Disclaimer: The Marvel Cinematic Universe belongs to Marvel Entertainment et al. - this is for fun, no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's note and WARNING: Rather dark though no more than CA:TWS implied. Still, read at your own risk.
The Asset, the Winter Soldier, doesn't have memories.
He has shards.
Sharp and jagged and grabbing at them is like grabbing at broken glass – painful and bloody and futile – when it is already so exhausting to just hold on. So exhausting to just exist, in this maelstrom of blinding light and confusion he wakes up to, choking on the liquid in his lungs while the shriek of his frost damaged cells is setting him on fire. He doesn't know why he keeps trying it the longer he is out of cryo. Doesn't know why it feels like triumph whenever he manages to get hold of two pieces that seem to belong together.
He knows this is not what it is like for normal people.
Because despite everything the Asset is quite aware he is a man. A human being with human feelings. He feels hot and cold, thirst and hunger, weariness and pain. It just doesn't stop him. He can get annoyed when his support teams fail to follow his orders or fail to follow them fast enough. He can get downright pissed when a target refuses to die as planned. It usually doesn't bode well for the target. The Asset gets vicious when he is pissed.
He Knows fear.
He Knows a lot of things, and it is something entirely different than remembering.
He Knows the destruction a certain type of ammunition will do, how to factor in the wind while lining up a shot with a sniper rifle, what will happen when he slits a throat just so. Knows to calculate risks and probabilities, how to make assault plans and how to adapt when they fall apart. Knows exactly the amount of damage it takes for him to no longer be functional. Knows this, Knows...
He is – detached, distantly – aware of the passage of time.
Notes the subtle changes in clothes, haircuts, the body language of women as they walk along the streets. Notes the changes in language itself, any language, how the very use of words becomes distorted and different. Notes the advancement of technology every time they teach him to handle a new rifle, master a new car, fly a new plane. The lines time etches into the faces of those handlers he is allowed to Know.
The missions are what keeps him sane in this never ending circle of ice and thawing and violence and ice again.
This sickening roller coaster of cold and pain and swirling faces and blood and screams and the recoil of the weapon in his hand. Well. As sane as he can be, existing as he does. He is thinking clearly enough to acknowledge that. At least the missions give him something to focus on. Something real, something constant, something to accomplish. Something to keep him away from the chair and the ice just a little while longer.
They tell him he chose this.
Chose to give this sacrifice, his life, his memories for Hydra's cause. Though he doesn't know and doesn't care what it is, and when he is out of the ice long enough he finds he would like to go back in time and give his former self a good punch for having been so stupid. With his metal arm. If it's true. He is an intelligent, tactically trained man, of course it occurs to him that it might all be an elaborate lie. Only problem about that is: He Knows, down to the marrow of his bones, that he once chose to … follow. To the end of the line.
Still. Sometimes, he thinks of walking away.
Thinks of simply turning around while out on a mission and vanishing into the shadows. But. Considering everything he can not believe the thought has never crossed his mind before. Considering this hell he is living in … how can he not have acted on the impulse at least once? Yet here he is and nothing could emphasize the utter futility, the absolute hopelessness of trying it more than the total absence of any preventive measures, any threats, any open or hidden warning against it.
There is a certain relief in it.
In only existing in the here and now without past or future, just orders and a mission and being told what he does is necessary and important and right. Living in the hell he knows is easier when what he glimpses of the world outside is just as violent and brutal and merciless. And he wants to live.
In spite of everything he can not stop wanting to live.
Can not not twist and struggle against the girder pinning him down while all around the helicarrier is coming apart. Even if he deserves this for failing his mission, failing it twice, the familiarity his target addressed him with confirming the suspicions born of a few careless remarks overheard after he came to in the chair, aching and breathless and raw. Deserves this for being angered by the wipe and seeking the confrontation as he did instead of shooting Rogers on sight after he survived his first attack. Deserves it even more for being so rattled by finding himself loosing the fight that he grabbed the chip with his right hand when his left could have simply crushed it. But he can not not look with desolate hope at Rogers as he drops down beside the girder, though he has just shot the man several times, no matter how off his aim has been from lack of oxygen.
And then...
And then Rogers lifts the girder off him.
And he can't. He can't listen to this. This unknown past Rogers is offering him that must be a lie. It must, it must, because it hurts, it hurts so much, this promise of something good, when in his head there are only glittering shards like broken glass; sharp and jagged and viciously cutting up his hands as he grabs at them. He can't have this name that echoes in the emptiness inside of him, can't have ever been a friend. Can't question everything he is. He doesn't dare. Only the missions have ever been real. Only! The! Mission!
The look in Rogers's eye stops him.
Just one eye, the other already swollen shut from the blows he rained down on him with his metal arm. A gentle look full of sadness and acceptance, of understanding and forgiveness. A look that gives everything without asking for anything in return. The shard of memory slices through the Assets soul in a blaze of pain and he still snatches at it, without thinking. Catching it. Knows suddenly, but down to the marrow of his bones, that he once chose to follow … someone. To the end of the line.
They used that against him.
In the white stillness of this horror the glass underneath them bursts and dangling from one arm he stares, frozen, as Rogers falls, falls, until he is finally swallowed up by the river. Still clutching this jagged shard of memory like in a bloodied fist. Then he opens his hand and drops like a stone.
Walking away – after dragging Rogers to shore, after staying just long enough to be sure he is breathing, however weakly – is the kindest thing he can think of doing.