{Chapter 22}

There became a sense of abandonment residing in her veins; Avora sat as a captive in the darkened solitary room; no source of light was present. Hours had passed since she executed her first orders. She followed the Director's commands with ingrained precision to achieve succession, instead of expected failure. The recesses of her addled mind were filled with harrowing obstruction.

Her senses were lucid, and small body felt distressed. Fighting against the feral urges infused in her veins, she edged closer to the door, scraping her palms against the cement, ignorant to the searing numbness that followed in the wake of pain.

She focused her brown irises on the latched, effortlessly lifting her weight off the floor; and she managed to grasp the lock; jiggling it with a desperate attempt to escape. Remnants of blood that seeped from her marred palms had smeared the rusted chrome, as she tugged to break the hinges off. Then, she felt the unknown approach of menace prickling in her veins. It was a reserve of unbridled power that resisted control, it siphoned through her blood, pulsing into her muscles at a rapid pace.

Feeling a sense of disrepair possessing her thoughts, the child refused to become plagued with unstable bombardments of horrific and morbid images of the young girls dressed in school uniforms, practice targets she had been ordered to execute without giving into the approach of resistance. Icy surges of harbored panic didn't relent, as she crashed to the ground when her limbs failed as thralls exhaustion passed through her disheveled body; clutching the handle while her small form was huddled against the metal paneled door. She felt detached. Her world was collapsing into torrents of blood, they desolated her from comfort and security of a home based environment. Her family was gone, but encroach of the nightmares remain locked in the recesses of her frantic mind.

There was a limited thirst of vengeance pulsing in her veins, something that untamed and daunting to submit against. She felt a phantomous tumult shadowing her thoughts; it was awakening, and feeding on her surges of desperation. For moment, she was subdued into a delusions state, her body immobilized and her fingers resettling on the ground. It was possession of sense of control, she was a vessel, and each thought steered distant memories to reemerge as she unconsciously dabbed her fingers into the smears of blood and begun to recreate an symbol that was ingrained into her.

With the splaying grace of her trembling hand, she painted the image with blood, molding it with detail as red and slate merged into a deformed face of demon. Hail HYDRA...Her tampered mind chanted. Muddled with a feverish haze clouding her senses, she reeled back toward the door.

Her resolved veered back to the floor, brown eyes instantly locked clarity onto the image of red. Only to discover that the face designed in her blood was familiar...There was connection. Yes, she felt a bonded to it. Something that meshed her past and future. Something that resided within her veins. It was a revelation of her destiny. The Red Skull. She couldn't take her eyes away from it, as a slew of shadow engulfed the bunker, and the approach of eliciting whispers that echoed her back into a devoid- a fathomless abyss where death, power and ruthless hunger consumed her.

"Do not fear what has been granted to you, little girl..." She listened to the measure of malice and spite rolling off a German tongue. The hollow bones of red bled through the shadows, and Avora knew that was she about to have an audience of the nefarious, inhumane leader of HYDRA. The Red Skull. His demonic visage emerged from her nightmares, feeding off of her dread.

"I have been waiting for this, my beautiful granddaughter..." He conferred, his soulless gaze narrowed at her sheared, mussed brown locks, and youthful ivory skin. She was a delicate flower, so young and full of purpose to resurrect his lifeblood, by draining hers. '"And you are a a very beautiful vessel carrying my existence. A power that will never submit to humanity's errors, it will only grow if you accept it."

He outstretched his leather gloved hand, fingers coiled to claim her injured hand. He regarded her with a deaden stare, his dark orbs glinting in the hollowed sockets of his skeletal face. Avora was hesitant to accept his hand; the Skull was a victimizing and demented monster, not someone that eased her to trust in him. He wasn't her snow angel-he wasn't the Winter Soldier. "Do not refuse me, child."

The hand was threatening to snare her. No. She couldn't accept it. "Please...I don't want this, Sir."

His eyes burned into molten slate, and boned features crackled with a displeased expression. "I see that you have resistance, no matter," he hissed at her, and with slow recoil of his hand, he granted her a chance to comply. "It's only a matter of time for your evolution to grant me what is required to emerge into this failed world once again...You will not refuse my ascension to our promising resurrection, isn't that right, child?"

Avora felt the urge to scream against this terror induced delusion; her heart's palpitations grew into frantic paces as she desperately tried to avert her eyes back to the haze of light.


"Bucky!" Steve emitted out a beckoning call, tears gleamed heavily in his crystalline blue eyes. Muscles stained as he tried to reach, pinning himself closer to the edge of the train car, hinges of the blown off door dug into his shoulders. With much gravity of effort he managed to slide his full weight towards his best friend. "Hang on..." Wind lashed over his face, and his jaw tensed against the wake of coldness. His lips quivering as pitches of desperate breath frosted out, his gaze never left Bucky. "Don't let go..." his breathless voice urged, and his gloved hand stretched into the drifts of falling snow. "Buck, c'mon grab my hand...'"

Every fiber of his body, commanded him to reach, his bloodied fingers almost brushed a desperate touch over the tips of Steve's gloves. It was so close...Then, the chrome rail broke off, and his lost his grip in the instant gravity had dragged him away from Steve.

"No!"

Steve...

It was like falling into a vortex of endless white. Tears dispelled in his blurring grayish azure eyes, as Bucky resumed his intent focus on the bridge, watching glints of the train vanish into a wall of harsh sleet, obstructing paleness of the dimming sky. Fear had claimed him, and he tried to call out for Steve, but strain on his throat became unbearable; he was voiceless from screaming.

Everything seemed distant and frozen as his thundering heart clenched with frantic pants of breath; his body felt the pressure of the air, crushing into his muscles, blood seeped from his marred knuckles as he tried to grasp onto a jagged piece of rock-anything to prevent him from dropping into the icy ravine.

Sudden impact broke his fall, and his arm twisted. Using the full reserves of his diminishing strength, Bucky mustered up enough of his effort, and gripped the crumbling edge.

Remnants of rock shards nicked his face, and his left hand desperately grasped onto the crumbling edge, muscles tore and bones snapped. He refused to stare at the damaged limb, only catching a glimpse of flesh bruising underneath his torn winter jacket.

He pressed his chest, his muscles scraped over the rocky surface that his eyes water as a grimace shrouded over his paling, chiseled features. He summoned up the last reserves of his strength to push through his limits; but the throbbing was impacting over his limbs. The metallic taste of blood thicken a glaze over his tongue, and he felt the blow of death penetrated through his bones. He couldn't speak, scream as the world was crumbling and his vision blazing with thralls of pain. He waited to fall.

'Why did I go for Steve's dumb shield?' his weighted thoughts conceived, as he tried to find meaning in the regrettable choice he'd made. A pent of anger became a cold flame devouring his defiance. He didn't want to accept that he wasn't going to be there for Steve; he had broken his promise he'd made to Sarah Rogers, he would never see Steve ask Agent Peggy Carter to dance...Those were be just glimpses of his dreams that were starting to fade out with his release of pained tears.

'I did it to protect him...Couldn't let them take Stevie from me...Couldn't watch the dumb punk fall...'

His stiffened fingers were glazed with blood; he was losing his grip, slowly edging closer to the mouth of the abyss. He choked on breath; setting his resolve on his left arm, it seemed mangled, ripped from the socket as rusty strains of blood smeared over treads of his navy blue sleeve. He felt sick. Through his bruised and bloodless lips, he released a shuttering cry, knowing that he needed to remain brave, stalwart for the last fight of his life. He didn't want to surrender, to face the cold ends of his fate that awaited for him below.

Some part of him knew that in war there's always causalities, and he was fortunate enough to embrace the miracle of Steve's transformation, to follow the determined steps of Captain America and to see his little brother finally stand up to the bullies. Steve rescued him from Zola's operation table, he never took a moment to consider that he was alive because his best friend never gave up searching for him.

Casting a hollow, tearing gaze down at the ice, Bucky accepted his choice and allowed his grip to slide, it was a slow descent, but he was too numb to feel the pain coursing in his pain. He closed his eyes and whispered into the snowy air, the broke plates of ice as he sank into darkness, with surge of hope that Steve would call his name again. "Until the end of line..."


Until the end of line...

The reproach of pain flared in his veins, replays of those memories raddled through his mind; he couldn't regain focus. Everything felt daunting to embrace; maybe it was trick of delusion, since his mind had been rewired several of times during preparation before falling into cryo phase. Regardless, he had a mission to finish—Avora.

With his rooted stance was pinned in front of metal door; he turned his resolve intently over flickers of light reflecting against cement. Everything felt absent to him; almost fractured. His pale blue eyes were cold with hollowed malice. He was searching for an outlet; the right direction that would lead him back to the little girl. Stillness crept over his obscured face; he commanded his body to remain frozen as darkness enveloped over his Kevlar tactical gear.

The Winter Soldier felt the coldness solidify over his bristled jaw, as he tried to subdue his thoughts until awareness clashed through his strained, abused body. He could taste a metallic tang lingering in his raw throat, but it wasn't his blood.

He knew he shouldn't have killed the assistant. It was resistance against his superiors; but his heart sped up in his chest, drawing him back to her as if he was being pulled by a magnetic force of energy through the dense corridor. He couldn't fight the intense urges, those assailing benevolent emotions of thrumming in his veins that commanded him willingly beyond the restriction zone and through the murky shadows of the labyrinth.

It seemed like a subconscious reaction harboring his perspective to raw awareness as he paused in methodical paces, scuffing his boots into the flecks of muted light caress above his current position.

Under the disheveled tresses of unkempt hair, with a glint of reserved malice, his steely azure eyes intently traced over the iron walls of narrow corridor, as he double-checked the darkened area; with his stature poised and readied, his gaze aligned over rows of doors. It was poorly lit, flickers of fluorescent light reflected over the metal panels, revealing only glimpses of moving shadow.

Parting his lips to emit graveled breath, the Winter Soldier remained silent to the approach of heavy footsteps. Was this a testament of his loyalty to a small child that showed affection towards him? He was trained not to compromise with emotions, to hold not sentiment that he wouldn't allow to breach pass his hollowed mechanisms of a disused heart. His pledge was to the Soviet nation-to HYDRA, not to a orphaned who had deemed him as her protector-снежный ангел.

His senses ignited against the pungent stench of blood that wafted off his Nomex tactical uniform, carbon coated with ebony, reinforced leather, the second skin of an Soviet operative; secured against the dense sculpt of his carved torso, in which he'd swiped from the armory room, and as resistance surged into the valves of his decelerated heart, the Winter Soldier crouched down low; breezily scanning his metallic glare over the locked doors that held no signs of admittance as two armed sentries carrying sub-machine guns formed an tight stack within his range of infiltration.

When he neared the furthest corner of the narrow hall he froze in mid-step and unblinkingly pinned his glacial blue eyes on rusted bars, catching flecks of tarnished light gleaming over the iron paneled walls.

Silhouettes of vacant cages eclipsed the obstructed area, as the Winter Soldier stalked closer to the corner; his rigid metal thumb fingers poised against his knife. The murderous glint in his keened glacial eyes coaxed the darkness, as he methodically advanced towards the directive point.

Taking a vague moment to recalculate his approach, the Winter Soldier slipped a combat knife out from the strap attached to his vest, gripping his chrome fingers into taunt clutch. Aware of the inhabitants behind the closed doors that he stalked passed, his pale blue eyes trailed over.

A chorus of harsh whispers reached him, not too far for his fox-like ears to decipher the alarmed panic in the tone of the armed sentries. "Раздел-1 не отвечает.(Unit-1 is not responding.)"Calmly he slipped into an alcove, becoming one with the shadows as they welcomed its agent. Azure orbs narrowed into icy slits as they assessed and observed ahead.

"Связь должна быть вниз. Что-то случилось ...(Communications must be down. Something must have happened…)The tremor of unease in the voice of the nameless sentry set him on alert. The element of surprise was crucial to the success of this incursion; stealth was paramount and discovery would be a costly factor to its outcome. "Стоять на своем. У нас есть заказы; ничто не прошли мимо нас.Держите девушку ограниченном." (Stand your ground. We have our orders; nothing gets passed us. Keep the girl confined.)

Muted rage brimmed beneath the surface of his stoic posture of deathly intent. The darkness in what remained of his beating heart sang to him like a siren beckoning his actions while a fiery malice rushed through his veins. Well hidden, its only evidence resided in the coldness of his dilated eyes focused upon his targets—waiting and assessing.

Once the sentries showed him their backs, the siren's call became a scream waging against the pounding of an exhilarated pulse in his ears, and he was upon them like a wolf seeking to devour its unknowing prey. The first to fall felt a cold and merciless mound of metal wrap itself around his neck; like a serpent entangling its foe, it stole the breath from the sentry's lungs and before his lips could forge words in a desperate attempt to sound the alarm, his mouth was covered by a gloved hand enfolding around his jaw before he was pulled into the secured choke-hold.

Merciless and unyielding, he was cold as death; he felt the sentry's struggle cease in his grip just as the second became aware of his hostile presence. "She will taste the air of freedom, just as you never will." His lips pulled into a sneer as the second sentry instinctively raised his weapon aimed towards him. Wordlessly, he pulled the familiarly sharp object from the sheathe of his vest and hurled it with morph speed; watching as the knife struck the sentry's shoulder, pinning him against the wall. "She does not belong to anyone…" With the second of his targets momentarily restrained, Winter Soldier discarded the limp weight of the other sentry in his arms and wasted no advantage as he rushed and retrieved his knife with a vicious pull. The sentry gasped with unspoken pain.

The scent of copper filled his senses—pungent and intoxicating as a red haze overcame his vision at the sight of the crimson fluid bursting from the opened wound. Enthralling, an unsatisfied hunger to end the corrupt life in front of him, glinted in his eyes. The sentry merely stared at him with wide, bewildered eyes, "Вы! Это ты! Системы охранной—!(You! It's you! Intruder—!)

The blood stained blade was at the sentry's throat in a heartbeat with warning, silencing his hazardous cry for aid before it could reach more ears. "She will be free of these walls of despair." His glacial blue eyes shimmered with unrelenting determination—staggering and intimidating, the sentry took no chances in conceding defeat as he squirms free and draws his 9mm pistol from his holster.

Before he could take aim, the blade found its way deep into the muscle of his right thigh, tearing through ligament which produced a blood-chilling scream and a barrage of gun-fire which echoed down the narrow dark corridors.

"And no one will stop me for ensuring that."