He woke up screaming that night.
Or was it a day? It was hard to tell underground. His voice was hoarse, and his throat hurt, and he had tears in his eyes and sweat on his trembling lips, twisted into a grimace he felt so foreign on his face, as every expression of feelings was ever foreign to him. He sensed that his flesh hand was shaking too and lifted it up to his eyes disbelievingly. He didn't know why it did.
He didn't know much, and he never had, just his priorities for a mission, just where to go after it, when to obey and when to lie down and wait for what else they decided to do with him, in order for him to be a more useful weapon. That's what he was. But not anymore. He felt weak and, unlike the left arm made of crude metal, he felt the weakness of his human flesh more than any time before.
Human. Was he human? He never felt that. He only knew he had to be successful in his missions and to return to the base, and to be ready for whatever they ordered him to memorize and carry out with precision and total efficiency. Now he didn't have that. His mission failed, he failed, new orders never came, and he knew he'd had spent two days here, all closed off and wary of footsteps coming for him, that never echoed between the desolate walls.
He was alone and he searched for the meaning of the word in his head. He had always been alone, he never had any accomplices, only people who made the orders, people who targeted at him, people who ran or screamed, people who made him scream. Now nobody was punishing him for his failure and he was feeling a sense of gratefulness for it, but he never knew when the pain would come again. And it would, it always did, bringing with it the oblivion and the cold.
Now he felt the ache and the chill in his healing arm but he didn't feel the cold enveloping him whole, asphyxiating him alive, and that was what he was grateful for. He suddenly felt almost animalistic need to be clean again and so he went to look around the station he was at. He also felt a need for sustenance, and with having nobody around telling him he couldn't eat or drink, until he understood the importance of a successful mission, with nobody making a point clear that he was not to eat or sleep or talk, until someone allowed him, he wanted to do just that.
He wanted, really wanted for the first time he could remember, and he let the feeling flow through him, bringing warmth with it. After some searching around, he found a closed but not locked door, behind which was a small room. It was almost empty but for some shelves, and he found two pieces of old bread in them and ate it in one go. He chased after the smell of the water and heard the sounds of it dripping, finding another narrow door, leading to a makeshift shower.
He saw some discarded clothes next to it, unmarked and seemingly fresh, sweat pants and a long-sleeved hoodie, and he found a crumpled towel in the corner of the stall. He decided to use the shower, even if he suspected his dressing of the wound wouldn't have liked it. He still made that decision – a first constant decision he could clearly remember making – and slowly stripped off his stained and dirty clothing. He got rid of the belts and heavy leather, strong boots, rigid pants and the underwear, and at the last minute wrapped his flesh arm in an empty bag lying around.
He had his shower and he ached with cold water sluicing all over him, but that was ok, he was used to the cold and that way of showering. He even drank from the stream, feeling how his dry throat savored the slightly metallic taste. Soon, though, the water became almost warm and he was surprised by it, mechanically soaping his sweaty and grimy body, trying to get rid of the stench that still reminded him of what he had been.
The Winter Soldier were words repeated to him, or at him, on many occasions, and he associated those with his missions and the people he killed and the ones who tried to kill him, and mostly, with the cold again, the dark, and the constant pressure of oblivion in his brain. He sensed the title like the second skin on him, and now he tried to wash clean of it, never really knowing why.
But he knew he was the Winter Soldier no more, he failed his mission and his thoughts got mixed up with confusing feelings, and nobody was ordering him around anymore. He didn't know what he was, but he didn't feel attached to the title anymore either. He just didn't have a name, although he always had names delivered to him, of targets to eliminate. But they were his mission, and he was a shadow that went after those who had to be destroyed. That didn't make him anymore human than he would have wanted it to.
He finished the washing, and the water was really warm now, but he cut off the stream and got out of the stall to dry himself off. He turned left while putting on the pants and froze. He thought he saw a ghost but it was really a reflection of himself, blank and vague in a misted piece of mirror on the wall, showing his wild eyes and feral expression on the cut and bruised face. Dark wet hair was falling around it and dripping beads of water on his naked shoulders and he shivered minutely.
He couldn't take his eyes off the reflection he saw. It scared him, just like the words of the man had scared him back on the helicarrier. It made him want to smash that reflection and dent the wall and watch the little pieces of the mirror fall. He didn't know he had done just that, until there was a crash and little pieces of plaster and shards of mirror were lying all around and inside a small sink underneath. He trembled and he didn't know why, except for the metal hand that was steady and cold as ever, having not felt the connection it just made.
He felt himself bending down as in a bottomless dream he had just had a few hours earlier, where he fell and fell, down the blank space, never reaching any end. Feeling colder and colder until he froze alive, and he was plummeting still. Now he was numb inside, just like in that dream, watching himself turn to stone, and it made him want to scream and smash everything around him, leaving nothing unscathed, until he was left standing in the empty space like a lone survivor of the cold and long winter.
He suddenly knew what that meant, winter and cold, and snow all around him, painted with a red stream of blood, bright on the white and shiny surface. He felt sudden warmth and saw that he had a shard of the mirror pressed inside his flesh hand, cutting through the skin and making the red seep and trickle down the side of the sink. He felt nothing more, just warmth, and it enraged him. He clutched the shard, hard. He squeezed on it, until he felt burning in his fingers and sharp stinging in his palm, effectively cutting it open.
Now satisfied, he dropped the shard on the tiled ground and suddenly felt high with relief. He could still feel, he could still hurt, he was human after all. He could hurt, but he could heal too. He would make everything he could not to meet the people that used to own him, he suddenly decided. He had the strength and he had the power, and he would use it for defending himself against anyone who would want to take his newly found sense of humanity from him.
He still didn't know who he was, but he was somebody, he knew that, and he would search for that somebody until he found it. He didn't really know anyone who could help him along the way, unless he counted the man on the bridge that had talked to him, begged him, said things to him no other target had ever said before. He was no ordinary target, he was no ordinary mission, but one he had failed consciously, one person he had saved and not destroyed. If someone could make him aware of who he was, it was that man. He had to find him. That would be his new mission.