{2}

Resisting thrums of the wild pounds of his heart, the Winter Soldier trained his metallic azure eyes over contorted pieces of metal. Vivid shades of red flared dangerously against his enraged vision. Everything felt distorted…He couldn't restrain to each thrall of accessing sentiment that ran with heavy torrents across his addled mind.

A vague stench of gasoline wavered in the brisk air in that moment his senses became compromised. Masses of snow covered his tactical boots as he trudged away from the smoldering wreckage; leaving three lifeless bodies of HYDRA agents dangling out of the van's windows. Tonight, he displayed no mercy.

The snow topped area reeked of the aftermath from a brutal assault that he conducted. Smears of blood imprinted the ground as his footprints vanished against the falling snow.

It had been a brutal attack. He used his combat knife with the precise effort to slice into their throats; he made the cut quick and painless. His metal hand restricted over chilled flesh and crushed bones as of the operatives tried to make an effortless reach for the orphaned girl, but he obstructed that directive, protecting her with feral and primal nature of a menacing wolf defending his wounded cub. He was vicious, lethal and savagely efficient to their weakness and it used his gain when he delivered the final assault. Screams of utter anguish finally diminished, as he coiled his arms securely around the child.

At first, it felt unnatural to hold her small body against the protective Kevlar of his armored vest, her pulse was steady giving him an understanding that she wasn't afraid of him. After repressing the ache lancing through his heart, he indecisively smashed his boots through the back window, rolling into the snow, and her snug and protected from his weight . Defiance somehow found him again, a sense of attachment that he fought against as he permitted her head to rest against his flesh shoulder, not knowing that his hand was stroking through her disheveled brown strands. The contact he welcomed couldn't be avoided.

Those were only moments before, he trudged in methodical paces from the wreckage, his glacial metallic eyes possessed a clear passage, it was enforced instinct to distance her from the looming danger he sensed wavering in the shadows: he had to succeed tonight.

Turning his head, lengthy tresses of dark hair lashed against his hollowed cheekbones, he stole a glance over his armored shoulder; locking his feral gaze distinctly on the moving target whom he registered as another operative. With automatic reaction, he aimed the muzzle of his pistol at the puddle of gasoline. He was only granted a small window of opportunity to do something radical. In that moment, he felt his gloved finger coil the trigger back, and he discharged a bullet against the metal back door of the vehicle, sparks of amber flickered into the spilled liquid as ignition released a deafening thunderous sound of an explosion. Vibrations merged beneath his boots as the frozen ground was tremoring in each sonic wake.

Unbothered, the Winter Soldier parted his chilled lips, drawing out vapors of crystallized breath; his enhanced sculpt of muscle stiffened under leather as he thumped heavy steps through the mounts of snow; enclosing his metal palm over her exposed wound. The bullet was lodged in the bruising flesh, as he assessed the damage with a calculating rove of his pale blue eyes. Red dripped from a opened cut on his brow, sliding to his clenched jaw as he tasted the sourness invade his throat.

Each step forced pain to generate into a swollen gauge of flesh, glass was knifing into muscles as he gritted his teeth, slogging his exhausted body against the violent slashes of the freezing rain pelting over the exposed flesh of his right bicep. The sting penetrated through bone as the searing coldness numbed the pain. He wouldn't submit. His body was condition-designed- to evolve from weakness.

For years he was mangled and imprisoned into a cryo pod, he was immune to different levels of torturous possession of HYDRA's will. Ice was potent in his veins. He was remade to feel no warmth of human touch, just the metallic coils of servitude.

The scent of blood always loomed over him. There was no escape from it, they forced him to become immune to the sickening wafts of decay piled at his feet. In a short time of HYDRA's emergence in the shadows;he obtained all directives, extracting life and eliminating obstacles that prevented his masters from their reaching full dominance. For the last seventy years, he had endured the brutal and effective training, dehumanization and coercion, serum infusions -all molding him into a perfected and loyal weapon of enforcing death. He became an equalizer to the balance of power and weakness; preying on the impure that resisted the New Order of HYDRA.

Sometimes he performed with drastic measures to prevent failure, leaving a blood trail in the wake of his wraith-like presence. He was nameless-heartless and only went by the codename that he was enlisted as, the Winter Soldier, an enhanced and distorted version of what had once been an honorable man. Through endurance and sensory manipulation, he accepted that harrowed existence by writing it with the blood of his victims.

Today was no exception. He had received orders to terminate lives that dwelt inside a farm house. A disloyal KGB agent, who defected after isolating a threat that would purge the errors humanity. He was trained to despise life; mostly because of the programmed impulses that corrupted his addled mind. He executed the family without resistance but never expected that the youngest of the children would have survived the assault. It was divergence -monsters were created not to feel and he was one to the core.

There was no escape. He treated days as missions. It was the only way to survive another clashing of a storm of guilt, and he had taken so many lives: whether pulling the trigger or slashing the knife. He killed without mercy, allowed his handlers to turn him into a relentless beast and made him walk into the darkness.

For years he followed their orders as a loyal asset; executing bad and good people with his precision and brutality -he never liked taking a life. His road had ended. He became a ghost, a nameless drifter with only nightmares to claim his depths. It haunted him to feel numbness each time he took the shot, made red rain pour and erased his presence from the scene. He became the undertaker- phantasm- that people feared, but it wasn't his true existence. The Winter Solider was a codename etched on the graves of his victims, purged from identity...memories... emotions...He was a soldier with iron layers and a highly efficient Soviet KBG assassin.

Deep underneath HYDRA's tentacles, he knew there was more to his life than just being a controlled gun with a license to kill. Though he was conditioned not to display human affection, to feel the need of attachment, he carried natural instincts to protect, but the blood on his hands couldn't be cleansed with vows and old promises, not when he drowned into the endless red abyss of sin.

He didn't want people to stare into his steel gray eyes, to see the dark reflections of his tormented and butchered past the faces of so many people that he executed still lingered in the stormy hues of he stared down at the innocent child: the one he was ordered to terminate, he found light in that darkness he walked, and there was a thread of hope that he could become something better than a killer or marksman: he embraced his purpose of defending her.

Holding onto that oath, he used all his methods, skills and intelligence and made the defining choice not to unleash the demon, but to become a dark angel -her elusive protector who could chase the devils when he was called...

With careful ease, he lowered the girl and quickly discarded his leather jacket to serve as the cover over her limp body. It felt right to do, almost like instinct. He gently positioned her head against a mound of snow that his metal hand shoved underneath a tasseled mass of fanned out brown hair. Looking at her innocent face with the absence of reluctance teeming in him, the Soviet assassin felt a small frown etching across his full lips as his icy resolve noticed bluish discoloring on her pale cheeks. She would freeze to death. He needed to react.

"Ditya," he breathed out harsh Russian, his baritone strained from disuse. In a slow effort of his gloved hand, he caressed two fingers under her jaw, feeling for a subtle pulse throb as he eased tentative pressure on her neck. A sense of relief flared in his veins as he felt a bleak and ebbing connection to her strength."Ty menya slyshish'?"

There was no response. The child was motionless under the cautious graces of his metallic touch. With a heave of frustrated breath, he fought against the approach of coldness and tasted the coppery tang of runny blood sliding down his raw throat as he swallowed.

'She's innocent. A life that can't be terminated. I gonna save her.'

Something collided within his riddled depths, he felt a familiar sense harboring him in that undetermined moment as his flesh hand lightened over her chilled skin. He couldn't isolate that piece of humanity as he allowed warmth to resurrect inside of him. It was only for a split second of gracing contact he caressed her disheveled strands before reaching for his knife.

Emitting out a feral growl, his metal fist slashed the ground,and his intent grayish-blue eyes scanned over the mounds of snow. "Where-where is it?"he snarled with a low seethe of frosty breath. The spear-pointed blade glinted against the obstructive whiteness flocking around them.

In a measured heartbeat of pure willpower; his chrome fingers seized the knife with a hammer grip in a cold possessive clenched. Without hesitation steering him away, the Winter Soldier ripped opened her blood soaked shirt; exposing her blemished skin to the nips of cold. He yanked the material clean off in one fierce effortless yank and discarded that raveled piece into the snow.

Roving his hardened, calculating stare, he mentally assessed the gauge deepening in her skin, a shimmer of lead revealed it's slow trek into her trim stomach. Patches of the swelling had increased over the opened entry wound.

Gobs of blood were viciously leaking out, and smearing over her paling skin in a webbing patterned. Breathing out a steady intake of air, the Winter Soldier composed all emotion and harbored all his strength to fight the murderous pulses that seemed to reach influx as red became transfixed in his blurring vision. He needed to focus. The child was fading, and he was resolved to create a medical incision on the swollen flesh.

"If you can hear me, I'm gonna remove this bullet out of you," he whispered in a throaty baritone, feeling a tad indecisive on how to make the cut. One breath he raised the knife; reserving the grip as the blade aimed to pierce. He remembered saving a life before, the distant weaves of memories constructed a gaunt boyish face with shining blue eyes, still unclear for him to register but it was real enough to hold, for a moment.

The desire to save the orphan was becoming relentless, his full lips fused tautly, as he slid the knife's jagged edge over her bruised skin, carefully with precise ease he carved into the muscle until a slit was formed. Muscles coiled with distress, but he maintained a steady-gentle- hand.

As his blade clicked against the bullet from the deepening wound, lines of dark maroon leaked from the exposed area. With a sense of unease, he swallowed thickly, dryness made his throat ache. The stench of blood wafted in the cold air as he regained focus on her fluttering eyelids.

Staring down at that faint glimpse of innocence triggered something inside, that the Winter Soldier's damaged mind couldn't suppress. It was dominant to fight. He was conditioned-tortured- never to feel, it was efficient to remain cold as ice for the mission, but he felt everything unravel in torrents as his blue eyes instantly fell on the child's lax face. In those seconds he watched the blood drip into the snow, his chrome fingers approached her chilled face and threaded against drenched twines of her hair with reverent strokes, almost brotherly. He wanted to savor the moment of grasping on a lifeline of humanity again.

A small hint of a smirk possessed his numbing lips, he felt her heart rate calming as the knife sliced into another layer of skin, plucked out the bullet. He wasted no time, one flick of the blade and it was gone from view. He seemed disturbed by seeds of memories that had been planted in his mind lifetime before he fell into deathless ice. Recollection of a distant time gave him the clear understanding that he performed a deep cut before; a young man wounded with a bullet in his chest. He remembered holding the boy's hand, offering his reverence and warmth as the soldier embraced the sense of peace. He became battle-hardened, fearless and pushed his limits as he carried the wounded youth's across countryside, holding weight firmly on his shoulders, and brought the soldier to a Red Cross tent for medical assistance.

Now, he was holding that burden again, the only difference was that instead of a soldier drenched in mud, his mission came in the form of a little girl. Nevertheless, he felt the same breaches of unshakable trepidation etch over his heart. The acid in his stomach begun to eat through layers as vexatious pulses throbbed into his skull. Like any man in pain, he drew up a forceful breath, allowing tears to freeze over his bristled jaw.

Confused, he glanced back at his metal hand, furrowing his brows, and wondered if what he saw was just an illusion to prevent him from seeing humanity underneath: maybe I'm still a man instead of a machine?

A small gasp had awoken his muses, the Winter Soldier ripped off a piece of leather from his jacket, and with an effective charge of instinct applied the strip over the girl's opened wound.

Heat wavered from his flesh hand and merged over her frigid skin, each connected pulse begun to create enough friction to seal off the leakage of blood that soaked through mounds of fallen snow. Unruly tresses of lengthy hair whipped at his wind-bitten face, he frowned deeply as his eyes tracked over the blue tinge coloring her lips. It wasn't a good sign. She needed a better source of warmth.

"Stay with me, malyutka," he urged, breathlessly, biting down at his lip. The rise and fall of her chest served as his only indication that she was still alive, barely, but functional enough for him to bring her to the safe house location that was inscribed in his mind.

The frozen earth vibrated with encroaching underfoot, recognizing the approach of a threat, he removed a pair of inferred goggles from a pouch attached to his uniform. He adjusted them adjusted them quickly over his forehead, hair became caught in the straps as the lens blocked out the distant flecks of moonlight from his gaze. He craned his neck, surveying the vacant area, anticipating intimate danger. His muscles tensed as he curled his gloved fingers over the handle of his recovered knife, hunching his rigid shoulders, he took a predatory stance and waited for the intruder to make his presence known.

The stillness of the moment gave him precise observation, he maintained a steady eye, senses alert to the encroaching presence of the HYDRA operative that became distinctly fixed in his hawkish vision. He measured each boot step, as the shadow hid between the snow top pine.

Gathering up sufficient details for his direct assault, the Winter Soldier straightened to the arches of his poised feet, his own towering shadow obscured the child's listless body. He was challenging the shadows, patiently waiting to become provoked. "Cross my path and I will kill you..." A growl ripped in his throat as he automatically slipped into his termination mode.

With a taut clench of his chrome knuckles, his hand fastened into a fist, blood slid over the sleek plates and landed in the snow. Icy rage engulfed through his veins, addressing his gaze, his blue eyes focused on the rows of trees with disinterest. In a shift of balance, a delirious haze overtook his mind; something had triggered the blazes of sudden currents of static began to filter through the crevices of his mind, creating instability in his flow of thoughts and flashes of distorted faces, heart rates lines on EKG machine, it was the chimeras of his past anguish and torturous presence of nightmares consumed every fiber of his body.

'Focus on the mission.'

Memories started to overlap, inorganic, malicious voices of lifeless husks droned in his pounding ears. It had forced his mind to shut down, almost like a reset program. He struggled through the systemic tortures and the mindless abuse he had faced in a red lit room consisting of four cement walls, steel restraints bolted to the ground, and a bucket of murky water: the Red Room. The labyrinthine prison where the strengths of humanity had been butchered and reattached by threads for cruel handlers to pull as strings: hell on earth.

Screeching out feral cries for release, he lost all balance his footing and crashed to the ground, knees absorbed the shock of weight hitting frozen earth, hs hands encompassed over his ears, trying to block out the tantalizing noises echoing back to his mercy pleas.

His bones started to jostle in the wake of distress and his heart throbbed as he thrashed wildly as red markers from sniper rifles painted his armored chest with dots. He was slipping back into the void, not realizing at the microchip planted in his infrared goggles that caused him to reenter back into a stage of a mind-numbing relapse. He was literally shutting down.

As world spun around him into a darkening vortex of red; his movements became erratic, unstable and ferocious. He crawled on his stomach, breath choked out his lungs and his forehead was pulsing. Screams turned up ragged and sharpened with cries of utter agony; sweat blinded his vision and dampened strands fell over his babbling lips. He was entering back into submission, the Sleeper Agent protocol had been activated...his mind was on the brink of turning into mush.

"Please...She's gonna to die out here..." He gawked out slurring pleas in Russian."Ona sobirayetsya umeret' zdes'."

His harsh screams turned up ragged and sharpened with cries of utter agony; sweat blinded his vision and dampened strands of messy hair fell over his babbling lips. He was submerging back into a dormant state, the Sleeper Agent protocol had been activated...his mind was on the brink of turning into mush.

Something foreign had invaded his body, making him felt like his insides were dissolving, it was a cruel and familiar sensation. Each surge of energy had permeated through his bones, his blood and internal organs. He tried to push his weight close to her, but his muscles underneath his jacket recoiled in pain; he wanted to protect her. He wanted to trust in himself again.

His dimming gaze shifted to the child, and he reached to grab her tiny hand,but the amalgamated, invasive fragments of his wrecked mind were growing spastic. His pants of breath were laced with heavy, choking moans and his heart rate was increasing as the organ pounded against his chest with jackhammer force; dismissing all the numbness that entrapped his body, the Winter Soldier managed to clasp his cold metal fingers around her pulsing wrist, refusing to break that line of their connection as surges of pain ravaged through his skull.

In those seconds of falling into a void of submission, as his muscles went slack, he caught a blurry glimpse of tactical boots crunching fervently through mounds of snow and then the figure halted with one pause of his footing before of the unconscious child.

The intruding operative was medium height, his built solid with muscle and he was garbed in black combat gear, armed and poised to deliver a killing strike. Feeling the admission of dominance over the situation, the operative's movements stilled, as he narrowed his wolfish brown eyes and collectively absorbed darkness as he locked onto the Winter Soldier.

Shaking his head with a semblance of unbidden disgust, the operative pressed the com link wedged in his ear, "Sir, I found the asset. The device worked just enough to shut him down. He has taken out three of our agents and he's not alone." He paused in his snide words and stared ruefully down at the unconscious child, as a wicked gleam twisted in his dark eyes, and so did her reflection.

"It appears that your loyal lap dog as found the little brat as you predicted, looks like she's wounded, do you want me to end her pain?" He digressed gruffly, his lips pulled into a roguish smirk as if he thirsted to catch a whiff of spilled blood. He aimed his automatic rifle directly at the girl's head. His stiff -trigger- finger slowly pushed back against the gun's hammer, waiting to release the bullet, not fully aware that he was evoking a murderous glare of HYDRA's living nightmare. "Just give me the order for the capture or execution, sir…"