Chapter 5


Coldness sliced further inside her rigid bones; everything was numb-even her blood. Straining to breathe harder as she could manage, the girl traversed her blearily gaze around the room of medieval decor. The crackles of fire lulled her body to ease as wave of comfort lapped over her; saturating her churning blood with heat. The following moment that seized her, bounded her into the darkness of a looming presence, but she condemned to the twisting knots of pain erupting within her small frame strapped into a wooden chair, in front of a stone fireplace.

Her wrists twisted underneath metal shackles locked over her chest, yanking and feeling her muscles protest in the chains.

There was glossy coating of tears masking over the beautiful caramel of her irises; shivering and timid she parted her lips, opening her throat up, but she was too weak to speak. All the escaped from her vocals was a muffled cry that intermingled with weakening breath.

Flinching a response to the strange touch coiling over her skin, she dared her female captor a timid glance. She tried to protest against the coldness encasing over her skin. Long fingers caught the strands of her dark mahogany hair, threading each piece in between the wove of her fingers.

The woman was tall, invasive and almost wore the semblance of a witch over her pale sculpted face. Emerald green dyed hair fastened into a thick braid touching her lower back, and muscular frame clothed in a military ebony uniform with shiny golden buttons on the leather collar of her jacket.

It took only a mere second to feel the tension bubbling in her veins as she stared at a pair of steel scissors gleaming in the shafts of light...only a moment to grasp the honorific tool clutched in the woman's hand. The serrated blades were only inches from the clusters of her beautiful hair, the only remainder of her mother.

"This form of insult is a collected disease and must become sliced off to make you pure." The woman spoke with a disgusted hiss ragging up her throat, degrading the child's wounded soul with vile words rolling from the tip of her tongue."You will become a new daughter of our family. Beautiful and loyal to every wish your father expects you to grant."

There was no time to scream. She pushed back against the chair, struggling to fight, but the jerking quarrel ended when the scissors opened and snipped her hair. She watched the tresses fall to the floor.

She was butchered.

Gloved fingers kept on collecting the strands, cutting the thickness as vacant green eyes matched the sadistic grin etched over the woman's full lips.

The girl twitched in the chair, breaking her lips apart, and releasing faint cries as piece by piece her appearance changed.

It wasn't until the older female withdrew a step back, and gazed at her work with prideful gleam sparking in her darkened eyes.

The female captor slowly raked a serpentine gaze over the child, admiring the new hair style, shoulder length hair that draped over her pale, gawky cheeks, disheveled and marred into the in the mien of a dehumanized slave for HYDRA.

She was shattered.

Crying with every tear she could muster, the child tore her head away to the side, feeling the shortened locks slash over her cheeks. The new feeling she was experiencing was so hard for her small form to retract too in a short period of time. The bond of the substance the doctors injected her with became grease sticking over the bones of her ribs and caking ooze over her pounding heart.

"Your rite of induction will commence once you become purified with humanity's cancer that infects this world."

"Where is my friend?' the girl asked admitting out a breath, her eyes closing into slits. Fragments of memory struck her mind of extremely piercing eyes,winter azure sky and a metal hand pressing against her stomach wound. A hollow sound escaped from her throat. "I want my friend." she demanded in a cracking tone.

"You only get what you receive, princess." The woman growled in her real voice of German with ting of sordid vehemence ghosting over her scowling lips.

She grabbed the girl's chin, inclining her to meet her villainous stare, and dug her polished nails into ashen skin. She stared intently, watching her captive's expression flatten into a semblance of fear.

"The Winter soldier isn't your friend. He is a soulless machine. He is not a human." She intoned scraping her index finger over the girl's curved jaw line. "You may treat him as your pet...Or a loyal dog, but he is below our ranks. He doesn't deserve a brat's compassion."

Trembling, suddenly feeling the hammering pulse against her skull, the girl clenched her eyes shut beckoning her courage. "Remember him saving me in the snow," she said in a low pitch of a rattled voice.

"HYDRA saved you from a bitterness of death instead of leaving you to freeze out in the cold. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

The woman with green hair was making her scared, apprehensive even. She felt every fiber in her body scream in pain when the hand of her merciless tormentor pressed hard against her bandaged mid-section, applying pressure over the gunshot wound, and making her shed away more tears.

With her body wrapped in chains, her muffled and broken voice as intermix of confusion. "When can I see my friend?" she asked in mere whisper, feeling her heart reach an impasse against her bruised chest.

The woman just laughed cruel and spiteful at the little voice. "Open your eyes and I will tell you."

She opened her eyes, shuddering under the intense glower as if she had been accused for a crime. "Please, can you let me see him?" she pleaded

"How many hours have you slept?"

Shifting her intent focus to the embers lighting over the charred logs in the fireplace, she was obviously avoiding the deaden stare of the witch.,Showing her inward resistance, she narrowed her brown eyes to where her trim stomach covered with cotton gauze, gazing at the blood stains leaking through the layers and bruise darkening over her small right hand. The marks left by tubes, a cut etched in the skin over her forearm where a needle must have punctured when a substance had saturated her blood in greasy hold of toxic poison.

A low growl emitted from the woman's throat, "You're not looking at me, princess. How many?"

"I don't know." she answered in a frantic tone, her brown eyes scanned acutely over the floor. "Where's my mommy's locket?" she asked, feeling the muscles in her chest stiffen against the drumming heart beat. Her expression morphed into a distraught and abashed look. She fought against the urge of impending vomit rising up the swollen walls of her throat. She shook her head and muddled out incoherent words that soon turned into a blood churning scream of dolor. "Please...I don't want to lose it."

"You will get it back once you are healed." The woman lied through a false smile, backing away from the distressed child before leveling her shadowy glare at the scraps of hair piled around the legs of the chair.

"You will return to your room and stay there until we summon for your presence...Your friend will be waiting for you."

She clicked her leather heeled boots to the wooden door, and the moment the wood dragged over the stone floor, a tall man dressed in tactical black armor advanced in silent, methodical strides.

"The asset has been detained in the brat's room as you instructed Madame HYDRA," he spoke with a cadence of malice, lowering his head as a gesture of respect.

"We disarmed him from weapons and placed restraints to hold him in place in case he disobeys and tries to disobey and take her away." He added, unlocking the chains off the child, grabbing her, squeezing pressure over her shoulder, she unreleased a scream, but he gave her a blank stare.

"Tell the director that everything has been prepared for the induction. The serum has been recreated and perfected from Zola's old records. When all the injections have reached completion, HYDRA will have a new daughter that will follow every command of her father without humanness and defiance." Madame HYDRA sneered with a dark gleam masking over her green eyes when she settled a dark, lusty stare on the girl.

"She will become magnificent." she added, looking at the operative. "Remove the restraints off the Winter Soldier. I want our new daughter to feel safe with him as the transcendence of her new life under our shadow begins."

Lifting her up with one arm, the voiceless operative threw her shivering body over his broad shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes and walked out and down the torch lit hallway.

When he awoke, the muscular planes of his back dug against the hard, cold floor. The Winter Soldier fixed his bleary and ghostly blue eyes on the shafts of moonlight streaming from the arched, barred window and slowly his vision came into focus as the searing and harrowing feeling crawled through his veins. He could smell the dense air permeating through the room, and listened to the familiar cries echo in his ears. Fragments of memory scarred over his impaired mind. He stiffened into an uprooted stance, his darkened eyes scanned over the room systematically until he locked his intense, but vacant glare on a dithering shape curled in a corner.

Solace brushed over his heart, as he felt the iciness melt away as he listened to the sobbing of a familiar voice. He stalked closer in slow and cautious strides, and found her, the child the made him feel human again.

She was different, there he remembered her, long brown hair butchered into same style he wore his own chestnut strands draped over his obscured face.

Her thin features pale and flushed with heat from a violent wave of feverish symptoms..She didn't look like that small, injured angel that he carried through the squalls of the snow tempest. She was prisoner, wounded, scared and alone to fend for her survival against the rabid wolves of HYDRA. His blue eyes widened at the inflamed mark on her neck. The swollen puncture holes of various needles red and to tender to the touch. They had lied to him-given him a false hope in a structured delirium that made him believe that she was safe from the horror.

Who is she?

Halting in his calculated steps, he crouched down to her level. Instinct told him to rest his hand on her trembling shoulder, the Winter Soldier realized that even now she was changing into a dehumanized weapon.

Tears for the first sign of her soul breaking apart. He knew that she wasn't going to keep her innocence, but he also that this child needed him; and he never had a friend who didn't treat him as a hollow shell. Maybe she was his freedom out of the desolation of red carnage, vivid nightmares of bloodshed and abhorrent screams and the senseless deliriums that obstructed his real memories. His real existence.

A deep sinking anguish was churning in his stomach; he reached out his metal hand, and placed it over her bruised shoulder. Searing the enthralling pain with the coldness of his frosty touch of alloy that seeped into her throbbing bones as the moonlight shone over them.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. I know you want to cry, but you can't...You need to show strength. Not weakness." he crooned in soft Russian a brush of soothing warmth, allowing his breath to ghost over her tarnished skin. "Pretend it's just a bad dream," he muttered, taming her despair. He looked clinically focused on the cotton sheathed around her tiny waist.

The girl lifted up her head, wetness streaked over her sallow cheeks. She dared herself to deep into the molten flecks of silver that had gripped around the soulless darkness of his pupils. Razor shards of azure that melted into a light crystal blue underneath the shadow of his long strands of brown hair.

Am I really doing this?

She elevated her shaking hand, but she managed to crack a smile, his eyes reminded her of a December sky, clear and carried mystery of winter. Her fingers stroked over the full shape of his still lips, the calmness that shone in his sharp gaze kept her steady and unafraid.

He simply pulled her to his lap, and placed her head on the smooth planes of his fervent chest. His metal arm wrapped like a shield over her tiny form as he lowered himself down to the floor, keeping her secured against his ardent body, using every ounce of heat to keep her warm.

She nuzzled snug against him, and drifted into a slumber while he conserved his lethal stare on the room's door, ready to attack if danger threatened to claim her.