A/N: Sorry for the delay, folks. Life has been majorly chaotic for the past few months. I won't bore you guys with the details, but things are tough right now. If you want some mood music for the second half of the chapter: "Midnight" by Coldplay.


Sophie woke alone and freezing, so she actually had to wonder for a few minutes if last night had actually happened. Maybe it was all just a really weird dream. But then she realized that her hoodie was unzipped and the grass next to her was flattened, indicating that someone else had lain next to her. Her stomach flipped. So we really did that.

She frowned up at the pale blue sky and wondered yet again why it was so cold if they were truly in Peru. Was he lying or confused? Were seasons reversed in South America, the way they were in Australia? But no…there was still lush greenery all around them. Was it the high altitude? Or did the mountains get occasional cold fronts? It was cold out, though not as cold as last night.

She suddenly sat up as straight as a rod and ripped her Converse off, frantically checking to make sure she had all of her toes and could feel and move them all. Her feet looked a little red and felt cold but thankfully, she had all of her extremities. She considered the possibility that he'd lied about frostbite being a danger…but why would he do that? To get her close to him? She ran her mind over his handsome but blank face, his stiff movements, the way he looked at her like she was a strange, distasteful object. No. Whatever man—or monster—he was, he wasn't the kind who cared about touching her.

So he truly must have believed that frostbite was a danger. Whether he was correct or not…that was a different question. But if he wasn't correct—if he'd been mistaken—this actually led Sophie to some interesting conclusions: One, that the Winter Soldier was fallible, and two, that he didn't know everything in the world.

It almost shocked her, that he might have been confused or mistaken. Somehow it didn't fit with the aggressive, prone-to-action figure of him in her mind. Then again…what situations had she really seen him in? Not many. There could be a lot he didn't know. She'd never seen him talk to normal people (Russian criminals didn't count) and she couldn't picture it even if she tried. He was too…silent and aggressive and weird.

Childlike.

The word popped into Sophie's head and she frowned to herself, a bit surprised. Why had that word been the one to appear? There was nothing childlike about him. He was large and powerfully-built, he was dangerous, he used tantrum-like displays of violence when he was displeased, he seemed to see the entire universe as revolving around his mission, he didn't seem to care about basic human social cues…

Oh my god. He's like a child.

Either that or he was a high-functioning autistic. But somehow she had a feeling that that wasn't it.

The realization that there was something childlike about him—something in his blank, empty rages and mindless obedience—made Sophie feel odd. Add that to the fact that she knew he was working for someone and she felt even more odd. He didn't act like someone who was willingly working for a boss or organization he properly believed in. He acted like someone who was completing the only work he knew how to do. It was like he didn't see there was anything beyond a mission. It was definitely weird, because she knew that even evil henchmen had to have something else they cared about: fame, money, power, even perhaps families or loved ones.

The Winter Soldier seemed to care about none of those things.

She got up and looked around, wondering where he'd gone. She slowly went around in a huge circle, scanning the entire mountainside and valley below them. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he abandoned her completely? She only considered it for half a second before laughing dryly to herself. He would never. The mission was too important to him.

Deciding she didn't really care where he was, she took this chance to dig out the knife she'd hidden under the rock and slip it into her other shoe. Then she began "packing": gathering the bag of food she and he had found, looking for any extra weapons or food, adding some decent branches and pieces of wood into the bags of food. She took a stick and scratched Sophie Duran was here into the dirt carefully. She was going to start leaving traces of her wherever she could. Chances were that no one would ever find her messages—but you never knew. Miracles could happen.

"What do you think you're doing?"

She jumped in fright and dropped the stick. Then she whirled around, covering the message from view. "Nothing," she said, trying to calm down her racing heart. Where the hell did he come from?!

He roughly shoved her aside and stared down at her message. Then he viciously kicked at it, destroying it, and gave her a look which made her want to wither up and die. Sophie had only once before had such a look—filled with scorn, disgust, and pure anger—leveled at her and it felt just as mortifying now as it had then. She began to wonder if it hadn't been better when he'd worn a mask and goggles constantly.

"Let's go," he said and then he turned and began to made his way down the mountainside.

She walked slightly behind him. He took heavy, sure-footed steps, steadily clomping down the hilly, grassy mountainside, gently rolling and slopping in some places, sharper and steeper in other places. She walked more carefully, hesitantly taking light steps and trying her hardest not to fall. She was clumsy to begin with—walking down a mountainside with flat-footed Converse was not fun at all. Even if the mountain wasn't the horribly dangerous and steep kind. She just didn't like it.

They walked in silence for a while and Sophie asked, panting slightly, "Where did you go this morning?"

He was silent.

"So you've gone back to the silence thing?" she mumbled.

He was silent.

Right, okay then.

They slowly and steadily made their way down the mountain. Sophie skidded a few times but she always managed to catch herself before she tripped. The sun was shining and the temperature became progressively warmer as they descended, though it still remained relatively cool. Sophie was still sweating by now, just by the strain of trying to make it down and angle her ankles properly so that she didn't fall or get a sprain. She knew that she was basically hiking in the worst shoes possible for hiking and there was a big chance she might twist her ankle or fracture it. That would be the worst possible thing that she could do to herself right now. He'd be forced to either make her limp along him or he'd have to carry her everywhere.

No thank YOU.

God, how far had they come? The valley still seemed so far away. She craned her neck to look back up at their starting spot—and was shocked to see that they hadn't even made it halfway down. Not even close. She bit back a groan and then turned back around, sighing and continuing to follow him wherever the heck he was going. He didn't have his scanner or any map out so Sophie really had no idea where he thought he was headed. Unless he was winging this as well. Scary thought, really.

Her stomach suddenly growled embarrassingly and she bent over, pressing her arms to her abdomen, silently willing her body to shut up immediately. She hadn't had anything real to eat in the past day except for the pretzels and snacks that she'd finished—and peanuts…which had made her mouth itch and burn very uncomfortably. She also hadn't had anything to drink at all.

He stopped so abruptly that Sophie nearly slammed into him and turned around, saying, "Eat."

"All we have left are peanuts," she said.

He looked at her.

"I'm allergic to peanuts," she explained.

"You ate them yesterday."

"Yeah, and it felt horrible."

"Did you die?"

She blinked at him.

"Did. You. Die?"

An angry flush crept up her neck and cheeks. "No."

He took a step closer until they were staring at each other except Sophie had to look up because the top of her head barely came up to his nose. It pissed her off, that she had to look up at him, made her feel small and childish. "Then eat," he repeated. It wasn't a request; it was a command.

Sophie did something incredibly stupid then. Her stomach twisted revoltingly at the thought of forcing down more peanuts which made her mouth and stomach burn and she thought, I won't do it. She pitched back her arm and suddenly hurled the bag as far away as she could, launching it over a rocky cliff nearby. He didn't even have time to stop her.

For a moment, they both watched the bag roll down the mountainside and then vanish out of view. Sophie vaguely thought about how the scene would have looked so good in a Wes Anderson movie: two lone, silent figures standing and watching a bag tumble quietly down a mountainside. Random. Odd. Almost hilarious.

Then he suddenly whirled on her, his human hand grabbing her throat in a painful grip, and it wasn't hilarious anymore. "You—!"

"Careful," she wheezed out, eyes watering. "Wouldn't wanna—damage—merchandise!"

His fingers twitched on her throat, squeezing even more tightly for a second, and then he let go. She doubled over, coughing and massaging her neck, eyes streaming more from shock than anything else. She wondered how long she could keep pushing him like this before he truly snapped and actually did kill her. Or would he never do that? Was the mission really so important that he would put up with anything she did?

Then it hit her: she had just thrown all the food away that they had.

She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. I just threw all of our food away in a childish fit…

…But I would totally do it all over again. She smiled to herself. Then she wondered if she was going insane. The Sophie from a week ago would never have done something so reckless and prone to get her killed.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't notice they were approaching a small rock that jutted out of the side and led to a four foot drop on the mountainside steeply sloping beneath. He walked around the rock but she walked right onto it and fell off it. She let out a small scream, hit the ground, and kept going, tumbling head over heels, rolling, hurtling down the mountainside. "Uh, ah, ah, uh, ah—" All she could do was let out short breathless cries of shock and pain as she kept rolling down the mountainside, her shoulders and head and arms slamming into rocks jutting out of the ground. The sky, the ground, the sky, the mountain sideways—her view swirled around and around as she fell down the mountain. She felt like she was being tumbled around in a washing machine as she went down, down, down. She flung out an arm to try and grab onto something to slow down but all she grabbed was a handful of grass. Her arm nearly twisted over itself as she didn't let the grass go in time and she suddenly slammed right into a tree just as the slope became less steep and leveled out.

She lay on the ground for a moment, blinking and unable to move due to the intense pain everywhere. Her breath had been knocked out of her and all she could do was open and close her mouth for a few moments, like a fish out of water. Something silver flashed in front of her blurry vision and her first random thought was, The Snitch! Her second thought was: The Snitch is golden, not silver. She rubbed her eyes, taking in slow, wheezing breaths, and sat up gingerly. The silver blur formed and sharpened into an arm—his arm. He was slowly shaking it in front of her, crouching in front of her and staring at her, his dark eyebrows flat and drawn over his eyes.

"I'm okay," she said, breathing heavily, leaning against the tree and looking up the steep mountainside. She'd fallen down that whole thing and survived.

"Are you incapable of watching where you walk?" he asked acidly.

"You're really talkative now, you know," she said by way of answer, still breathing heavily. "It's kind of"—she panted once—"weird."

Satisfied that she was alive and didn't have any broken bones, he stood up, grabbed one of her hands in an iron grip, and hauled her to her feet. She bent over, trying to breathe normally, and winced at the sharp, poking pain all over her body. Tumbling down a mountain and hitting a bunch of small, sharp rocks on the way tended to do that to you. Her clothes were dirty, grass-stained, and had many little rips and tears in them now. And I just got these. Man.

"Let's go," he ordered, not waiting any longer. She tried to pull out of his grip but he only tightened it painfully in response and hauled her after him. He moved at a quick pace and she stumbled as she tried to keep up, but his uncomfortable grip kept her upright and moving—which was exactly what he wanted, she supposed. They made their way like this down the mountainside, Sophie trying to tune out the person keeping her on a leash and take in the view around her as she went. Either she was sweating from exertion or the temperature really was warming up as they went down because she was sweating profusely by now. The sky was a pale blue and she felt like she could breathe more easily the further they went down. Strange. The mountains had bits of forest clumped on them but the forests became denser and more widespread the further they went. The valley they were headed to seemed to be almost exclusively forest. Sophie hoped there weren't any huge spiders or other terrible insects. She hated killing them but she would if she had to, because she was terrified of them.

She'd thought all of South America was very tropical, like the Amazon rainforest, but this greenery seemed more wooded, the type of natural scenery she'd seen in pictures of Colorado and Yellowstone National Park—except without pine trees and evergreens. The ground was a thick, almost scrubby bright green grass and lush greenery grew everywhere, trees and brush and bushes, huge boulders and craggy mountain faces covered in soft green moss. Tiny clusters of violet and yellow flowers sprung up now and then as they walked; she wanted to pick one but he didn't give her the chance to grab any. She heard the shrill sound of birds and some insects buzzing and see-sawing through the air and the faintest wind rustled the grass and trees around them. The tips of the mountains that surrounded them were capped in pure blue-white ice, giving them an almost ethereal look, misty silvery-white clouds hanging around the peaks. She could see the blue stream—it looked larger and larger the closer they got—weaving through the valley and wondered from which large body of water it originated. Or perhaps it was melted water from the snow at the mountain peaks. It was all very amazing for someone who'd never been this far into wilderness before. The small man-made "natural" parks she'd visited didn't even compare.

Even though he moved at a fast pace, their overall progress was slow and steady. They were forced to slow down at some places due to steeper slopes and even had to go the long way around once or twice to avoid very steep drops a couple dozen feet. At one point they had to drop down five feet—there was really no way around it—and he picked her up around the waist and leaped down before she'd even realized what he was doing, landing with a loud thud, crushing the dirt and rock underneath them. Then he grabbed her wrist and they were off again, her traipsing and tripping behind him.

They reached the base of the mountain by nightfall. The only reason they even managed to get down that quickly was because their plane had crashed into the middle of the mountain and not the true peak. As it was, they were still quite a ways from the true valley. The ground was leveling out but the valley was still further below them, a good few miles away it seemed to Sophie. Her legs felt weak and wobbly but just as she made to sit down on a large rock in her path, he tugged her arm impatiently so hard that it almost wrenched out of her socket.

"What are you doing?" she yowled, rubbing her arm and wincing. "We're at the bottom!"

"We're exposed. We keep going." He pointed to the dense forest of the true valley.

Sophie's jaw fell. Her legs were aching from walking down all day, her stomach was growling, and she needed to sit down and rest. "Are you kidding?" she asked weakly. "That must be like miles away! I'm going to pass out."

"There's water there," was his response.

Okay—that's a good point. Sophie paused and pretended to think about it, but they both knew he wasn't really giving her a choice. So she sighed and yanked her arm out of his grasp, saying, "It's flat ground now." He let her go and they set out again.

The sky kept darkening as they walked and a playful breeze blew around them, making the grass and the leaves on the trees rustle. Insects chirped and shrilled in the heady warm-cool night air and Sophie couldn't help but look up and spin around as she marveled at the scene around her. The dark silhouettes of mountains rose up on either side majestically, the grass looked like a green sea in front of her, and she could see hundreds of stars glittering in the night sky. She'd never seen so many stars before. The lights of D.C. had always masked their glow. She'd never been so disconnected from civilization before and she wondered why she hadn't done it before. Aside from the whole being kidnapped and starving and tired and beaten and bruised part…it was amazing. She bit back a smile as she stared up at the shimmering constellations against a navy sky as she walked, walking more and more slowly as she took the universe in. One of her favorite songs—"Midnight" by Coldplay—echoed faintly in her head as she walked. "Leave a light on…" she sang wordlessly to herself, looking up at the many lights glowing in the sky.

Things would probably look disgusting tomorrow, in the harsh light of day and under his cold gaze. Things had looked disgusting for a while now. But at least she had this moment. She would lock this moment away in her chest and carry it with her. The next time he hit her or the next time anyone hurt her—or locked her up—or whatever fate beheld her…she would think of this moment. One of the few times Sophie Duran truly allowed herself to see and feel the beauty of the world around her instead of hiding from it.

They walked steadily for two hours and her feet felt like bruised, bloody stubs by the time they reached the forest. Sophie was ready to collapse by the first tree they passed but he grunted, "Water," and she knew he meant they had to keep going until they reached the lake. So they kept walking. The trees masked the night sky above them and she moved instinctively closer to him, feeling afraid of what could be lurking in the darkness.

It took them a good half hour to finally reach the huge lake that sparkled calmly in the middle of this section of the valley. Sophie collapsed near the edge and cupped her hands, drinking in probably a whole gallon of water. It was probably full of bugs and harmful bacteria but she didn't even care. Then she splashed water on her face and hair and, dripping water, she crawled backward until she reached soft grass, and collapsed. The temperature was cool but warm enough that she could sleep on her own this time. She gazed up at the glittering constellations above and hot tears pricked her eyes. She was happy but she was breaking apart on the inside. She had no one to share this beauty with—only a cold, empty robot watching her always. And she would likely die soon. She wished she could call her parents and tell them she loved them one last time. She regretted being so blank with her mother during their last call. Why hadn't she seen that it was the only way her mom knew how to care about her?

Tears slowly leaking down her cheeks and into her ears and hair, smiling slightly, Sophie fell asleep while tracing star patterns with her eyes.