The Soldier walked. He ran, he skulked, he marched. He crashed in alleys and behind dumpsters. He plowed through the countryside. He slouched and stole and hid. Where he was walking to was of only passing concern and the days blurred together into one endless, rain-soaked slog.
Sometimes he tipped his head back to the dingy street-lamps – or the stars, if he was very lucky; the Man had worn a star on his chest – and wondered if there would ever be orders again. Orders, and the comfort of a rifle in his hands. Orders, and the white-hot pain that washed everything else away. Orders, and the metallic coffin with the burning cold that always brought back the darkness.
He should be back there, by now. Oblivion. It had been – how long? Months, maybe, since he had pulled the Man from that river and his world had shivered to pieces all around him. The Soldier was quite sure that there was no one left to give orders, if he should go and ask for them.
The Man had seen to that. The Soldier wondered if he should thank him, or kill him – or if he should even try to find him. All the people he had ever sought out had ended up dead.
Dead. That would be easier. Something ghosted through his mind, half-shredded, almost forgotten:
To die, to sleep-
No more-and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to...
There had been many somethings, lately: flashes of words, sounds, smells, fleeting images. They hurt. It felt as though someone was ripping through the floor of his mind, looking for a person buried beneath. Was there someone there? He didn't particularly care to know, not if it hurt like that.
A few days ago, he had slept in a barn, high in the hayloft, listening to the scuttling rats and the creaking joists, when a nightwind blew flush on his face and he saw, with blinding clarity, a small golden-headed boy beside him, perched on a fire escape, leaning out into the darkness. They were laughing, but he lay open-mouthed in the silence, arms flung wide at his sides to steady the whirling darkness.
The Soldier spent the next hour shivering uncontrollably in the twilight, sweating and shaking.
He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know why he was going there. It would be so much easier to just lay down in the shadows one night and just let go. To sleep, perchance to dream...
But, in the end, something always stopped him. Because as much as the somethings – he was learning to call them memories – hurt, they brought back things that didn't: sensations he had no names for, but that lit a warm flame under his ribs, chasing the cold away. And maybe it was part of his training and his programming, or maybe the instinct had always been there, but he had to know what it all meant: the Man, the scrawny boy, all the words, Brooklyn -
and Steve.
And Bucky.
He had to know.
So every morning, pried open his eyes to meet the dawn and soldiered on. He hauled himself up, grunting and cursing under his breath, and slid through the labyrinth of an unfamiliar world.
The Soldier shoved off from the rain-wet concrete and stumbled into the drizzle. There was something here, achingly familiar, that quickened his steps. He knew these streets, though something was irrecoverably different. As he walked through the neon glow and inky shadow, running together in the rain, his feet grew ever more sure of themselves. He was going somewhere. He dodged through an alley, across the sopping street, stopping before an ancient apartment building, brick-clad and sorrowful in the rain.
He made no move toward the door, but this place had been home, once. He was sure of it. He knew the shape of the fire escapes, hanging out into empty space and looking like bony ghosts in the half-light. The way the railings slanted - an almost drunken pitch - was there, in his mind, before he looked up. Painted and peeling, the trim was the wrong color, but still. He knew.
The Man would know more.
Something like hope bubbled up in his chest, burning away the rain.
So. More Winter Soldier. This falls between As the Ruin Falls and The Falling Light. There will probably be at least one more story in this continuity. Many references in this fic - including the title - are made to Hamlet's famous soliloquy. If you have not read it, go and do so immediately. Shakespeare's a genius! *fangirls*
Ahem.
Thoughts on my benighted ramblings? I really struggle with Winter Soldier's voice, so any feedback would be helpful.
-RandomCelt