Author's Note: Hello! Last chapter was quite the cliff-hanger, so here we are - we've travelled through time because well, that's how cryo-freeze works..
Christiane was captured by Hydra and was put away into a cyro-freeze chamber. She has inherited the gift now, and that gift is her ability to control people's dreams (just like Anya's) and go to a place of limbo. I'll explain - she's able to go to a state of limbo in people's dreams/thoughts, like a ghost. She herself doesn't know she's able to do this, and nor will she be aware of what she can do because well, she's in cyro-freeze.
She's doing this unconsciously because Bucky and her are linked as soulmates and true lovers, therefore when her somewhat dormant state is able to dream which isn't very often (I'd like to say it's because of whether the temperature in the chamber goes up, therefore allowing brief brain activity before freezing over again and nothing happening), she's able to go to link herself to him in some way in this place of limbo, making her appear like a ghost to Bucky/The Winter Soldier.
Hope this makes sense. Ask me if you're curious about her gift!
The first song in this chapter is Rachmaninoff's Elégie Opus.3 No. 1 and the second one is Debussy's Claire de Lune (if you recall was played in Chapter 10).
It also goes between Bucky's/The Winter Soldier's point of view and in third person.
Hope you enjoy this chapter!
Kiara
December 1975
"Soldat", said the general.
"Я готов отвечать (Ready to comply)".
The soldier was brought out from this cryogenic chamber for another mission, being left to thaw as the scientists around him monitored his vitals. In the moment of vulnerability between coming out of his cryogenic state, and before the general said the trigger words to activate the Winter Soldier, small flashes and seconds of images would flood into his mind. He would sometimes be overwhelmed by these images, leading to the scientists having to put him in a memory-suspending machine that would wipe his most recent memories. This was to make sure the Soldier had no emotional attachment to any of the kills and missions he would have to carry out before, and after. Any past memories from the Soldier's previous life as an American soldier were simply confined, overlapped by the personality of the Winter Soldier that Hydra and the Soviets had programmed him to. He was a weapon.
"Soldat", the general loomed over the Soldier as he sat strapped to the chair, heavily breathing after his activation, adrenaline rushing through his veins and muscles. He could easily rip his arm from the confinements, but knowing the general would have severe punishments to him afterwards he stayed, waiting for his orders.
He looked at the general out of the corner of his eyes, indicating he was listening.
"You will ride to one of our facilities. The scientists working there are traitors, wanting to defect to our enemies. You must eliminate all of them, and retrieve a vial that will be useful to us. Go upstairs in the warehouse, down the hallway to the last room on the right. It is located in Ivanovik's favorite book, The Master and Margarita. Make it look like an accident, and burn the facility to the ground. Is that understood?"
"да (Yes)".
The confinements were undone as scientists and assistants fitted him with his uniform and weapons. Guards walked with him armed to the garage where he was to take a motorbike.
I parked the motorbike in the forest. The facility was already in a remote part and knowing no one would hear or see what would happen, and the dense snow outside would prevent easy access to what would be left of it anyways. I could already hear the men talking from inside the facility. It was a small and old weaponry storage, converted to a chemist facility. They had left the front sliding doors open to let in a breeze, a lamp above shining a warm cast onto the snow in the gap between the doors.
The soldier stepped into the doors, taking his shots. He closed the warehouse doors, turning off the lamp and ran upstairs, his feet quiet against the cold concrete floor.
The corridor was dark, chiseled with shadows from the moonlight that shone through the window at the end of the corridor. The general said the vial was hidden in a manuscript of The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov in the bookcase in the last room on the right.
All the scientists had been already eliminated on the bottom floor of the warehouse that served as the experimentation facility. In this room, there was just one pothole window about the size of a melon, just enough light to shine onto the piano. There was a sheltered bookcase where with a quick indication to the book, I was able to take the vial and place it in a sheltered container on my belt.
There was also a piano against one side of the wall and a desk across from it. As I took the vial into the container, suddenly, a clear note was played from behind me.
I turned around, scanning the room for anyone there.
There was no one.
I looked back to the bookcase, checking if there were any trip wires that I had set off. Nothing, just an immense façade of books and blueprints.
Again, the piano played behind me. I froze, waiting for the melody to stop before turning around to point my weapon at the piano.
A girl sat there, she looked relaxed and looked at me. Her eyes were bright despite the darkness of the room, she looked at me with concern and something like affection.
My nerves jumped, my heart raced and my hands began to shake. It wasn't something I was used to, yet there was this sudden burst of a tiny morsel of warmth springing from my chest, a feeling I could not explain or understand.
"посиди со мной? (Come sit with me?)" she said softly, patting to the empty spot next to her on the leather stool.
I walked towards her, cautiously sitting slowly beside her. Every ounce of my brain was telling me to attack, but my heart attracted me to her like a magnet.
"я знаю тебя (I know you)".
She began playing again, a song, which I recognized in the back of my memory, a flicker. It was beautiful but yet played so sadly.
Suddenly I saw myself back at the facility, the scientists around me with the song being played in the background as I was drowning in a tank. Icy water engulfed me, the muted melody playing in the background as scientists stood and watched me, taking notes on their clipboard.
I quickly gripped her wrist tightly; she stopped playing and looked at me, her eyes full of affection and love again. She understood immediately, nodding and started playing another melody. Again, it was played beautifully and sadly. My head felt like it had been hit, a stinging pain searing through my skull as images flashed by quickly, too fast to recognize.
"Нет, это не реально (No, this isn't real)", he gripped his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
She stopped playing and looked at him again. "Are you sure?" she replied in English.
His mind started to flicker again, images appearing hazily as if he were in the same situation, sitting at a piano, in a different life.
His eyes stung from the sunshine casting across the window to where they were sitting at the piano. He looked down at himself wearing pleated trousers, a white shirt and leather suspenders. Sitting next to him was the girl in a yellow dress and her brown hair curling just down her shoulders.
She smiled and laughed, as she tried to play something off the radio in the background. It hummed a piano solo accompanying a trumpet tune, a deep baritone voice singing to it.
Another flicker again, his head feeling as if it were about to explode. He looked up, closing his eyes.
He opened them again to see her laughing, her nose scrunched up a little and the sound of her laughter contagious, his lips felt a little upturn.
His gut, the Soldier's gut, told him this wasn't right, yet it felt so soothing and familiar to the Soldier and the fragment of an unknown identity within him.
They were dancing together, a cold wind gently flowing like silk around them, light crystals of snow fell from the pitch-dark night sky.
He looked up, closing his eyes to feel the light snowflakes fall onto his face delicately.
They were in a small square of a village with a fountain behind them, cobblestones beneath their feet. A piano was being played behind, people singing in a foreign language he pinpointed as French.
There were laughter; old men and women also dancing around them but keeping a distance from what he suspected was some privacy for the two, and the smell of champagne, coffee and warm bread floating in the cold air. She put her hand on his chin and cheek, pulling his gaze from upwards to her awaiting green eyes, darkened from the amber lighting of the bistro lamp behind her.
"Bucky", she said. He looked at her, but there was no sound. She said something again; he couldn't decipher the words on her mouth, and yet she was still smiling at him, a gaze of love, protection and devotion to him.
"Who are you?" he whispered in English, his eyes widening when he realized he was not speaking Russian anymore. She grazed her thumb over his cheekbones, the stubble moving with the motion.
As if coming up for air, he heard what she said loud and clear, shouting his name in front of her, "Bucky"!
He blinked hard, suddenly back in the piano room, the air whooshing past his ears. He quickly got up, stumbling back as he knocked over a lamp, gripping onto the wooden frame of the bookcase, splinters crunching under his metal hand as he tried to steady himself.
"No, this can't be real" he gasped in English, shaking his head he paced to the door, one hand on the frame, he looked at her again straight into her eyes, "You can't be real", the image of her in front of him started to scatter away with the breeze of snowflakes coming through the open window, being kicked up and flying away. He ran, trying to get away as fast as possible from what he saw, what he thought he saw.
He could hear his heavy breathing, his head swayed, and his flesh hand twitched, he heard her whisper as if in his own ear, "But I am", before he got to the front of the warehouse shutting the door and threw a few grenades, disappearing into the Siberian winter night whilst the warehouse blew into flames.
"Mission report, Soldat" barked the general.
The Soldier sat in his confinement chair with the same scientists observing him like a lab rat.
"Mission report, Soldat"
He took a deep breath, and swallowed, the images of the girl still fresh in his mind. "уничтоженный (Eliminated)".
"Very good." The general turned around to the scientists, "Freeze him. He will forget everything that happened on this mission when we will use him again."
The scientists scampered at the controls of the confinement seat, extending it into a standing format. The Soldier was raised and put back in the cryogenic chamber, a mask and goggles fitted over him.
Just as the ice started to seep into his skin, stopping his heart until the next time he would be revived, he looked at the scientists around him. A girl caught his eye at the back of the room at the doorframe, in her yellow dress watching him before she also disappeared like the wind, and his eyes closed.