says. They strap you down and you watch and feel as they plant something below the skin on the underside of your arm.

Afterwards you don't bleed like that. Not in that way.

Your body is slow with the weight of added chemicals, heavy in your veins, but there is movement between your legs, pressing down on your hips. You lift the hands that are praised as unshakeable and wind them directly over arteries, feel the pressure of blood trying to oxygenate vital processes.

You squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until cartilage and bone give way under your fingers.

You let the corpse fall to the floor and then there is almost-silent hiss of gas seeping into the room. You are just alert enough to accept the mouthguard before you become part of the electric circuit.

This time the clipboard carriers bring in someone with a tape measure. You stand at attention as the woman moves around you, measures the breadth of your arms, the span of your torso.

It's a statement, they say, that's why the expense, the ivory silk that moves fluidly with you. Your hair is combed close to your skull. The female scientist looks you over and grins dangerously, painted lips parting predatorily like in a story someone told you. Red like blood, the scientist says, and the woman brushes close, obeys.

This time one of the spectators escorts you to the mission site, an event with food and cloth more decadent than you could've dreamed of as a kid, you have no words to describe but you turn, you have to tell someone because this is the sort of thing they'd love to draw-

-but the handler closes his fingers sharply over your bare upper arm and hisses orders into your ear. The last entrance to the hall closes with a finality few of the guests hear. You take your soldier's orders and a dull knife from a server and leave in a dress stained in match with your lips.

They order you out of the dress and into the chair. Your mouth closes on the guard and you leave lipstick stains on it as you convulse.

They order you into the box, something tall and chrome but barely bigger than a footlocker. You are a soldier, you obey your orders. You turn, once you're inside the box because they want to watch your face through a tiny window, settle on edge in the vague impression like your body.

Your hand rises slow, uncertain, as the cold deepens. (Cold cold cold where is - this cold is too much to be caught out in-)

The cold drags you down until your heart and breathing slow past the moment before you take the shot. It's not deep enough to not dream. (Deep cold, the span of the bed too great to reach across and see-are you okay, come here-)

There is someone moving between your legs. You are still and eventually, everything else is still again.

You are needed, soldier, they say when they open the box's door and fresh air rushes in.

Your country will need you later, they say when they order you back in.

It's colder every time, but you never say. You mostly don't remember. You are an asset, a soldier. You obey orders. You do not give orders. You do not question orders.

You are the finger on the trigger. You are the knife in the dark. You are the ghost in the night, footprints lost in the snow.

You are a forgotten monster for some time, the world changing on the other side of the frosted glass window. You are alone with your strange dreams of cold beds that are not empty, if only you could open your eyes or turn around, curl into and nurture a spot of warmth with.

Here is your new handler, speaking in your almost-forgotten first tongue, eyes tracking casually along your chest. He chuckles to himself as he outlines your next mission

Pimary target designated Nicholas J. Fury, director of SHIELD. Secondary targets: SHIELD elite taskforce, designation The Avengers, main associated targets: callsign Captain America (to be killed by The American, your handler barks with laughter), callsign Black Widow.

Your services are needed again, soldier, he says.

"The man on the bridge," you say, speaking almost without a directive for the first time in a period undeterminable. His stricken face is doubled in your memory, a strange name fluid and meaningful in his mouth when he looked at you. Shield in hand or shield discarded, reaching for-

"I knew him," you say, caught on the track of that thought. The man on the bridge-bridges under the overcast sun, over chasms empty except for wind and snow.

Orders hold you still until the electricity steals the memory of the man from you.

On va voir, callsign Captain America murmurs.

They wanted to set you aside again, that being active for so long would cause asset malfunction. They wanted to raze your slate clean and let the ice keep you stagnant and dreaming.

There was no time, they said, and here is where they pay the price.

The asset is malfunctioning. The hardware that houses the programming is fractured and there is a man whose face you knew-at once a small, bony man, a tall, broad man, a man who doesn't need you anymore when he's strong enough to stand against the wind, a man who reaches out to you with fear because you're falling and he fears your loss-and your mission.

Secondary target upgraded to primary target, callsign Captain America. It's not a kill order, so you don't shoot to kill. You shoot to slow, to hamper (snipers take headshots shoot for the kill, soldier).

You are the Winter Soldier, the name James Buchanan Barnes has no meaning to you, except-what kind of jerk names their kid that? your mom decided to name you for your dad, as soon as she knew he wasn't coming back, maybe that's why you always insisted on-Bucky.

He's not stopping you. Steve.

He freed you from where wreckage pinned you down and you hit him (I can do this all day) and he's not fighting back, he's not trying. You can feel the heat of his skin when you strike him, and he-

-he lets his shield fall.

He has fought for so long, has refused to give up for so long. But. He took your bullets. Three of them. He takes your blows. He is willing to fall at the hands of the Winter Soldier if it is James Buchanan Barnes who the Soldier was built from.

"Finish it," he says. "'Cause I'm with you 'til the end of the line."

You have failed the mission. The aircraft are tumbling from the sky explosively and turbulently. You let the Captain fall, eyes shut as he accepts what you give him, as he always did eventually (c'mere punk you'll freeze to death and then I'll be left alone with my frozen toes).

Your hand rises unordered, is this what it felt like to watch me fall? and then you are cutting through the air, following after.

The mission. Mission designated survival, callsign Captain America.

You slice into the water, diving down in search of that warmth. You find it letting the air spill from strong lungs and latch onto the belt. Here the damage report raises alarms but you persist. You have a mission.

The water lights up with burning shrapnel as you finally reach the banks and slowly drag the Captain up. His pulse hums in his neck, but his lungs-the Captain is not breathing. With your less damaged arm you alternate between compressing his chest and pinching his nose while you tip his head back.

This is a familiar sort of desperation, counting the seconds and hours until his lungs cooperates.

Finally his chest seizes up and he turns to cough up riverwater (c'mon it's okay Stevie breathe) and he sighs out something that might be his best friend's name.

You settle back to watch him breathe for a moment, the two of you caught halfway in and out of the water. Your mouth and the arm (the one that they thought about taking) are warm where they touched him. You watch him breathe.

Then you leave. For the first time you are warm. You will wait until the Captain has recovered before you ask him about the warmth.