Kindness

He might've been sopping wet by then, his clothes hanging a bit heavier than he would've liked, his wet hair matted to his forehead and sides of his face, but none of that mattered. Right now, he was trying to keep the memories at bay, stop them from crowding his head and stuffing him until he thought he would burst. He hated to admit it, but he'd failed his mission. He was supposed to have killed that man, and for a minute, he thought he had. When the target had collapsed to his knees after the third gunshot, he'd thought that it was over. It wasn't until he felt the helicarrier lurch and tilt under his feet, half the room breaking apart in the sudden explosion, that he knew that he had been wrong.

He'd let himself be saved by his target. Granted, he'd beaten the good Captain into submission after he pulled the debris off and away from his legs, but in a moment of weakness (the Soldier cringed at the thought of it now) he had let the memories get the best of him and allowed his target to 'escape' into the waters below. Something stirred inside him, a memory tickling in his brain, telling him that that man in the star-spangled getup was important, not only to the mission but-for some reason he couldn't quite understand-to him as well. After diving into the water after him, the Soldier had dragged the man onto dry land, leaving him on the shores of the Potomac, unconscious and wet, but alive.

That was not supposed to have happened.

It had been nearly three hours since then, the Solider had walked and walked, keeping away from the populated parts of the city and closer to the tiny neighborhoods that dotted the outsides of the main hub. He could move without being noticed through the backyards of unsuspecting, mostly empty houses. He was betting on the parents being at work and their children being at school, so there was less chance of him being spotted sneaking through people's yards. He'd long since popped his shoulder back into place, grimacing when he did so and cursing the Captain in several different languages for being to one to dislocate his shoulder during the scuffle for the disabling chip, and leaving him scrambling with all of these thoughts and memories left unwanted. The Soldier knew, from somewhere in the back of his mind, that he had seen that bruised and bloodied face somewhere in his past before, knew that name that the Captain-no, Steve- kept referring to him as, and it drove him crazy. He couldn't think straight with all those memories suddenly flooding back through his head and if he even dared to try and make sense of them, more and more came running and crowded his mind as if someone had left a faucet running and the sink overflowing.

Headaches burned behind his forehead and the Soldier pinched the bridge of his nose as they grew in intensity. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself, suppress the memories, desperately trying to block out the voice in his head-You know you want this; you want to know what Steve is talking about, so why won't you just let it happen?-and keep going. He jumped over a wooden fence, gracefully hoisting himself up and over the tops of the planks and thumped to the ground. So caught up in his struggle to shut the noise in his head up, the Soldier found himself totally caught off guard by a dog barking loudly at him from the backyard porch. All the training in the world couldn't keep him from flinching at the sudden outburst from the enormous Labrador now barreling at him from the wooden above ground porch. It jumped at him, barking and wagging its tail, showing no signs of wanting to hurt the Soldier, just really wanting someone to play with.

The Soldier wasn't having any of that, however, and kicked away at the dog, swatting it aside when it jumped up against his legs. He'd killed plenty of humans in his time, but never an animal; he didn't really want this stupid dog to be his first. But all of its damned barking wasn't doing much to alleviate the headaches and swearing expletives at the animal was doing nothing along the lines of making the furry, slobbering onslaught stop.

"Boxes!"

The Soldier froze and looked up to the porch nearly a foot away. The dog never calmed, but turned its head in the direction of the voice. "Boxes, here!" The dog-Boxes, the Soldier guessed, by the way it responded-took one last look at his new friend, and then bounded back towards the porch where he was greeted by a small boy who looked about seven or eight. The Soldier eyed them both, for a moment at a loss for what to do, and then moved to cross the yard and hop across the other fence. No need to start anything in the kid's yard. He just needed to get out of there, clear his head-

"Hey, you're bleeding, mister."

The Solider staggered a single step, faltering once, but regained his footing and continued walking as if nothing had ever happened. "I can give you some Band-Aids," piped the child. He held onto Boxes' collar with one hand and was clenching and unclenching his other for some odd reason. "If you don't put something on those cuts, they'll get infected. Then you can't go to your costume party." The Soldier faltered another step, this time stopping and turning to stare at the kid. "I'm not going to a costume party," he ground out. "You can borrow some of my dad's clothes if you don't have anything else to wear," said the boy. He seemed to keep talking forever. "Y'know, so you don't have to keep walking around in your costume." The Soldier considered just ignoring the boy and continuing on, but maybe the kid had a point. Eventually someone would see him, no matter how far away he kept from the city. If common sense and espionage and stealth training had ever taught him anything, it was that blending in was always the best tactical advantage, and he didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D., or what was left of them, picking him out just yet. He wasn't exactly the civilian type and certainly didn't look like it.

He turned back to the boy and walked towards the porch. "Fine." The boy grinned lopsidedly and guided the Soldier to the back door. Upon entering the boy's home, the Soldier took note of how quiet it was. The television was on, but it was turned to some colorful kids cartoon. The lights were turned off, allowing the natural daylight of mid-afternoon to pour through the sheer curtains of the living room and kitchen areas. Boxes, once let go of, circled around the Soldier's legs once before wandering off towards the kitchen. "Your parents aren't here?" the Soldier commented aloud, glancing around the home. The boy shook his head, his left arm which, was covered in a green cast, reaching up to scratch his freckled cheek. "Nope. They're at work right now, so it's me and Boxes."

The Soldier followed him through the living room, nearly tripping over a toy lying carelessly in the middle of the floor. "No babysitters or anything?" The boy shook his head again. "I'm old enough to be by myself. And I've got Boxes with me." He trotted up the stairs in the corner of the living room. "They never teach you anything about not talking to strangers?" he murmured, almost inaudibly. The boy turned suddenly, stopping so quickly that the Soldier nearly tripped over him as well. "Yeah, but you're not a stranger. And all strangers aren't bad people who want to hurt you. You're not a bad guy," he said. 'He's right. You weren't a bad guy once,' came the voices again. The Soldier shook his head to clear it, already feeling the memories coming in droves. He'd never cared that his targets saw him as a bad guy, and he couldn't remember ever not being one. Well, until now. Why was he denying that there had been some good in him once? That there still might be some within him? What was he so afraid of? 'I'm not afraid,' he told himself. He kept telling himself that mantra over and over, and slowly the voices and memories quietened. "How do you know that?" he asked the boy. "How do you know that I'm not a bad guy?" The boy stopped in front of a room in the hall and reached inside, turning on the lightswitch. It was a small bathroom, obviously one belonging to the boy, with light blue pieces of carpet placed in front of the sink, the bathtub and toilet. The shower curtain was clear, see-through plastic with little blue and white stars painted on. The boy pulled this back and exposed the side of the tub, gesturing to it as he turned back to the Soldier. "Sit here; I'll get the Band-Aids an' stuff."

The Soldier reluctantly seated himself on the edge of the tub and watched the boy rummage around underneath the sink. "My mom taught me how to clean up cuts an' stuff if I ever hurt myself when I was playing outside. I can take care of myself if I have to, an' I can help you too, if you want." He rose up again with a plastic bin in his arms, full of Band-Aid boxes, medical gauze, tubes of ointment and other medicinal paraphernalia. As he pulled out the Band-Aids and gauze, something about the whole scenario sparked a memory in the Soldier's mind.

"Hold still, will you? Jeez, I wouldn't have to do this if you could just keep your nose out of other people's business," said a voice he recognized as his own. There was something about it that he hadn't heard in his speech for quite some time, not since he'd woken up in the HYDRA labs: teasing, lightheartedness, friendliness in general. "I was just trying to stick up for those soldiers. That guy had no business saying all the things he said in that theater. Disrespectful…" grumbled another voice. He knew this voice. It had been calling to him earlier today. He was a skinny guy in a dress shirt and loosed tie hanging limp around his neck. Sitting on the side of the dingy bathtub slumped forward with his forearms resting on his knees, he looked up at the Soldier, his face bruised and the reddish-purple fingermarks of a bruise trailing along his left cheekbone. A cotton ball was wedged up one nostril, lightly bloodied at the tip where blood had seeped through. "Well, you're not wrong. But still, Steve, don't go around trying to be a hero all the time. You mean well, yeah, but I'm not always going to be around to haul your ass outta danger. I don't particularly want to hear that you ended up in hospital somewhere for trying to save the day one of these days," came the unfamiliar Soldier's voice. He saw his hands reaching up and sticking an adhesive bandage along the bruise, then dusting them together and returning a roll of gauze to a cardboard box. "Just watch your own back, alright; don't worry about everyone else. I know that sounds really heartless, Steve, but until you can hold your own against three other guys who want a piece of you just because you were doing the right thing, do me a favor and don't try anything like that." He paused and ruffled the blonde's hair with a lopsided grin. "S'for your own good."

The Soldier shook his head quickly. The memories were coming too quickly now and he could feel the beginnings of yet another headache. "What…happened to your arm?" he said, catching the boy's attention. He needed to keep the memories at bay and couldn't do that in idle silence. He just needed the boy to keep talking; he wasn't ready to handle all of those memories. Not here. "I fell off of the monkey bars at the playground. These kids were making fun of this first grader, so I went over and told them to quit it, y'know, pick on someone their own size an' stuff. Then they dared me to hang upside down on the monkey bars because they said if I was so brave then why didn't I do the dare," the boy paused and toddled over to the Soldier with the ointments and Band-Aids in his hands. "Those bars were slick 'cause it had just rained. I thought I was never gonna hit the ground."

"Well, if you could just keep your nose out of other people's business…" the Soldier murmured, freezing the minute those words left his mouth. That name he'd heard in every memory that had escaped his careful suppression, he knew he'd nearly pegged the boy with that moniker. Steve. The boy shrugged. "It's the right thing to do. My mom told me that I should always do the right thing. That's why I helped you too. And I know you aren't a bad guy," he said. He suddenly sniffed the air around the Soldier. "You…kinda stink, though," he added. "Like you've been swimming in a lake or something and then did a lot of exercises. You should take a shower. That'll wash the cuts an' stuff too, and then we can put the Band-Aids on. And don't worry about your costume, you can still borrow my dad's clothes. He won't mind."

The Soldier stared at the boy as though he might say something, then exhaled, blowing strands of hair out of his eyes. "It's not a costume." The boy grinned. "Your arm looks really cool though. Is it real?" he said, reaching out to touch it. The Soldier jerked away instinctively, instead busying himself with unclipping his vest. "It's not a costume, so obviously, yes," he said offering an answer to the wide-eyed boy. "Whoa! That's so cool!" His enormous smile died away for a moment as realization set in. "But won't it short out if we put it in water? Like bzzzt, bzzzt," he made little zapping noises to emphasize his point. "No," the Soldier replied. He looked up momentarily and saw the boy's hands brush against his green cast, then glanced down at his own metal appendage.

"I'll be fine."

Author's Note:

Hopefully this will pick up for some of you and the addition of a little boy character will not turn you off from the story. They won't be interacting for much longer, and pretty soon we'll be getting to the nitty gritty of the story, I just wanted to kinda 'set the stage' for what was to come later on. Comments, reviews, and suggestions are welcome! Ciao!

-AC