Chapter 8
Looking into the swirls of caramel, he hated the feeling distant and stoic, it made his stomach churn and bones feel petrified. It made him want to become human again.
It made him want to shield his warmth over her shivering body as she curled against his side. Her laden arms wrapped over his stomach. He felt the tremors subside as he fondly stroked his metal hand through her shorten locks of brown hair. He wanted to see more humanity, at least understand emotions that many HYDRA agents that he had observed in the past never held on their harden faces.
You can't feel. You're a weapon. Hollow and cold.
His metal fingers slowly made their trek down her back, carefully avoiding the bandages that covered her wounds, she was still shrunken down, timid, afraid and drenching his black shirt with salty tears.
He took a deep breath to steady himself and glanced at the doorway, before his intense blue eyes snapped down to her paled face.
"Why can't I go outside?" The little girl asked, grabbing the martial of his shirt into small fists with a tight squeeze as she sniffled into his tensed muscles.
"Uh...ยป He cleared his throat and coughed roughly. "I don't know why you can't leave your room..." His voice drifted as he turned his gaze back to the door, just to double check. "I think I have an idea, you have to stay right here and don't move..." He mumbled, barely sounding firm, he gently settled her arms down, and eased himself off the floor, still looking at the door, with his intense blue eyes. He could sense danger, impending threats in the shadows, and even though his was a lethal killer, he knew harm would come to her, if he blinked.
"Where are you going?" she asked in a weakening voice, and tried to lift herself off the floor, but her balance was unsteady, and legs wobbled as she stood up against the wall.
His jaw clenched as he tried to retain his tetchy anger that was growing in his veins as he glanced over his shoulder, eyeing her with a ravenous glower.. There was a part of him that wanted to show his benevolent streak to her, but his programmed mind kept that part locked up inside. Frustrated, he released a deep breath. It blow steadily from his throat, but his veins were surging with bitter rage. "I'm not going anywhere...I can't." He narrowed his blue eyes at the floor. His torso twisted and he moved in haste towards the balcony. He snapped off the lock and took a step outside. The moment he saw a pile of snow, he grabbed a handful with his metal fingers forming into a ball.
"What is that?" She asked and staggered closer to him, looking up at the snowball in his hand.
He stiffened his lips into a disgusted grimace. "I told you not to move," he barked ruefully, not wanting to listen to her little voice. She was relentless, and shifted her tiny form in front of him, looking up at his face with her needy brown eyes. Growling under his breath, and averted her stare.
"Stop looking at me like that," He mumbled sharply, his voice deep and gravelly, he was trying to hide the lightness shining in his blue eyes as her frail hand touched his metal plated wrist. Blowing up a frustrated breath, a few pieces of his dark hair flipped out of his eyes, and crouched down slowly to her, holding out his bionic hand, and whispered in a gruff tone, "Take it."
She gave him a bright smile, and took the snowball out of his hand, her fingers curled over the cold layers of ice, and her body shook against the wispy flakes that fell into her hair. "Why did you make this for me?"
The Winter Soldier sucked his lips into a tight grimace, "I don't know, I thought it was the right thing to do and..." He trailed off, shifting his eyes back to the bedroom's door. "I think we need to go back inside."
"Thank you," she entrapped his waist inside the lock of a grateful hug, he suddenly became startled by her emotions that had entered inside of his heart.
"You're welcome," he returned, holding her against him and ignoring the commanding voice of Brock Rumlow in the doorway that shot out the orders to move into the hall. He didn't want to depart from her, not when she needed him to protect her, but he had to obey for her survival. Pulling away, he guided her back into the room, lifted her on the edge of the bed and told her, "Stay here for me," he placed his hand on her frozen cheek, I won't be long."
Staring at the tears roll down her face, he stepped away from the bedside, feeling another piece of his soul rip and moved in hastily strides to the door.
"You're needed outside, asset." Rumlow spoke in a emotionless voice, keeping his dark brown eyes latched on the child, and he waited for the assassin to disappear into the shadows, and then he moved into the bedroom. He thumped his boots and placed his gloved hand on her trembling shoulder. "It's getting colder outside and I know that you want to go and play. Don't worry, your friend will be out there playing a few games with some of my pals..." He settled a villainous glare on the Winter Soldier. A darkened grin stifled over his lips"Why don't we play our own little game?"
She glared up at him, "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers...Even the ugly ones," she smirked, holding her defiance, and he hand squeezed harder on her shoulder.
"I'm not stranger, I'm an old friend of Winter," he grinned darkly, yanking her arm, and pulling her off the bed, blocking out her screaming protests. "Now, lets go outside and play..."
In the devoid of the snow, the Winter Soldier stood on motionless on the frozen ground, breathing the cold air as it scraped against his lungs. The slashes of the wind bit against his tensed jaw, he never flinched. He remained uprooted on the mounds of snow, his leather combat boots pressed with traction as his tresses of dark hair dangled over his pale haunted azure eyes.
He was immune to the coldness encasing over his marred bones, the alloy plates of his metal arm never grew stiff as the temperature dropped a few degrees.
Restless, he felt the churning of his disheveled soul rip into shreds as his intent, murderous glower leveled with the faints flakes of snow falling from the ashen clouds above his frozen body. He wanted existence to flow back into his veins, to the warmth of his own blood pulsing with the single pound of his heart.
The Winter Soldier did not have a name; he did not have a birthday, a reason to step forward without the directive of voices commanding him to move; no emotions gathered over his chiseled face. Everything felt like it was raked away when he had been strapped into the unbreakable restraints, injected with lucid substance that made his veins burn with liquid fire. He was a hollow weapon, molded in the image of HYDRA; his hands were laden and glued to the cold metal of sniper rifles, pistols and knives.
Car explosion. Two charred bodies..Americans...Husband and wife.
There was no escape for him, no freedom to run without his handlers hunting him down. Extraction of his humanity always happened, if he remembered a single name, a lyric of olden song that replayed in the recess of his impaired mind. Lately, after rescuing the child, he had been haunted by distant past. Images configured and flashed when he dared himself to close his eyes, and fall back into the darkness.
"Tell me what you see, Soldier?"
"There is a boy," he felt his own breath ghost over his chilled lips, feeling the warm of the memories reemerge back into his fractured heart. He blinked a few times, batting his lashes against his frozen cheeks, melting the particles of snow, as he released a deep, abysmal sigh of confusion. He was incoherent with words, mumbling in harsh Russian, and squeezing his eyes shut, relenting against the thralls of pain crashing over his body.
He entered the throes of delirium, forcing images from the rifts of his barred subconscious. He always expected his fate, the coldness and the bite of death penetrating farther into the marrow of his solid bones. It was his punishment. "I remember a boy...He had golden hair and bright blue eyes. He looked ill...dying in a small room...The boy needs..."
"Kneel down, Soldier," a virulent baritone of German commanded in the dimness of gray light. "That's an order..."
Feeling his legs strained, he crashed to his knees. He wrapped his arms over his Kevlar vest, rocking his body frantically, entering another relapse, feeling the weights of his sins crush his bones into paste. He blocked out the barren landscape, reentered the myriad cimmerian pools of chaotic thoughts, swirling into ripples of dark maroon and sooty black until everything swallowed into a chasm.
Screaming.
It was a sound that had been emblazon in his blood clogged ears. His head like it had been filled with flame. He felt the cracks of his soul open as the tantalizing voltage from the machines surged through his battered form.
He was a prisoner under the shadow of their merciless torture. His bare muscles pressed against the cold metal of the chair, listening the probes buzzing as the steel arms lowered and cloaked over his blood stained face. His right hand trembled with tiny tremors as the breath of his lungs sucked out when the shackles clasped and he forced himself to recline backwards.
"Steve..." he whispered as watery lines of blood trickled from the swollen corners of his mouth. "Steve...I'm coming home..." He choked out pitches of weakened words; only then to receive a slap of a backhand. The raw skin heated with invasive pain of shocks, making his jaw grow partly numb, until onslaught reached the stiffened muscles of his chest.
"Steve is a dead," the virulent response of his superior echoed in his ears. "The American super-soldier died...He failed his mission." the man coldy added, snapping the restraints over his heaving torso into place; and he couldn't budge a muscle; his chest strained and breath hitched as the encroaching, horrific droning noises of machines rippled through his pulsing veins. "Let's pretend it's just a bad memory-a nightmare that can be easily erased...Just like a soldiers name on a grave."
He became captive under a pair of grayish-blue eyes, burning with cruelty like toxic blight melting the snow, watching him slowly contort in thralls of agony in the torture chair, his face twisted with excruciating pain.
The penetration of agony punctured into his heart, as he felt the smoldering tears roll steadily down his bruised and ashen cheekbones. His face stung and he tried to force force out screaming protests, but he was rendered voiceless, condemned to silence.
"Bite down on the mouth guard..."
His response was quick and clear. Blood and salt mixed in the water building over the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth just enough to spite on the floor. With his act of unbreakable defiance he revealed to his handlers, that he still was human. Another slap in the face jerked his head surprisingly to one side as he yelped aloud. The knells of his pain ended when the rudder mold of a mouth guard pushed over the upper row of his teeth, and his head held into place. The metal probes swiveled into an upside down position, latched over his temples. The vibrations rattled his skull; he felt bile making its course up his throat as he screamed out his fear at the malevolent enforcer-the new director who spoke in American tongue.
"You cannot break me!" he screamed in rage against the mouth guard, he was relenting as the electric shock waves melted inside is eye sockets. "I'm a kid from Brooklyn...My name is James...Buch..."
He could not contain the tears; his skin felt charred, heartbeat skipped and soul ripped into threads. He closed his eyes, fighting with every breath, until his tongue grew brittle and everything he had kept in his mind faded into red pulses of confusion, order and death. The blood in his veins hardened and emotions erased in the surges of volts jolting against his heart.
Finally, after jerking violently, the young soldier gave into the pain. He allowed it to consume him, until all he felt was pure, feral, sickening, brutal and morbid fire turn into fathoms ice that coated over his marred soul, inescapable and damaged...Winter.
He drifted out his mania when a pounding force of a leather fist rammed into his jaw, making him double over as blood stained the snow underneath. Vision dimmed for a few seconds, as he stared up at Von Shulter cracking his knuckles with a sadistic expression painted on his tanned face.
The Winter Soldier grunted aloud, and with an upsurge of rage, he flipped back onto his boots, and readied his body into a fighting stance. He barred his teeth like a fierce wolf, snarling under his breath and charged at opponent with a bellow of disgust. Nothing could restrain he clenched jaw and felt the ignition of unknown emotions grow untamed. With a fast reflex, he removed his knife, and threatened Shulter with a fast sway of his blade in the frigid air. Angrily, he clenched his metal fist, his ire and adrenaline spiked as he lunged at the operative with his blue eyes darkened into full pupil, no white, just blackness.
"The director wants to give you another treatment," Shulter smirked cockily at him; eyeing his knife as the sound of his knuckles crackled under stiff leather gloves. He circled the Winter Soldier, daring the assassin to break out of his resistance to attack. "You've been lacking discipline ever since that worthless brat came here." he spat his back teeth, he looked at the operative with unyielding eyes, glaring underneath tendrils of dark hair, he reeked of sweat. Shulter's sadistic words found a way to jab against his heart. He pushed the Winter Soldier to the edge. He used the girl as his the impassive latched on the assassin's menacing face. Shulter taunted with malice ragging up his throat. "Tell me, Soldier, do you have feelings for the little brat?"
Suspicious, the Winter Solider spat out blankly, "She is my mission..." He responded with a gravelly voice and gripped his metal fingers around the handle into the tightness of his clutch. "Why do you care about how I feel?"
"I do not care," Shulter shot back, scoffing, and he watched his opponent's blue eyes flare with hatred. "You know that you are just a drone. A soulless husk who obeys for us. You are nothing, but a ghost of winter. That little friend of yours will soon join you once she's put into a grave." He effortlessly gestured his hand, to Rollins holding the child's tiny arms against his mid-section, she was thrashing and protesting in Russian, but the operative smirked in amusement. Submitting to her cries, he released his arm lock, watching her fall into the ground. Rollins crouched down on his boots, and grabbed a fistful of her dark hair, yanking her head back up. Blood dripped from her blue tinged lips, and her brown eyes glistened with tears.
Shulter smirked, and aimed the nozzle of his pistol at the trembling child, his face emotionless, and eyes sooty black, as his jaw clenched against the biting wind. He forced out a heaving breath, "You want to feel again, then I will make you feel every emotion possible when I pull the trigger." he glared down at her coldly, tightening his curled finger over the trigger and threatened to pull it back. "All it takes is one bullet to become the difference maker...She will die in...One,...Two..."
"STOP!"
The Winter Soldier snarled, breath exploded out of his lungs. His steely eyes grew vicious and dark as he charged directly at Shulter, shifting as his metal arm twisted into a grappling hook, and he struck the man down. He coiled his metal hand around Shulter's neck, placing the man into a choke hold. His flesh hand squeezed the weak points of the wrist bones, as he applied harsh pressure and jerked the arm upwards, listening the bones crack as rueful smirk crossed over his lips. He made the gun drop into the snow.
"You kill me...She dies," Shulter warned, pulling another handgun from his side hostler and jabbing under the Soldier's chin. His finger taunt on the trigger. He was waiting for the reaction. His dark eyes shifted a glance at the commander who stood at the chained fence, giving him a curt of a nod as he waited. "You think just because you've got a metal arm-you're untouchable. I can see it your eyes...You're weak...and becoming useless."
Abashed by those condemning words pouring out Shulter's mouth, it felt every pitch of breath sear in his blood, and he seethed as saliva gathered against the spaces of his gnashing teeth.
He pressed his knee into the other man's hard stomach, coiling the muscles as his metal hand, made the droning mechanical sounds as he reached for the operative's throat.
It was a form of deadly combat, the struggle to stay focus was impending. Torrents of blood became molten and eyes became a noxious hue of steel as he clasped his hand over Shulter's throat, squeezing the pulse, as he moved the bones underneath skin.
He was becoming bloodthirsty and uncontrollable, if another operative tried to remove him; he slammed his metal into their torso. He wanted to observe Shulter die his cold hands, to stare into the whiteness of death, and hear the last breath.
Kill. Destroy. Terminate.
Red fog consumed his vision as he snarled and pressed against bones, feeling no concept of his actions, just the power of his bionic arm forcing weight into the neck of his opponent...blood pumping...bones snapping and breath fading...he was monster. His mind twisted, not catching up with reality, not feeling the churning of bile in his stomach. Confused, his blue eyes widened and lips parted and blood dripped over the metal plates, and he blanched violently backwards at the moment he listened to sobbing permeating the air.
He released his choke hold, and he stared down, heaving out heavily pants of breath and watched Shulter's eye roll back into his skull.
Remnants of tears fell over his lips, as he jerked back with a sharp gasp, and shunned himself from her weepy eyes, burrowing his face into the crook of his arm.
Rollins clapped at the success of the mission, and lifted the displaced child, seizing her wrist, "Well done, Soldier. The director will be pleased." He placed his gloved hand along her jaw. He forced her to stare at the macabre of blood painted over the snow. Then, he said with a vile flick of his tongue, "How do you like him now, sweetheart?"
Not giving him a response, the girl refused to stare at the morbid sight before her. She dug her face into his leather jacket, hands clawing desperately as the smell of spilled blood wavered in the air.
"No," The Winter Soldier said in crackling voice, his own tears blurred his eyes, she refused to look at him. "I didn't mean do this...You weren't suppose to see this..." He chanced himself a sharp glance, and his blue eyes leveled with the watery maroon smeared over his clenched knuckles.
Shaking his head miserably, he tried to reach for her, but two HYDRA agents blocked his path, and he watched Rollins pick her up in his arms and take her away. He knew that she would have become lost to him.
"NO!" he roared, thrashing his body wildly against the arms pressed over his chest, preventing him from racing for her. "You can't do this to her...She's my mission," he seethed out viciously, blood dripped from his frozen lips, his voice growing throaty and weak. "She is my friend..." He gazed back at her fearfully, tears falling steadily down his rough cheeks as a needle jabbed into the side of his neck.
His eyes fell shut and he poured out his emotions and blood in the snow.
