My first impression of him was that he looked mad.

Like a rabid animal, like a thunderstorm, and just from my first glimpse of him through bullet-proof glass, I knew that he wasn't someone I wanted to piss off.

I didn't formally meet him for several months, the first time I saw him was just after I had graduated.

I had worked with HYDRA since I was about seventeen. I needed a way to get into Stanford, into the robotics school that I desperately wanted to study in. My cousin Oliver had worked with HYDRA for years, they had put him through school, and, in return, he worked for them. HYDRA was a deeper division inside of SHIELD, one that made tougher decisions in order to protect people before they were put in danger. It made sense to me; some people were beyond justice and they needed to be taken out before they could plant bombs on the New York City subway system or decide to shoot up a high school. Oliver was somewhat high ranking, so he got me an unbelievable deal like his. I got free schooling and a job immediately out of college; what more could I have wanted? So, for the next eight and a half years while I got my PhD, I worked for HYDRA. Some part of me felt like a child who had access to an exclusive play house that most kids didn't even know about.

At long last I graduated with a PhD, and my HYDRA coworkers, friends really, had thrown me a graduation party in the deepest part of SHIELD HQ that SHIELD didn't even know about. . Director Pierce himself had shown up to congratulate me and it was the proudest I had ever been of myself.

Director Pierce had me walk with him and we talked about what I was going to do for HYDRA. He said that I'd probably be shadowing an older robotic engineer for a while until I got the hang of things and I told him, vehemently, that I would make HYDRA proud.

We heard a struggle somewhere in another room; a large piece of furniture toppling over with a crash. Mr. Pierce didn't seem worried at all and he walked toward the noise and motioned for me to follow him. Cautiously, I did.

We came to a room with a large glass window with a view of a plain white room, an interrogation chamber.

And there he was inside. The Winter Solider.

He had thrown an agent three times my size against a wall and was grappling with four more agents, fighting like his life depended on it.

"Ah," Pierce said as if we were watching a documentary on something that he almost found interesting. "Do you know who that is?"

He pointed to the man that the agents were trying to restrain. At the time I had no idea, so I shook my head.

"That's one of your future business partners," Pierce said coolly. "It's too bad you didn't see him on a better day, he's prone to temper tantrums sometimes."

The 'temper tantrum' that the Winter Soldier was having was making some of HYDRA's best agents look like mall cops, but I said nothing and tried to keep my face neutral.

The Winter Solider was pushed out of my mind the next day; I suddenly had a mass of new responsibilities what demanded all of my attention. Namely, trying to appease my mentor, a tall, grim man from London named Dr. Chambers. He was sharply critical of all of the work that came out of our lab, but I was good at my job. I was in my element; I didn't care that my new coworkers were unsmiling and cold, or that I was the only woman in the department. I was far too pleased to notice much of anything outside of Dr. Chambers and my lab.

Dr. Chambers wasn't actually cruel, I learned after a few weeks, his face was partially paralyzed from a stroke he had had when he was forty which the impression that he was always irritated. He never raised his voice for no reason and so long as I did what I was supposed to, he didn't say much. He wasn't nice, per say, but he knew what he was talking about and I could work with him.

I talked about the Winter Solider more often than he liked and he told me to just call him 'Winter' like everyone else so that I wouldn't go blue in the face after saying his name so many times.

I worked on drones mostly in my first few months. I showed my college work to Dr. Chambers; a robot I called 'Jaeger' that stood shorter than me and could be hit by a truck several times over and still run at 30 mph. I had worked for two years on its hands; it had sensors that allowed it to 'feel' what it was touching. It could determine temperatures with its fingertips and tell the difference between over three hundred different surfaces. I had also programmed it to say my name in a way that didn't creep me out.

"Stella Martin," Jaeger hummed as Dr. Chambers looked it over. "Stella Martin."

"Can it say anything besides your name, Dr. Martin?" Dr. Chambers deadpanned in a way that was almost amused.

"I can say all kinds of things, sir," Jaeger replied, turning his camera lens eyes on Dr. Chambers. "I can say no and I can say maybe and I can say Jingshanosaurus eleven times fast, sir."

"It's 'doctor'," Dr. Chambers told Jaeger with what he could manage of a small smile.

Jaeger's camera lenses focused to mimic blinking. "Doctor," It repeated.

About a month after I introduced Dr. Chambers to Jaeger, he informed me that HYDRA was going to be waking up Winter soon and that we needed to make sure his arm was fully functioning.

I asked what he had meant by 'waking' him up, but Dr. Chambers simply clipped that I'd find out soon enough.

We had to go through three different walls of security; I was given a very temporary visitor pass that had to be authorized by Director Pierce himself. We were flanked by armed guards as we made our way into the depths of the facility and I repressed my nerves. I wasn't going to be surprised by the Soldier now; I had seen what he could do. HYDRA wouldn't allow me to be endangered by him.

Dr. Chambers and I waited inside of a plain white room to be let into where they held Winter.

"Dr. Martin, I must forewarn you," Dr. Chambers said in a monotone, breaking the stuffy silence.

"About Winter? I've seen what he's capable of –" I began.

"No," he barked sharply, surprising me. "No… you have not."

I watched Dr. Chambers, unsure, as he took a steadying breath. He wasn't looking at me, he was staring straight ahead at the door in front of us.

"The Winter Soldier is… a monster," he said quietly. "He can't reason, he isn't capable of it. He's a weapon, a tool that is necessary for HYDRA's operations… but a monster none the less."

A buzzer went off and the door in front of us started to open.

"Don't get close enough to him that he could grab you," Dr. Chambers warned.

I nodded. Basic safety stuff… if this guy was really that bad, surely they wouldn't let us near him…

The doors slid open and I was surprised to see a large metal container in the middle of the room. Our two guards joined three that were already in the room and the four scientists glanced at us and nodded shortly to Dr. Chambers.

I furrowed my eyebrows and stepped closer to the container. A circular window was set into the middle of it, the frost on the glass making it impossible to see inside.

"He's in… Cryogenic sleep?" I mused.

"Yes, Doctor. It's the only way to keep him complacent," came a voice from behind me.

There was Director Pierce, looking unruffled as always.

"He's ready to be awoken, sir," one of the scientists, one that I recognized from the mess hall who always sat by himself, informed Pierce.

"Good," Pierce nodded. "Well, he's been in Cryo for 38 days, let's see how he is."

Pierce stood next to Dr. Chambers as the other scientists busied themselves with the cryochamber.

Fog hissed as the doors were opened to reveal Winter, looking true to his name. He was unconscious, lifeless. Frost dusted his unkept hair and his skin was like wax. I noticed dark circled under his eyes

"Freezing him and thawing him out over and over has done some damage to the electrical wiring of his arm," Pierce explained. "Hopefully you two can fix it, or even upgrade it."

I knew that wasn't a suggestion and as nervous as I was about being thrown into a wall, I wanted a good look at that bionic arm.

Winter suddenly came to life, his eyes flew open and he gasped in air, his eyes wildly flitting around. He pulled on his restraints and shouted and the guard's guns went up to point at him.

"Winter?" Pierce asked, stepping toward him.

Winter's eyes snapped to Pierce.

"Do you know where you are?"

Winter's eyes darted around as he tried to figure it out.

"Sir, should we prep him?" one of the scientists asked.

Winter's eyes slid over to him, anger flashing across his face. He seemed to know what that meant.

"No, give him a few minutes," Pierce said. "If he doesn't calm down soon, we will."

Pierce walked out of the room and Winter glared at all of us in turn, but he was starting to calm down. He had stopped pulling against the restraints, anyway.

This was going to be much different than working on any robot.