"Whatever it is, I don't want to do it anymore."
His world, still wavering between realms from the recent calibration, came to a dizzying halt. Whatever argument he had prepared against her evaporated like smoke.
"I don't know if I can do it anymore," she said lowly, then paused. "Now or never, right? This is now."
He watched a rivulet of sweat trickle down the hollow of her throat. Bucky's lips went numb, words lost behind them for the second time that day.
He nodded.
"Gruzovoy vagon."
The man with the tilted beret took a long drag on his cigarette before asking in gruff Russian, "What is this?"
The soldier stood silently in a dark corner, his black tactical gear blending into the shadows so well that the other dozen or so men in the room forgot he was there. The bunker was damp and cold and a harsh blue-white light from a few bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling made the walls glisten with moisture. While the assassin quietly assessed the room from a calculated distance, the others focused on the man with a small red book in front of him.
A man with small, beady eyes spoke up. "Emergency stabilization recovery protocol. Each soldier has been outfitted with a code word."
"Jesus fucking Christ. Another one? What does it do?"
"Complete system shutdown. It was deemed necessary after the latest…outbreak."
The man in the beret flipped uninterestedly through the pages of the book. "Let me guess. Deemed necessary by you pig-fuckers that can't control your soldiers."
"Vadim," a stout officer with a thick neck spoke darkly, "Even your asset showed resistance to orders in the latest trial. There must be a fail-safe."
Another man at the end of the table sat with his arm outstretched and conspicuously flexed his fist. "Ensuring armed personnel at all times is not practical. It is clear who would win in combat."
"So, you have deliberately sabotaged the entire squad." He hovered over a page and blew out a stream of smoke from his nose. "I think the problem is not them, but your lack of balls as handlers."
"Enough!" A man in a white coat marked him as a scientist. "The procedure has already been executed and it cannot be undone."
Vadim gripped the corner of a page and slowly pulled his hand back, letting the rasp of tearing fibers fill the room until the he finally pulled the page from its binding. "And you even wrote them all down," he chuckled, genuinely amused.
"Toska."
"Porosha."
"Poputchik."
"Bytiye."
"Avos."
In perfect succession, the assassins that had been standing along the perimeter of the room fell to the floor as dead weight. Except one.
"Congratulations, gentleman," Vadim's words oozed. "It works perfectly. Do you feel safe, now?"
The room watched with bristling tension as he frowned at the last code word, then nonchalantly lifted his cigarette tip to the page. The burning circle on the page turned yellow, then brown, and finally black as it began to spread outward, like some sort of time-lapsed cancer.
"You son of a bitch—"
Vadim jumped up. "How DARE you alter my soldiers without my consent?!" he roared, spittle flying through the light. "How dare you corrupt their minds with this shit?! You fucking imbeciles!" He crushed the flaming paper in his fist.
"Hydra cannot risk insubordination from its own army," another handler in glasses stood. "What good are soldiers if they can't take orders?"
"These soldiers have been ruined by your cowardice! Look how effective they are now! And you would've exposed this weakness to the world in a fucking diary!" Vadim snatched the red book and chucked it at one of the scientists. "Fix it!"
"The procedure cannot be reversed," the man with the thick neck lazily raised his eyes to Vadim. "No matter how much you scream."
There was a pause as the vein in his temple throbbed beneath pale skin. Then, a single word,
"Zanimat'sya."
Engage.
The room exploded into fire and blood. Gunshots ripped through the air, punctuated by piercing metallic tings as they rebounded off of the solder's metal arm. Men fell left and right in a room full of strobing muzzle flashes. Some dropped suddenly and silently from the grace of an expertly aimed bullet while others were cut down, screaming, with a few ungodly strokes of a knife. Blood arced across the room, a latticework of dark paint glistening off the walls. The soldier moved fluidly through the room, pausing only to exchange the briefest of blows with the officers, before moving on to his next target.
The stout officer raised his gun at the approaching winter soldier. "Go to hell."
A blast of twin gunfire and the entire room fell silent.
The officer fell backwards, a perfect dark hole just above his right eye. The assassin looked behind him, just in time to see the gun slip from Vadim's grip. A gurgling laugh pushed blood past the corners of his mouth.
The winter soldier walked over to his handler and began methodically checking for wounds. Vadim grabbed his wrist and stopped him.
"Very good, soldier," he wheezed. The bullet wound in his neck seeped an almost black liquid. "If it cannot be undone, then at least it will be forgotten." A wet cough choked his words as the last bit of color drained from his face. "Very good."
Vadim's head drifted to the side and never moved again. The masked soldier stood and swiftly sheathed his knife. Protocol dictates that he report to Hydra headquarters to await new orders. But the next briefing will not come for nearly a decade. Upon return to central command, all of the elite soldiers will be sentenced to a dark and dormant hibernation in the depths of Siberia as Hydra quietly infiltrates the deepest corners of the world. Years later, in their quest to choreograph history and humanity, Hydra will forego their formidable death squad, recognizing them as a "potent but proven instrument of discord." Instead, they will redeploy only one winter soldier.
Unthinking, the man with the metal arm turns to leave and steps deftly over the bodies. His black boot crushes a dark imprint into a charred scrap of paper, marring the only few intelligible letters left.
…nik.
Ice flashed down his spine and seized his breath. Bucky stood motionless, stunned, blinking rapidly against flashes of white in his vision. Like an anchor being released from a ship's bow, Bucky' lungs broke free and he took a massive, shoulder-heaving breath.
A small grunt by his feet grabbed his attention. Charlotte lay crumpled on the floor, her lips a pale purple and a ribbon of blood running from the canyons of her ear. Without thinking, he reached down and tried to lift her with his arm, cursing when she folded lifelessly and slipped from his grasp.
He knelt down and pulled her to his chest, a sliver of training instinct reminding him to keep the airway clear. He placed a broad hand over her forehead to keep her head upright and almost hissed at the heat radiating from her skin.
Half a heartbeat later, the door burst inward and Shuri, along with several others, flew in and quickly grabbed her from him. Bucky tried not to look at her limp figure as they fled her from the room. The Wakandan princess hesitated.
"Are you ok, Barnes?"
He didn't really know the answer but nodded his head anyway. Shuri spoke again, but it came across as a swirl of English and Russian nonsense. For a flash of a second, he was standing beneath a bare lightbulb in a damp cellar and smelling the sharp rubber of his mask. Then, just as quickly, the world reformed and he was staring at dried blood smeared across his wrist. Shuri was hesitantly heading for the door, clearly torn between her half-dead friend and the mentally unstable patient. Hoping that she would trust his nonverbal signal, Bucky gave another nod and she left the room with a final backward glance.
Sitting alone on the hardwood floor, Bucky took a deep breath in and waited for the world to solidify into a single reality.
Warm and dark.
No. Not quite dark. Brown. There was an orange-brown light somewhere beyond his eyelids. Trilling chirps and buzzing insects filtered into his awareness. And he was definitely, uncomfortably, warm.
Bucky threw back his blanket and started to sit up. He was just lucid enough to see three small silhouettes patter out of the hut, their feet kicking up halos of dirt in the column of sunshine filtering through the door. Their giggling voices joined the sounds of the African grasslands outside and Bucky allowed himself a small chuckle.
He looked down at himself, surprised to find that his personal clothes had been swapped for a clean red robe with a blue sash wrapped around his torso. A cursory glance around his hut revealed his sparse, but familiar furnishings; the firepit, a cow hide stretched across a portion of the wall, a few dried gourds hanging from the thatched ceiling. Even his old, worn backpack was propped against his wooden bedframe.
He stood, wondering how long he had been asleep for, and took several slow steps towards the doorway. He ducked beneath the low doorframe and was immediately greeted by sunshine and buzzing flies and bleating goats. He paused a few steps outside the hut. A soft breeze rustled through the flora and gently tossed a stray strand of hair. Just down the hill towards the lake, Shuri stood surrounded by three boys with white and yellow paint on their faces. All of them were smiling.
"…were you doing that?"
"He's doing it!"
"No, he's resting." A round of giggles. "Go, go!"
The boys scampered away, shouting and laughing.
His feet felt heavy and slow as he meandered the short distance to where Shuri waited for him. The bitter smoke of a nearby campfire singed his nostrils and the tough grass crunched beneath his leather sandals. The sun oozed warmth into his skin. Cow bells gonged somewhere beyond the neighboring forest.
When he stopped in front of the Wakandan princess, she gave a quick dip of her head.
"Good morning Sergeant Barnes."
No one called him sergeant. Maybe a senior officer or two back during the war, but no one else, even amongst the howling commandos. His name was James Buchanan Barnes.
"Bucky," he said.
She gave a slight nod and tightened her lips, obviously thinking. He turned his eyes out across the water dappled with sunlit diamonds.
"How are you feeling?" she asked gently.
"Good."
He surprised himself with how quickly he answered. And he meant it.
"Thank you."
He wasn't expecting her smirk or the way she lightly patted his chest as she started to walk away.
"Come. Much more for you to learn."
He lingered a moment longer. The African heat was strengthening, already quelling the water's surface into a still reflection. A golden haze draped around rocky peaks in the distance and Bucky briefly contemplated the world beyond those stone gates.
He padded after Shuri, who was several long strides ahead and talking, he realized, to him.
"…can stay in Wakanda as long as you wish. If you cannot remember things or have blank spaces in your memory, don't worry. It will get better as your mind begins to…re-map itself. It will acclimate."
Bucky didn't say much as they walked and he only vaguely listened as Shuri talked. He got the impression that his autonomy would be somewhat limited by the jurisdiction of the palace. A longer leash than Hydra's, but still a leash until they could ensure he was continuing to make progress. Bucky couldn't blame them. Besides, as an estranged war criminal in at least a dozen countries, he could think of no reason for him to venture beyond the Wakandan borders. He didn't need anything or anyone else.
Bucky suddenly froze. Shuri turned and looked at him thoughtfully.
"Charlotte."
She nodded. "I was wondering how long it would take you to ask."