Chapter 9


Warm tears solidified against the rough skin of his jaw; he allowed the falling snow to bury him as his metal hand curled; scarping in the frozen ground. He needed something to hold on to in his dire moments of feeling utterly unraveled by the tantalizing emotions, thralls of numbness and the aches of his scattering heart.

It never hurt so much.

When the Winter Soldier closed his eyes, daring himself to slip back into the mindless void. He had been pulled back into the emptiness, sitting in a corner. His knees tucked close to his scarred chest, and his blue eyes paled into a hue of sullen white as his dilated pupils captured the shafts of flickering lights caressing over his bruised and exposed flesh.

He was forced to the listen to the emblazon cries of torture, droning echoes of machines and screams of humanity stripped and reshaped into sentinels bearing HYDRA's mark on their skin.

There had been restless nights when he smelt the lingering stench of dried blood smeared over his metal knuckles; the room was cloaked with dingy stagnant that intermixed with a encroaching smell of death. So often he'd listened to the heart-wrenching screams resounding from the skeletal halls of his asylum Fellow operatives. Some sounded mostly human, but others had mechanical pitch ripping from their throats.

Most of the tortured and starving captives he saw when his superiors granted him access to leave his confinement, were lifeless husks of programmed machines. No heart beats, no emotion was written on their paled and frozen faces...just a simple and permanent expression of hardened order. This array of devolving humanity into an emotionless legion did not avail inside of him. The forsaken were lost into the weaves of HYDRA; but he had a chance to wield freedom once again.

Through the abyss of crimson, he had felt the memories programmed inside of him. He knew that he was taken as boy, away from his mother and was given to HYDRA. His handlers told him the details, forcing him to believe in deceiving lies that kept his heart and mind at an impasse. For as long he could remember, those fragments of falsehood had been unnatural to grasp in the welcoming darkness of his prison.

He had spent many nights consumed by sheltered pain. Listening to the hollow growls of his emptied stomach, and shedding tears of anguish when the faint images of a frail, sickly boy with short golden hair regressed from his sheared mind. The boy had warm and deep blue eyes, the color of crystal that took away all doubt and made him feel stronger.

He blinked, searching for clarity in his vision, but the haze of tears coated over his heavy lidded eyes. He tried to blank out the mantras and focus on nothing. He wanted to the abyss to consume him, swallow him whole, and devour him.

He didn't want his friend to become a part of biting coldness, programming and the pain. He wanted to give her freedom.

Feeling the clusters of thoughts dim, his metal fingers shakily probed over the ground; he lowered his dismal gaze, allowing the pain to build in his temples. He stared at the drops of maroon, feeling each one depart from his wounds, and rigid lips. His body was still against the chained fence, and his head had begun to pound with trepidation and torrent thoughts of delirium grind against his skull; making him fall back into a merciless prison of ice.

HYDRA tampered with his thoughts, weaving their own ideals into his memory codes, keeping his under their control. While they watched him shattered when the threads of his soul twisted and knotted within, creating a barrier to trap all emotion and allow him to feel nothing. They never stopped him from receiving pain, his injections were persistent, and if he showed resistance to their orders, he'd get slapped by his high superiors until blood strained over his chiseled and bruised cheekbones and heavy-well defined jawline.

Defiance.

He never remembered the details, just tiny fragments of memory that always took him to place where he would wake up screaming in the night and recalling what he once was. It's a sanctuary of darkness; he always had felt the iciness of the of inhumane malevolence encase over his bones, stared into the void, and listened to the sounds of terror as humanity becomes butchered into mechanical slaves.

Death was always welcomed in his gray shaded world, and he tasted the savage nature of the ruthless killer they constructed by torturous experiments. All operations and mind swiping boiled into his pulsating blood and evolutionary process takes hold and injections warred his own instincts, it all became necessary for his survival.

Remnants of her innocent face shadowed his thoughts, her brown eyes that were filled with life and hope; faded into a murky darkness, blocking out the kindling light of her soul.

Pure.

The Winter Soldier didn't remember much from yesterday's experience...he remembered the ice encasing over his bruised limbs, hardening over his raw skin and forcing the blood to freeze in his veins.

He felt the tears gliding down his cheeks, he attempted to stop them, unsure how to react to the folds of emotions consuming his body. He blundered out his sorrows unceremoniously, and then sobbed uncontrollably as the iciness of realization dawned upon him. He knew the little girl was going to become lost soul-a nameless and desensitized weapon.

Inorganic.

"No," he seethed out monstrously, clawing violently through the strands of hair which dangled over his face. Rage stressed in his throat as blood leaked from the corner of his tightened lips; he rammed his fists into the ground, thrashing the dusty snow in all directions. His heart sped up a few notches in his heaving chest, breath grew into rapid pants, and voice cracked into a shuddering cry. "She doesn't deserve this...She deserves to be free!"

He jolted himself awake, bathing in his own sweat; feeling every fiber in his trembling body fuse with anger. He was finally grasping the sensations of feeling, no more searing coldness, but hot blood and pulses of a heartbeat. He was feeling true human emotions again.

"I have to save her..." he whispered out a frosty breath, swiping his gloved hand over his quirking lips, smearing the blood across his sharpened jaw.

Before the asset could ease his full weight up, he felt the cold leather gloved hands of masked men seize him roughly; a pin prick of a needle entered his blood stream. "I have to free her..." he bared his teeth at the dark haired operative, and jerked against the arm lock, feeling the heaviness cross over his neck.

Within twenty seconds of arriving into the chamber, he was dragged forward to the metal doors, carelessly, at an inhumane regard. He was man handled; his black garments ripped off of him, and then replaced by what look like Kevlar and black bullet resistant armor.

The leather jacket zipped up to his neckline, constricting his chest into a stiff barrier; his messy brown hair framed over his face and hostlers strapped to his slender hips and muscled thighs. He was armed with lethal weapons to make him a walking armory when engaging enemy territory- combat knifes, guns, and then a heavy scoped rifle was placed in his metal hand. All loaded up with untraceable shells and released from the safety lock.

A hard graphite mask was placed over his clammy jaw, sealing his lips as he once again became voiceless to protest.

"Human resilience is an infectious disease that ruins order."

The Winter Soldier's face hardened with a tense glare at the coldness in the voice aloud in the shadows. Agent Rollins stepped from his hiding place, and then he watched the obscurity of menacing glower melt into blue fire. Choking up a breath; he fought to release his voice against the barrier enclosed over his mouth. "Tell me where you're keeping her?"

"I assure you the girl is safe. She was frightened by you sudden outburst. You cost me a good agent." The firm voice in the doorway drew his attention.

The director entered the room, flanked by two nervous assistants, approaching the steel table at one corner of the room.

He was dressed in his usual color of a charcoal gray suit and his expertly polished black shoes. His aging face flexed as wrinkles curved at the sides of his mouth. His mussed ginger hair twirled against the crown of his head, as a faint breeze of the chilling outside invaded the enclosed area. His grayish eyes looked down at the pliant asset, with a glimmer of a morbid disappointment.

Halting in his steps at the table, he opened the box on atop of the table, and lifted a chained necklace out; he walked to the Winter Soldier with a confident and haughtily stride. He froze in front of the younger man, cuffing his hands behind his back, and kept himself positioned into a regal stance.

Pursing his lips, he spoke in a direct tone. "Do you even know who this child is?' he questioned, staring at the stillness welled in temperance blue irises, inches from him.

"The girl you saved is the future of HYDRA's reign. Her blood is precious to us. She will reshape this world into our order. I need you to stay away from her..." The director spoke softly, in a low and instructive voice that was a sharp threatening edge to his normal colluding tone.

His sordid words almost felt like knife, molten steel penetrating the layers of the asset's defiance to misbehave was still lodged in his brain, but he wouldn't tolerate the poison seeping from his superiors mouth. He felt the potent urge to kill was clawing in his veins. "You have been subjected to emotions that are making you lose focus on the missions. You killed a a top operative yesterday without my consent. You disobeyed because you wanted to protect her from us..."

The Winter Soldier managed to give the director a curt of a nod, even though he felt the rage bubbling in his veins. "Yes," his muffled voice responded in a rough tone.

The director took a step back, "I see," he replied, lifting the necklace, holding it before the asset's eyes, it dangled before him, gleaming in his darkened pupils.

He watched it sway, still and tensed.

"This belongs to her?" he questioned, his voice low. Unsure. Timid.

The locket was old and tarnished with a name engraved at the back. A name that made his heart swell as he looked deeply at the letters. "I want you to say her name...Let it roll off your tongue...because it will be the last you name you will remember it."

Avrora.

He stared at it for a long, long moment. He bit his bottom lip. He was hesitant to answer. He couldn't say her...Name. It selfish for him to know it without her remembering her birthright. A clamor of buzzing in his mind configured with his hazardous thoughts. His remained locked against the hard texture of his mask.

Sensing his insubordination, the director reached out his hand, tangling it into the mutinous assassin's wild mass of hair, yanking the strands as he listened to a small yelp pierce from the other man's lips.

"Her name is Avrora," he barked, tugging hard, jerking the asset's head downward, before ramming his knee hard into graphite mask. "Aurora..."

Bones into his stiff jaw jostled at the impact, the Winter Soldier instantly staggered backwards; losing his balance and crashing to the concrete floor.

"She will never belong to you," he coughed up watery blood; his lips scraped from the shards of graphite digging into his soft flesh. "You can't own her...She has a life. She is pure." he barked, tasting the blood seep in between his clenched teeth. Rollins lunged in automatically; picking him up by the neck, he snarled viciously as the constricting gloved hands squeezed against his windpipe.

He couldn't fight back, not when he knew Avrora's life was hanging on a thin line.

"Come on, you pathetic excuse of soldier," Rollins discharged out in a seething breath, listening to the bones crack against his fingertips. His eyes darkened into murderous indent as the enraged assassin writhed and thrashed to break out of his hold. "If HYDRA didn't need your sorry ass...I would break your neck right now!" He growled, and twisted his arm, slamming the other man to the floor.

The director moved away, and leaned his stern posture against the wall, folding his arms as he watched the sight of his best agent take down the greatest assassin and expert marksman in the history of strategic warfare.

"You will follow my orders and you will finish you missions...Or you can watch her scream?" his voice raised as he addressed the details of the situation, and then he narrowed his gaze at the drops of blood escaping from the Winter Soldier's mouth. "Tomorrow you will have access to see her for a short period of time. After you will watch as the new reformation of HYDRA is birth once her blood has become extracted. You will not fight or show emotion. Fail to disobey this command and the girl with be harmed."

Spewing out more blood, the Winter Soldier nodded silently, and Rollins released his choke hold. "I will find a way to stop you," he growled in a throaty voice, clamping his eyes shut, he knew that her existence was now in the clutches of HYDRA, and he failed his directive...She will die.

He stood up to his full height of five-eleven, and released a breathless declaration, his unnerved eyes morphed into blue embers against the umbra of his messy hair. "I will not fail her..."

The director marched quickly to him, and slapped his face with a forceful backhand. For a long second the pain seared his jaw bone. He turned his head and glowered dangerously at his superior.

"She is my mission..." he retched out, dizzy and unstable with his emotions. "My friend..."

"Then you will fail her..."

Hearing those soul jarring words enter his ears, the Winter Soldier hung his head low, and whispered out her name, gently and faint, "Avrora."