A/N: I'm a little late in updating this story and I'm especially late in updating all my other stories. Let's just say that there's been...major family drama. I'm not even sure how I found the chance to upload this chapter. Hope you guys like it! Let me know what you think in the review box! And if you're waiting on an update for The Original Three or The Second Trial, I'm really sorry—I'm trying my best! There's just a lot going on.


The girl hadn't killed him. This was the most shocking thing. She could have easily killed him. Even a weak little thing like her could have killed an unconscious man. He wondered for a moment if she'd been too afraid to do it—she seemed to be afraid of most things—but then his sharp eyes caught the red slashes on her right palm and fingers. Fresh. Newly made. He saw the piece of metal laying next to him, its edges red with dried blood, and he put two and two together easily. So she had considered it. It would have worked, if she'd done it. Even if he wasn't impervious to getting stabbed in the throat.

He wondered why she hadn't.

He should have been launching into action. Using his sat-phone to radio back into the Hydra base in Brazil where he was supposed to be taking the girl. Accounting for his weapons. Using his geo-map scanner to figure out the best route out of these mountains. And yet all he could do was sit like a stupid lump and watch the girl listlessly drag a stick through the dirt.

She had seen his face. He didn't know what to do now. He had been given explicit instructions for her to never see his face. Less because it would make it easier for her to identify him to authorities and more because Hydra understood the psychological implications of seeing someone's face. They wanted to avoid even the slightest chance of a human bond forming between the Winter Soldier and one of his targets. The more he seemed like a mechanical monster to his targets, the more they would be terrified of him—and the more he would maintain a proper distance from them.

He looked the girl over carefully to see if she'd been damaged in any way. They'd be angry if she was too damaged. Then again, they were going to be angry with him no matter what happened now—they'd gone off course and would be late returning to base. He was allowed free reign to proceed with his missions as he so chose and planned…but within a set time frame. Hydra never allowed him unlimited time out in the world. He had no idea why and had never considered the matter because it wasn't his matter to consider. He just knew that was how things were.

Amazingly, she didn't look much worse for the wear. He'd have thought that a small, slender thing like her would have been shattered by their leap from the plane—even though he'd sheltered her pretty well—but no, she'd emerged with only a few cuts and gashes, it seemed. And she'd woken up before him. How the hell had that happened? She'd woken up before him and had even found time to build a small fire to stave off the cold. He couldn't help but coldly salute her smart thinking. Of course, a fire could signal their location to undesirable parties…

He clenched his cybernetic fist. He could deal with any undesirables.

Just the way he'd dealt with the pilot on the plane. In retrospect…he realized he'd acted too quickly. He'd been reckless. It was his fault, really, that they were in this mess. But who could blame him? He'd been watching the scanner and had noticed that they were slowly veering off of the planned route. He'd gotten up and gone to have a word with the pilot. Perhaps the idiot was confused or had fallen asleep on the handles. He had no idea. But what he found was entirely different. The pilot had pointed a pistol at him and said, "Hydra deserves to burn," and then he'd wrenched the handles so that the plane jerked violently.

He realized his mistake now. He didn't know how to fly a plane so he should have allowed the man to take them wherever he wanted—or threatened him into taking them to Brazil—and then killed him when they landed. But he'd lost his temper and a furious struggle had ensued, which accounted for the violent rocking of the plane. And then he'd killed the pilot and accidentally destroyed part of the plane's control panel.

The plane had gone down after that.

He tried not to think about the pilot's betrayal because it made his blood simmer with rage—and the only other person around was the girl. He had to get a hold of his temper and fury. He couldn't take his rage out on her because she wouldn't survive it.

He took a deep breath of cold mountain air to clear his head. Time to get back to work. First things first—account for his weapons. Then food. Then figure out a way out of these damned mountains and back onto their planned route.


Sophie tried not to watch him. She really did. But she couldn't stop staring at his face—seriously, such a welcome relief after his terrifying face mask and goggles—and she was also curious to see what his next moves were. He sat looking limp for a little while, which unnerved her. She'd never seen him look so…loose. His legs, his arms, hands…they were all limp, unclenched, not rigid. He also looked a bit dazed, staring off into the distance. She furrowed her brow, concerned that he perhaps had sustained some brain damage during the fall, but then he shook his head and tightened back up. He sat up straighter, squaring his broad shoulders, and she could see that the veins in his neck were taut. She sighed, disappointed. He'd gone back to his strict soldier self.

He began pulling weapons out of his pockets and laying them out on the grass, disassembling the guns. She watched, utterly fascinated. He pulled so many weapons out that she was honestly a little concerned. Where the hell had he held all these weapons? She didn't even want to imagine.

He began putting the guns back together and strapping himself back up again. She watched with baited breath, hoping he wouldn't notice the two missing daggers. They'd been so small and Sophie-sized, they were probably useless to him anyway. He finished inventory of his weapons and strapping them back onto his body and into his pockets, and turned to the fire without a word. She exhaled in relief and went back to scratching random words into the dirt with her stick. He hadn't noticed, thank God.

"Where are my two daggers?"

DAMMIT.

She winced to herself and then looked up at him, trying to make herself look innocent. It wasn't hard; she was generally an innocent person. "I don't know," she said, trying not to quail under his hard gaze.

"Are you sure?" he asked in a low voice, standing up and taking a step toward her.

"Positive," she said firmly, hoping he couldn't hear her hammering heart. Play it cool, Sophie.

He crouched down right next to her and looked her right in the eye. Her heart burst into a sprint of terror but she forced herself to look into his cold blue-green eyes and repeat, "Positive."

"And if I search your body?" he asked, his voice soft and semi-threatening. "All of you?"

Sophie bristled at the thinly-veiled invasive threat. If you search my body and find the dagger in my shoe, I'll still have one buried under a rock. The thought gave her the confidence to hold her head up, keep looking him directly in the eyes, and coldly say, "Go ahead. I don't have them. They probably fell out when we jumped."

His eyes narrowed but he moved away from her, clearly satisfied with her answer. He probably didn't think she had it in her to lie to him. Ha. Proved you wrong, you douchecanoe.

"What food do we have?" he asked.

"Uh—" Sophie looked around at the debris around them, taken off guard. "I don't know?"

He snorted derisively. "You didn't check?"

Her cheeks burned. "No."

"Smart." He stood up and stomped over to where the majority of the wreckage was littered around and began sifting through the pile, sending huge pieces of metal flying wantonly, flinging them every which way. One nearly hit Sophie in the head and she said, "Watch it!" She watched him rage-dig through the pile and wondered why he was so pissed off. Besides the obvious reasons, of course—but he seemed like he was especially angry about something.

She didn't want to go near him but she felt stupid and useless after his comment—her starting a fire didn't seem so special anymore—so she got up and began looking through the wreckage as well. There wasn't that much to look through. The plane had been small and half of it was still wedged into the mountain above. Other pieces had fallen down further parts of the mountainside. Their little clearing only had a few large pieces with lots of small, crushed pieces laying around. She hauled a large piece that looked like part of the wing aside and found a small cloth bag. She untied it and looked inside to find a dozen packets of salted peanuts.

She was allergic to peanuts. Not deathly allergic, but they made her mouth itch and burn uncomfortably.

"Fabulous," she mumbled to herself. Her luck just got better and better.

After salvaging for a few more minutes she determined that there was nothing else. She walked back over to the small fire and dropped the back of peanuts on the ground. To her incredible surprise, he had found an entire bag of pretzels and snacks. He had shown her up and she had a sneaking suspicion he had done it on purpose.

Don't be an idiot, Sophie. He has no reason to try and show you up. We both know he's superior in every way—except being a decent human being.

She sat down by the fire and picked up her twig, scratching a childish monster face into the dirt with narrowed eyes and fangs. Then she looked up at him. "Okay listen," she said, taking a deep breath. "Now that we're stuck here—and I know this wasn't a part of your plan—can you please tell me why you've kidnapped me? It's been days. I have nowhere to go. I have no money. We're stuck. It really doesn't matter if I know now and who knows, it might make me more cooperative if I knew…" This was a bald lie and she had a feeling he knew it but neither of them said it.

He was silent, slowly turning a gun over and over in his hands, human fingers mingling with bright silver ones. She hoped he wouldn't shoot her. He wasn't going to kill her at this point but shooting her in the foot or calf wouldn't kill her.

"Well?" she demanded.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" she asked somewhat huffily, feeling bolder because she could finally see his damn face. "Either you tell me or you don't! How do you not know if you're going to tell me—"

"I don't know why."

The words didn't make sense to Sophie. She stared at him, tilting her head slightly, confused. What did he mean, he didn't know why? He didn't know why he'd taken her? That was obviously a stupid lie. No one premeditatedly kidnapped someone to this degree for no reason! He obviously had a reason.

"Are you working for someone?"

"Yes." I knew it.

"Who?"

His lips tightened and his knuckles whitened dangerously. Sophie hastily retreated from that question. "So you don't know why…they asked you to kidnap me?"

"No," he snarled suddenly, looking up at her, his eyes blazing with fury. She jerked back, startled, and then scrambled back a bit as he leaned in closer, looking dangerous and utterly mad. "I don't know why they picked me to get a stupid, weak, little girl like you and I don't know why they want you and I don't know! But I don't want to know. It's not important to the mission. So shut the hell up before I throw you off a goddamn cliff!"

His chest was heaving up and down with rage and he looked deranged. Sophie felt like she'd swallowed her tongue in fear. He'd never lost control like this before. She was about to get up and quickly walk away from him—when she realized, looking at his face, that that was exactly what he wanted. He was thrown off by this whole situation—landing here, losing his mask, her asking questions—and he was trying to control it by freaking her out.

Well, she wasn't going to let it work.

Okay, actually, it was working. She was totally freaked out. He looked dangerous and capable of doing very bad things to her. But she also knew, deep down, that the mission involved delivering her alive to whoever had ordered her kidnapping. "No, you won't," she said loudly, trying to control the trembling in her voice. "You won't throw me off the cliff and you know it because then I'd be dead and where would the mission"—she sneered the word—"be then, huh?"

His nostrils flared and he stared at her, fury coiled tightly behind his cold eyes. "True. But I can still hurt you. You want some cuts and bruises? I can make you shut up."

"Then do it," Sophie spat, almost sobbing with fear and anger and frustration now. "I'm so sick of this! Do it! You've never had any problem doing it before!"

"I will!" he snarled, moving close to her as quick as a snake and pressing a blade to her face, right into the corner of her eye. "Don't test me!"

"I—I am testing you," she gasped, trying not throw up with fear. She knew she was wildly pushing her limits but she was so fed up with this constant cycle of control and abuse he had put her through. Now she was going to talk back and ask questions even if it meant him hurting her. "Do it! Do it, you freak!" she shrieked, feeling almost half-mad.

She felt the blade press into her cheek and felt a sting—and then suddenly he shoved her away from him with a noise of disgust. She hit the ground and her head hit a rocky portion. Stars exploded in front of her eyes and a strange, slurred sound came out of her mouth: "Hnnnghh."

She lay there for a moment, feeling tired and unwilling to get up—but the rock behind her head really was very sharp and pointy and painful. So she slowly sat up and felt the back of her head. It hurt but there wasn't any blood. She was good. The Winter Soldier had retreated back to his seat and was studying a black device held in his hands but as Sophie sat there and a sudden cool breeze swirled around them, she felt a hum of satisfaction. She'd pushed him and he'd hurt her—but he hadn't killed her and she'd stood firm. She'd been brave for once in her life and she'd stood firm.

And she was still alive to tell the tale.

To some people, her defiance might have been nothing. Other women might have done so much more than Sophie was doing. But to Sophie, it was an incredible step. What had happened to her in college…her whole life leading up to these moments…she had backed away from confrontation and conflict at every turn. She couldn't handle fights, she couldn't stand arguments, and anything that seemed slightly dangerous or risky at all was out of bounds. She didn't socialize because she was afraid of what it might lead to—mistakes on her part or annihilation on others' parts. She didn't have an online presence because she stayed the hell away from technology, given what she could do with it.

And now she was standing up to her kidnapper. A violent man much larger than her size and far more powerful than her. Far more powerful than most human men, actually. She didn't know much about the situation but if she had to give an educated guess, she would say that he was an enhanced super soldier the same way that Captain America was. It was the most reasonable explanation she had. But obviously this guy didn't work for the good guys like Captain America did.

She felt the winds of change stirring slightly. She didn't know if she was being stupidly poetic—but it felt like they had turned a corner of some sorts. He was still violent and dangerous. She was still his captive. But now…some of the power had evened out between them. She'd pushed him and shown him that she wasn't going to meekly back down anymore. And he didn't have the complete upper hand of the situation, given that he was just as off course as she was.

She pressed her fingers to the stinging cut he'd nicked on the side of her face and her fingers came away stained with blood. She wished she had a mirror to see how bad it was but it felt like it was only a small nick, nothing bad. She pressed the hem of her hoodie to her forehead, bending down so her head was near her knees. She hoped her cut wouldn't get infected because her clothes were dirty…

In fact, most of her needed to be cleaned. She felt disgusting, especially after the plane crash. It was a silly thing to be worrying about—body odor, sweat, dirt—but a part of it was logical. The dirtier she was, the more chance of her cuts and gashes of getting infected. Her hair felt limp and greasy, her scalp ached, and she'd been wearing the same underwear for almost a week, which was horrifying enough on its own to almost cancel out every other hygienic horror she was enduring.

"We need to find water," she said suddenly. He didn't respond but she could tell he was listening—or she hoped he was, anyway. "Does your phone or geo-scanner or whatever work?" Even as she asked, she knew they didn't, because if they had he would have surely used them by now. And sure enough, his answer came back a short and clipped "No."

"We need water to drink," she continued, "and clean ourselves off in. Your mission is going to be pointless if I—or you—die from an infected cut."

He stilled ever so slightly at this last sentence and she knew she'd hooked him. He looked up at the violet skies, evening falling around them. "We head down tomorrow," he decided. Sophie was fine with that. It was getting far too dark to start heading down now and she didn't much fancy the idea of heading down the dark, ominous-looking valley right now. What had looked so beautiful and charming earlier now looked isolated and dangerous in the purple skies. Still, she had to admit that the sunset was beautiful. The sun slowly dipped below the mountaintops, bathing the valley in a mixture of orange-golden light and dark green, feathering onto the violet-blue streaked skies above. She leaned back onto her elbows and sighed. What a view.

She didn't notice the almost-curious look he gave her at her sigh.

The fire had been consistently burning lower and lower as evening fell and eventually it petered out, a thin stream of smoke curling up above it like an unfurling flag. Sophie stood up to gather more wood and he roughly asked, "Where do you think you're going?"

"To gather more wood for the fire," she said, feeling it was fairly obvious.

"No more fire."

She stared at him. "But—but it's freezing out here! And we're not wearing winter clothes!" It definitely didn't feel like summer up here but she figured that was the high altitude doing the work. Hopefully it would be warmer down in the valley tomorrow.

"No fire," he repeated, his voice stiff. "Attracts attention."

Maybe that's exactly what we need. Someone to notice us—save me. "So?" she asked stubbornly.

"Do you want to get eaten by mountain lions?"

She paused suddenly, her earlier thoughts rushing back to her. She swallowed once and asked, "So there…there are mountain lions out here?"

"Yes." He could have been lying but she didn't see why he would be.

"Where exactly are we?" she asked. She didn't think mountain lions existed in the mountain ranges of Europe—but perhaps she was wrong.

"Peru." He seemed extraordinarily chatty tonight. Perhaps he had seen something change in the wind between them as well—sensed that she wouldn't be deterred by silence and violence anymore. Not most of the time, anyway.

Sophie blinked at him and then slowly sank to the ground, crossing her legs. Peru. They were in freaking Peru. What mountain chain was in Peru? The Andes mountains, wasn't it? She wasn't positive but she definitely wasn't asking the Winter Soldier for a geography lesson right now.

She gingerly lay down on the cold grass as darkness fell around them and curled up into herself, wrapping her arms around herself and scrunching up as tight as she could into a fetal position. But still the cold bit her through her thick hoodie and shirt and pants. Her ratty Converse were no match for this temperature. She lay there shivering and hating her life for about twenty-five minutes and she had finally succeeded in dozing into a frozen half-sleep when suddenly she was woken by something hitting her shoulder hard.

"Whazgoinon?" she slurred, rubbing her icy palms on her eyes, rolling over and blinking through the darkness at the Winter Soldier.

"Come here," he ordered.

She squinted at him, confused. "What?"

"Come here," he repeated, not clarifying. It didn't exactly help the situation. Sophie had no idea what he wanted but she didn't want him to get angry and beat her up—she was honestly too tired for it tonight—so she slowly sat up and crawled over to him, clearly confused. "What?"

"Take off your jacket," he said and then he tapped the ground in front of him. "Lay down here."

Sophie's brain must have been working remarkably slow, she thought in retrospect, for it to take so long for her to understand what he wanted—and it was made all the more embarrassing by the fact that she had even actually thought about this situation earlier in the day. As it was, it took her brain a few minutes of staring at him to understand what he was commanding her to do. When it finally registered, she recoiled away from him and said, "No! No!"

"You will," he said in a dangerous tone.

"I will not!" she said, her voice shaking with both horror at his idea and fear over what he might do to her for refusing. She was taking a new stance in standing up to him—but that didn't mean she wasn't terrified of the punishments he could dole out for her rebellions and insolence.

He was silent and still for a very long moment that seemed to stretch out for all of eternity—Sophie could see his stone-still silhouette in the darkness—and then he finally said, "Do you enjoy having all your fingers and toes?"

"I am not going to get frostbite," she snapped, moving even further away from him. "It's not that cold!" This was a lie. She was freezing. She didn't understand why it was so cold—for god's sake, they were in Peru—but she was definitely going to do some research on the climate in the Andes mountains if she ever made it out of this alive.

"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice very flat.

He's taunting me. He's trying to scare me. She looked down at her hands. Her beloved hands. Fingers that she really enjoyed having. She didn't want to lose any of her fingers or toes or ears or nose. She didn't want to lose any body part. She had a very low tolerance for pain and discomfort and the thought of losing any body part to the cold filled her with immense horror. "I'll take my chances," she said, though her voice wavered uncertainly.

"You are not allowed to get permanently damaged," he said mechanically.

"I won't—"

"You are not allowed to get permanently damaged." A chill went down Sophie's spine as he blankly repeated the words like a robot. He didn't sound like someone who cared—he sounded like someone who was reciting a line from a manifesto he'd been forced to memorize a hundred thousand times and spit out as if his life depended on it. As if it was all he knew. And he was talking about her like she was an object. "Permanently damaged"? Who said things like that? It was such a dehumanizing way to say "permanently hurt." She was not a box of goods to be "permanently damaged."

"Come here," he repeated. Everything he said was so flat and devoid of any real emotion, as if nothing really mattered to him. Who on Earth was he, to do someone's work so brutally…but act like the work didn't matter to him? If it didn't matter, why the hell was he so insistent on completing the "mission" properly? None of this made sense to Sophie. The longer she spent time with him, the less she understood him.

"What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"My temperature runs hotter than normal humans."

Normal humans. Implying that he wasn't one. Sophie knew this by now, of course—how could she not? He'd done things no average human could do. Still…to hear him say it so openly, so factually…it was unnerving.

Hell had not frozen over. Sophie didn't see any pigs flying. Zeus hadn't come down to Earth to reveal he was Sophie's dad. No owl had dropped a letter from Hogwarts into Sophie's lap. Nothing impossible had happened. But Sophie was freezing—and it looked like she was going to have to eat her words. She might have endured shivering through the night, curled up, arms wrapped around herself, but now he had brought up the possibility of frostbite. She didn't really know if that could be an issue—she didn't have a thermometer with her to formally check the temperature—but now she couldn't stop feeling paranoid about it.

"If you don't come here, I'm going to knock you out and drag you here myself," came his voice through the darkness. "I'm giving you three minutes."

Sophie's stomach seemed to bottom out. Looks like he's made my decision for me. She closed her eyes and prayed to the heavens to forgive her for this betrayal she was about to commit. Then she slowly, ever so slowly, scooted closer to his form in the dark. To his credit, he didn't move and his expression remained impassive and apathetic. His eyes seemed to stare past Sophie, over her head, into the darkness and this made Sophie feel better. For once she was glad for him ignoring her existence. If he acted like she didn't even exist, she would be able to endure this much more easily.

Her stomach was flipping nauseously at what she was about to do but she didn't know what she could do to stop it. He would force her if she didn't comply—and a weak part of her didn't even really want to rebel, if she had to be honest with herself. She was freezing and she wanted to warm up and she had a strong feeling, deep down, that he wasn't going to do anything inappropriate to her. It just wasn't his MO. The worst part about this situation would really be her having to eat her own words and having to swallow her dignity and pride.

She would decide tomorrow if it had been worth it.

She slowly unzipped her heavy hoodie and pulled her arms through the sleeves, leaving the hoodie hanging around her shoulders like a cape. She immediately felt the cold pierce the tight-but-thin long-sleeved shirt she wore underneath and she shuddered against the cold. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound of him unzipping and unbuckling his shirt or vest or whatever the hell it was that he wore on his torso. She kept sitting there, eyes closed, even when he had gone silent and he roughly snapped, "Sometime in this century."

Sophie briefly considered throwing herself off the mountainside.

She tried to say, "Okay," but she choked on the word and what came out was an incoherent gargle. She swallowed and then slowly lay down on the ground next to him. He was facing her and she was facing him. She edged just close enough to him to sort of feel his presence near her. "There," she said firmly.

He made a noise of irritation and his right hand shot out, grabbed her, and yanked her close to him. Sophie pressed her hands to her face, trying to pretend she wasn't in this situation. The front of his jacket or shirt had been unzipped or unclipped to reveal his chest underneath—his bare chest. Which Sophie was now pressed directly against. She was literally flush against his bare chest. She had a temporary crazy idea where she considered reaching down, pulling her blade out, and plunging it into his chest—

But no. Considering him, a chest shot wouldn't kill him. It would only piss him off. He'd pull the dagger out and then stab it into her chest. No…only a throat shot would work for him. The only way Sophie could guarantee him dying.

Not that she was really planning on doing it. She hadn't been able to do it before, she couldn't do it now. The blade was just a defense measure for future times. Not even necessarily against him; what if a mountain lion attacked them? Sophie wanted to have something dangerous in her hands to defend herself with.

That was how they lay. Her face and upper body pressed tightly against his bare chest, hands covering her face so that her face didn't have to touch him. His chin could have rested on her head but he angled his head so that it didn't. For half an hour, she was incredibly twitchy and on edge, very tense. She couldn't relax this close to him. It felt all wrong. She couldn't believe she was in this highly personal position with him, even if the context was as impersonal as could be. But he was right—his temperature ran incredibly hot. In fact, his skin was hot to the point where Sophie would have actually thought he was running a high fever…but hey, he said it was normal for him, so who was she to dispute this? She didn't want to relax but his plan worked, as Sophie had known it would (thanks to that survival guide she'd read). His body heat seemed to flow straight into her and warmed her up to the point where she actually dozed off. Her legs and feet and toes were still chilly but once her hands and upper body were warm, the bottom half didn't feel so painful in comparison. He smelled like sweat and dirt and blood, which turned Sophie's stomach a bit initially—but there was also a hint of…leather and fresh grass? Probably due to the fact that he wore leather and had been knocked out on the grass all day. Either way, the smell masked the blood and sweat on him and she actually fell asleep at some point, unable to resist feeling warm.


He kept his right hand pressed on the small of the girl's back so the stupid thing didn't roll away from him. She felt uncomfortable with this plan. He could see why. Human women were always wary about being near men they didn't know, for good reasons. She needn't have felt any alarm. This was purely a survival tactic. He had no other thoughts in his mind. That sort of…debauchery was not for the likes of someone like him. It was beneath him and he didn't think about it. His mind was always on the mission. The goal. The task.

And currently his mind felt almost panicked with worry about the mission. Everything was going off track. He was off schedule, the pilot had been a traitor, it would undoubtedly take them a few more days to find their way out of these godforsaken mountains and get back on track… He clenched his jaw when he thought about how badly he'd screwed this mission up. They were going to punish him for this.

And she had seen his face. Another blow that he kept internally berating himself for, though that hadn't been in his control.

And the questions she had asked earlier…she was getting bolder. More daring. Out of control. His handlers had been right—once they saw the face, they humanized you and things began to spin out of your control. She'd been fine—she'd at least stayed shut up—when he'd worn the mask and goggles. Now she couldn't stop asking questions. And he didn't even know what to do about it. He'd responded with a vicious display of violence, a display that would normally have made her cry and immediately stop talking—perhaps even vomit a little (if she had anything in her)—but this time she'd held her ground. He couldn't tell whether he was impressed or enraged or a little bit of both. Yes, she'd shrieked and cried but she'd still held her ground. It was dangerous. She was…evolving.

The questions she'd asked were eating away at him too. Why had they picked him to bring her in? She was so beneath his capabilities—and yet they'd insisted he keep a low profile and bring her in unharmed. She must be worth something, more than just her rich father's money. It was uncharacteristic of him to question why he'd been told to do anything but unbeknownst to him, the longer time he spent away from his handlers, the less glazed his mind became. His mind was always a chaotic place—always looking for weaknesses, strengths, ins and outs, escape plans, kill shots, scanning, planning, computing, strategizing—but now it was becoming chaotic in a different way. Different types of questions were arising. He was being tormented by different thoughts. Thoughts he normally would never have thought.

He didn't realize it but he was evolving too.

Something else was bothering him deeply. This situation…holding her held tightly against his bare chest… He frowned as a sharp pain stabbed through his mind and he closed his eyes against the pain. It was a survival tactic. He'd seen other agents use it (very reluctantly) with each other before on missions. He'd never done it with anyone because he'd never had a mission where he needed to deliver a target unharmed, and he personally didn't need it; his temperature was always high due to his increased metabolism and enhanced status. But even though he knew it was tactical…even though he'd seen Hydra agents use the same strategies during missions where they encountered intense cold…even though he'd never personally used the tactic before…

Why did it feel vaguely familiar? And not for tactical reasons? His mind was agonizingly blank as he frantically tried to dig for a reason as to why, why, he had the oddest feeling…that he'd done this before…

Done what, exactly?

Huddled with someone to keep them warm?

Held a woman close to him?

Been shirtless near a woman?

He winced as another stab of pain shot through him. He didn't understand. He couldn't recall. The feeling was so faint…and far away…he couldn't reach it. He wanted to desperately reach it, unravel it, figure out what his mind was trying to tell him—because as far as his memory stretched, he had never in his existence done anything like this with anyone. And yes, his memory was often blurry and shifting in and out of focus—he remembered some things but had to be repeatedly told others—but he was positive he would have remembered if he'd used this tactic before.

He decided he would blame it on the girl and her infuriating, demanding, idiotic presence. It was her fault his plan and schedule had been consistently thrown off track. He should have just kept her knocked out this whole time and carried her around fireman style, like she was some luggage. Perhaps tomorrow he would. Everything seemed to stem from her, all of their problems, all of the issues with this mission. Even the fact that this scenario—him holding her close to keep her stupid fragile body warm—felt eerily familiar was probably her fault in some way. He didn't usually form an opinion on his missions—opinions were not his to form, nor did he normally give a shit about forming them—but he decided in this case he would make an exception…and he decided that he loathed this girl. She was a nuisance but more than that, she was a menace to his careful plans

He lay like that for a long time, his mind spinning like a sickening dervish, but finally he forced himself to shut down and go to sleep so he wasn't loopy and sleep-deprived tomorrow. He could do things like that, almost force himself to slow down his body systems and go to sleep. Sleep was necessary for survival and survival was what he did best.

As he faded into darkness—a part of his brain and ears alert, as always, for any approaching sounds, his left hand close to a weapon—he had the strangest thought that the girl, oddly enough, smelled faintly of blood...and vanilla.


A/N: Also, I realize that in CA:TWS, the Winter Soldier did know how to fly a plane. But for the purpose of my story, I made it so that he didn't know how to fly one. Happy holidays to those who celebrate!