Blank

by 95winters

He's unstable. Erratic. But he's not blank. There's a lot going on inside the Winter Soldier. And what he struggles to remember just may be the thing that brings him back to the sanity of reality. This explores what he does after leaving the Smithsonian at the end of Captain America 2. NO SLASH.

1. Prologue: Poteryali

Prologue: Poteryali*

He couldn't stand to stare here any longer. He didn't recognize that face, no matter how much it actually looked like him. No matter how insistent the man on the bridge had seemed.

Then again, who was he to disagree when someone told him who he was?

When he decided he had read the exhibit over enough times, the Soldier turned to leave the museum. What he brought with him was a wad of pilfered cash, a solemn resolve to leave the site of confusion, and a single photograph.

The Soldier kept his head to the ground, a new habit he deemed insanely important, and casually but briskly made his way through the mass of excited museum inhabitants. Once outside, the icy air bit into him like the numbing stabs of the idea of identity. It was winter in D.C.

The Soldier's breath came out like fog in the cold air as he made his way past the museum's entrance and onto the sidewalk. Most people were bundled up from the snow, making the Soldier's disguise unnoticeable. On the sidewalk, a young army soldier made his way past the Soldier to meet a girl that was waiting for him. The man didn't even glance at the Soldier, moving right past him into the arms of the girl. The couple lovingly embraced and huddled together in all smiles. The Soldier didn't give them a second thought either; he kept walking.

He continued on to a neighborhood, where the houses were lit against the growing dusk, illuminating a sense of warmth from within. Through candled windows, families were sitting down to dinner, chatting and laughing. Decorations were beginning to go up; after all it was the end of November. A few children were outside swirling snowballs at each other's flushed faces . But the Soldier once again turned down his head and kept walking.

He walked down the street, thoughts whirring as a broken machine, unable to comprehend anything. He walked past the houses, unaware of the life he was missing. He walked out of the neighborhood, lost in resolve to recover his identity. The Soldier walked father and farther down the street, farther into the winter fog.

*"Poteryali" is Russian for "lost," "dead," or "gone."