Not My Mission
A Captain America Fanfiction
by Pheather McKelle
A/N - Some story I wrote during a writer's block. Enjoy!
So apparently there's formatting issues? This is happening to a lot of my stories and I'm not quite sure why. Anyways, thanks to the person who pointed it out, else I probably wouldn't have noticed. :P
Chapter 1
Not part of the mission.
Not part of the mission.
Not part of the mission.
They traded flurries of blows and countermoves faster than the eye could see, each attempting to expose a weakness in the other. He had gone so long without a proper sparring partner that the opponent's expertise almost took him by surprise.
Almost.
With a sidestep and a duck, the Winter Soldier effectively knocked the opponent to the ground, the breath whooshing from his lungs as his back collided with the floor. He groaned, attempting to roll over, but the Winter Soldier planted his heavy boot on his chest. With his left arm, he curled his fingers in the opponent's collar and hoisted him up so he dangled a good foot above the ground. With thick, clumsy fingers, the opponent attempted to pry his grip away, but the Winter Soldier slammed him against the wall. The opponent was garbed entirely in loose-fitting black clothing, including his head. Only his eyes could be seen through sheer black fabric.
A pang of foreign emotion struck the Winter Soldier as snippets of memory flashed through his tattered, ruined mind. A man on a bridge. Red white and blue. Bucky. He snarled, attempting to regain control of himself, but he found he couldn't. That had always been handled. There had always been others. That wasn't his job.
Not part of the mission.
But now that was all gone, and he had to make due. As blundering and clueless as a newborn child, he wrestled together a few scraps of memory, bound them with frustration, and stuffed them in the back of his mind. He was so busy trying to piece himself together that he didn't notice the second opponent until the knife was at his regrettably exposed throat. It was short and thick, serrated near the grip. It was a survival knife, not an assassin's knife. But the opponent wielding it was probably far from incompetent, if the first opponent had any skill to judge by.
"Drop him." This opponent was female. Her voice was lower than the other female opponents he had killed. She was also taller. When he hesitated, she applied more pressure on the knife, drawing blood. It dripped down the contours of his neck, soaking into the collar of his shirt. Slowly, his metallic fingers unclenched, and the male opponent slouched to the floor. The female opponent kept her knife to his throat. A quick line in an unknown language was spoken from her, and the male answered.
While the male opponent was stumbling to his feet, the female bound his arms with a generous amount of duct tape one-handed, keeping the other at his throat. While his robotic prosthetic did not feel the cut in circulation, his real arm certainly did, and his fingers quickly prickled from lack of oxygen. Forcing him to the ground, the male held his chest down and tugged a hood over his head while the female bound his feet and removed all weapons. It was a meager arsenal. A knife and two glocks, three ammunition magazines, and one flash grenade. He used to have an RPG, but it had been lost when he dived into the water…
When had he dived into water? As the two opponents bundled him in the back of a pickup truck, the Winter Soldier tried to recall why he was at that particular fishing shack. He knew that the owner should have been in connection to his current mental state, but why had he dived into water? And who were these two new opponents?
Several more flashes of discombobulated memories flashed through his mind, causing his head to ache. He grimaced and rolled to a more comfortable position to try and unravel this latest mystery.
He resorted to a mantra of sorts: remember the earliest thing. He always went to the same memory: a face. Not of particular importance, just some woman walking down a street, probably in the early forties before he was drafted. Before the serum. She was just one in a sea of faces, but his pain-dulled and deranged mind had pulled hers out from the masses, and she was his earliest memory.
After that, a snippet of a train, the feeling of cold, and a sharp phantom pain in his robotic arm, which no longer felt any sensation. Fighting. Lots of fighting. Red Room. Then a cold metal box, a blast of freezing water, then nothing. It was all black space, empty shelves where thoughts used to sit, until several months ago, when the Man on the Bridge first appeared. Called him Bucky. That he remembered. Bucky struck some inner cord of his being. It felt familiar, like a forgotten childhood sweater. But one that smelled old and damp. One that he wished he could discard. That man and his name were no more than a hinderance.
Brushing aside that thought, he swam through murky indistinct waters until the flash of the Man's face, bruised and bleeding, sharp and clear as crystal, loomed in front of him. This memory was different, because an emotion came with it: guilt.
Which was strange, because the Winter Soldier rarely experienced guilt. In fact, in his own memory, he had never felt any guilt whatsoever. But looking at the Bridge Man's face was enough to make him want to apologize. He had caused that man pain, something he swore-
What did he swear?
He groped around like a blind fool, desperately grabbing at the flimsiest of thoughts, attempting to find that missing gap. Like the name of someone on the tip of your tongue or a fact just out of reach, it eluded him, vanishing as soon as it appeared.
That was how the mantra usually ended: with him chasing phantom thoughts through the confines of his mind, which only led down deeper and darker branches that he was too scared to explore, fearful of what might be at the other end.
Rough hands grabbed his shoulders and snapped him awake from his rivier. The hauled him upright, dragged him off the truck, and slung him over their shoulders like a prize buck they had just shot. He felt as helpless as an oversized caterpillar, wriggling against inexorable forces that sought to control him.
He felt himself enter a building, and was then hauled to an elevator. The descent was smooth and he barely felt the lurch in his stomach as it dropped. The air seemed to grow progressively warmer the further down they went until it was pleasantly toasty. They proceeded down a hallway, then turned down another. They stopped and one captor knocked on a door. Someone inside grunted an affirmative, which was muted from the hood, and the male captor led him inside.
He was deposited in a chair and he felt his appendages being bound to it. The hood was removed and he was in a well-lit room. One side was just windows which looked out over a limestone cave, lit at intervals with spotlights that made the natural variations in the stone's color shine and sparkle like they were speckled with diamonds. The room itself was sparsely decorated, with a simple mahogany desk opposite him, a chair, and an occupant.
The man sitting in the chair had neat black hair peppered with silver, and a crisp white shirt tucked into black pants. He wore a restrained yet dignified expression, and though his age looked to be approaching fifty, he was well-muscled and fit.
"So this is the Winter Soldier?" the man stood slowly, a wary look in his eye, as if a trussed-up wild animal were tied to his chair and not a man.
"We lured him to the fishing shack by the bridge." the female captor explained. The Winter Soldier silently cursed himself. How could he be so stupid? That man was probably long-gone by now. Of all the traps to fall for! The man barely acknowledged them, eyeing him over with intensity.
"I'll debrief him from here, you can go rest." the man said, not unkindly. The two captors nodded and left on silent feet. As soon as the door closed, the man snapped his attention to the Winter Soldier. He glared back, willing him to make a mistake.
"A lot of recruits are suspicious at first. It's only natural." he began, walking back to sit on his desk, clasping his hands in front of him. "It's a lot to handle. But we were all just like you once, including me." he smiled, like the cracking of granite. The Winter Soldier tugged his bonds petulantly, his gaze cold and unblinking.
"Believe it or not, Barnes, we've had worse than you. Most of them have worse experiments than that contraption you have, experiments on their DNA." This caught the Winter Soldier by surprise. He thought the most they could do was graft machine to flesh. He thought he was alone in this world.
"They've all been brainwashed more times than they can count, not that they would like to. They've been in cryofreeze states so long and so often that some suffered from freezer burn. Think you've had it worse? You're wrong. One might even say you're lucky." the man gave him a hard look. His low, gravelly voice fell heavily on his ears. He tried to deny what he was telling him, and almost did, before there was a knock at the door. Both flinched, but it was the man who recovered first. "Enter."
Two other black-garbed captors - different ones - deposited a wriggling mass on the ground with a thud. Muffled curses streamed from the black sack, which thrashed like a hooked fish.
"This one was following him." one of the male captors informed him. The older man nodded and worked the tie loose and pulled the black sack down. The infuriated face of a red-haired woman emerged, a hateful gleam in her jade eyes. She was bound and gagged more heavily than the Winter Soldier, but looked as though she had been pulled out of a mission. Empty holsters on her belt and legs told that much, but her most striking feature were her eyes. Green and slanted, with a slitted pupil like a cat's. She also had ears, still in their customary place on a human, which were currently pinned to the sides in anger. When she hissed, she revealed pointed canines.
The Winter Soldier stared at the cat-woman who had evidently been following him. He didn't recognize her, and even with brainwashing, he couldn't possibly have forgotten her. The man examined her face, but if he were searching for any information beyond the obvious, he didn't find it. He nodded curtly to the two captors, who inclined their heads and pulled the top of the sack back over her head. She kicked with both feet but only hit air as they dragged her away. The man turned back to the Winter Soldier, a thoughtful look in his eyes. He clucked his tongue, as if to say I told you so, then turned back to his desk.
"So here's the situation. We'll get you your memories back, reform you into someone who can be trusted to do grocery shopping, and in turn you'll help find and destroy those that did this, and rescue anyone else. Seem fair?" the man said. The Winter Soldier did not hesitate in responding.
"And if I refuse?" The man chuckled.
"No one has yet refused the return of their memories, and no one will. After that, they know what their captors did to them, and most are here for retribution." he winked, and the Winter Soldier felt his metal fingers compressing around the arm rest. The man was right. His priorities were memory restoration, and after that, all of his hatred and frustration and confusion were molded into one bit pile of revenge. "Of course, we can't keep you here permanently. Some leave as soon as all identified with them directly are dead, and they go through a psyche evaluation to determine if they're… Er, sane enough. If you are, you're free to go. If not, we recommend places you could stay. Some choose to stay their whole lives. They've dedicated them to our cause, and they're called the Black Ledgers. You might even see a few." the man paused, then walked around the back of his desk and retrieved a thick file. The Winter Soldier glimpsed "James Buchanan Barnes" stamped on the front and assumed it was a compilation of any assassinations linked to him.
"You have quite a history, Mr. Barnes." he leafed through the file, pausing to read small tidbits of information, then moving on. "We could use a man like you." The Winter Soldier fidgeted in his chair. The man peered over the top of the file but made no comment.
"I'll do it." He said suddenly, a pained expression on his face.
"Do what?" the man asked.
"I want my memories back." he said stubbornly, like a child denied his favorite food. The man smiled.
"Did you think we really expected you to refuse?"
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