Disclaimer: Entertainment purposes only. Feels explosion.
A/n: So ever since seeing Captain America 2: Winter Soldier, I have been drowning in feels. This is me trying to work through them. ;D (This is also my entry into the Beta Branch Quote Challenge.)
WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR WINTER SOLDIER
Prompt: "If it's broken, it means it still works." -Hook, Once Upon A Time
Pieces of the Whole
He comes back to consciousness, and the world is a jumbled tangle of threads and images around him. He is not scared, because this is not new. He waits for it to settle, for the colors and shapes to realign themselves into things that make sense (although, "make sense" is relative).
A man in a white lab coat hovers nervously nearby, and is talking in rapid tones to a taller, distinguished looking man in a suit. The soldier in the chair thinks he might recognize that man – he's a superior, he gives him missions, yes. The soldier remembers, though it's like digging through knee-deep mud to find the end of a rope and pulling to discover the memory – memory might not be the right word, but he's not sure what is. There aren't many images in his mind to compare to.
"I'm afraid we've pushed him too far this time," says the lab coat man. He glances at the soldier and back to the man in the gray suit. He is frightened – not of the soldier, but of how the suit man will react. It is clear in his eyes the difference. Had the soldier been unshackled, the man in the coat likely would not have been within arm's reach like that in the first place.
The soldier struggles to focus on the man in the suit. It's as though the world has splintered into shards and the soldier is trying to fit the jagged pieces back together with his bare fingers, smearing blood as they cut him.
"We… I think he might be sort of…" the lab coat man twists his hands around. "Well, sir, broken."
The older man in the suit looks the soldier up and down, as cold and clinical as if he were inspecting a car, a set of guns, a refrigerator. Machinery, a weapon, a tool. Not human, no, never human.
This doesn't bother him (though nothing does) because he knows he isn't human. He is a shell, he is hollow and empty and cobbled together out salvageable bits.
"No matter," says the suit man. He flashes a small knowing smile at the lab coat man. "If it can be broken, it means it still works."
"That man on the bridge…"
Laughter.
A hand on his shoulder.
Warmth.
The feelings are fleeting. They are like wisps of smoke, disappearing between his fingers. He can't latch on, he can't grasp them. He can't understand them because he is not human, and he does not have feelings, not really. He knows pain, and he knows the mission. He completes it, he starts over.
He does not have a heart, nor a soul – those are reserved for living, breathing people. He is a weapon. He does not have these things, and knows that in the same way he knows he possesses a silvery metal arm. In the same way he knows when he has a mission and how to complete it. It is simple, it is fact.
So why is there a peculiar ache in his chest? Why does something stir deep within him when he recalls the face of the man on the bridge? What is it about him that feels… safe?
"I knew him."
He watches the man in blue and red and white fall to the water below. There is a roaring in the soldier's ears that has nothing to do with the fiery explosions cascading around him. Something is wrong…
Because that man looked at him differently than anyone ever had. He wasn't telling the soldier to take lives, he wasn't setting him on a mission to infiltrate or steal or murder or anything else. He wasn't using him the same way a construction worker uses a hammer on a nail, he wasn't demanding something from him. There was emotion in his eyes the soldier can't describe, can't comprehend, and somehow it struck something inside the soldier.
Nothing has ever felt wrong to him – because he doesn't feel and what the hell is "right" and "wrong" anyways? There is no such thing – there is moving forward, there is fulfilling requirements, there is pain followed by a blank slate. (But it's never really blank – it's a chalkboard wiped with an old brush back and forth so there's still a faint residue of what was written there before.)
Watching that man in blue die, though? It is wrong – the sense that the world has tilted in a direction it shouldn't. The soldier doesn't know how he knows it or why he knows it, but it is with a wave of something like panic and certainty that he realizes he can't let the man in blue die. Then his hands are letting go of the beams and he's falling after him because he can't let him drown before he has the chance to understand.
He grasps the man in blue under the water, kicks towards the light. They break the surface and the soldier begins swimming for the shore. He feels tangled inside, like he's sifting through a pile of knotted threads that all lead into each other and into nowhere.
He wants to know who Bucky is.
And as the soldier lets go of the man in blue, leaves him on the shoreline, he thinks he must have a heart buried in his empty chest somewhere, broken though it may be, because he can feel something, even if it he doesn't know what it is.
If it's broken, it means it still works.
A/n: Thank you for reading! Feedback is love.