Chapter 11

Snow falls around a dark figure wearing a surprisingly light coat for the weather. The white flurries seem to run from his path. Nature seems weighed down by his very existence.

A Russian farm house looms in the distance. The man walks toward it slowly, his gait awkward and uneven. His brown, greasy locks slap his face; they look like they are trying to grab his humanity. But his eyes remain stuck in a glaze.

Two other forms appear behind him. But they make no sound, like apparitions. One is a petite women, with bangs skimming her forehead and eyes wide in anticipation. The other is a man, who is the same as the one heading towards the farmhouse. But while one is dazed, the others eyes are brimming with unspoken despair. Bucky quakes. Ella waits.

The ghosts fly over the snow. It skims their ankles without a touch. Despite the hologram around them, their eyes are glued to the man meandering towards the barn. Meandering, because he seems confused. Yet, he knows his mission.

Giggling bites them. Nips at their ears. It stabs Ella and Bucky to the heart. They know what this means. The man drags open the barn door, unsealing his fate, unpeeling it through this neat wooden box.

Therein sits his souls death. A small, giggling girl. Her course blond hair messily frames her face. Kittens crawl around her lap, and she gleefully sits petting them. Bucky is frozen. Ella gasps.

The man enters the barn, which has a small fire flittering over the walls. His shadow creeps along as he goes stumbling towards the girl.

"No," Bucky whispers, watching his younger self pull a gun out from inside his new jacket. Ella's eyes sweep from Bucky to the Winter Soldier. She is caught in the scene of this creepy and horrifying play.

The little child is completely consumed in her innocence. A gun cocks, contrasting the warm atmosphere around her. Winter Soldiers become kaleidoscope, as his shadow is multiplied throughout the room. The girl looks up. Her scream slashes the air.

The Soldier steps forward, into the light. His leather jacket and metal arm seem too put-together for his shaggy hair and glazed eyes. Despite the cold, sweat fills his pores. Winter looks sick.

Arm of flesh meets the metal of gun. Its pointed straight at the girl. She backs away, fear consuming her gaze. "Mama!" The child screeches.

Suddenly, the man lowers his gun. He shakes his head, eyes clearing. The Winter Soldier just stops. Stops. He leaves.

Moves on.

One shake of his head, and a minute of simple staring between the child and him, and he leaves. Gone with the snow.

Ella looks relieved, but perplexed. Bucky can't blink. Eyes are still glued to the scene.

There used to be a bang. There used to be a sobbing; from a mother to her child. The girl of Абрам Попов, a Hydra commander who just that morning had gone against very strict commands, used to be lying on that floor as a message. The girl on the list of Bucky's most haunting assassinations, used to melt into the stiff hay. The child with a red hole in her mind: Роза.

Now, Poзa sits on the floor, watching the assassine leave. The rose finally breaks the spell with a scream. One last, final scream.

/

I feel sick. Unsettled. Morally infirm.

Like rounds and rounds of chemo, I try to eradicate the cancer in his brain. The tumor that has enfolded our lives. I stick him into the room T'Challa set up for his procedure. Make him watch his different murders be mutated into a false finale. Over and over.

But it's too fake. After that first simulated assassination, I was jolted. That wasn't how it was supposed to go. She was so close to death… But then it stopped. It was counterfeit.

Bucky comes out of the room every time, wide eyed, but only in the beginning. After each simulant, his eyes get duller and duller. I'm afraid his eyes are a reflection on his soul. Slowly fading out of this world, into a place inside his head where everything is jumbled up.

I sit in my office, staring out at the pouring rain that's sliding down the large window. The beads clump, then slowly spread their claws, finally slipping and melting away.

How dismal.

The rain makes me feel even more nauseous, which has been an increasing effect as the procedures ware on. The inside of my stomach swirls like the patterns I'm drawing on the window. The door bangs open.

"Ella." I can tell it's Steve's voice by the almost annoying concern that it's drowned in.

"Yes?"

Steve comes into the room, albeit a little hesitantly, looking solemn. "Bucky is finished. He went to the first one again."

"What! Why would you let him do that?! Why would he do that?" I gasp, and immediately begin to pace.

I should know this! I'm his therapist! My mind is so jumbled, I can't think straight.

"I don't know," Steve heaves through his nose, pinching the bridge. "I guess he just wanted to see that the little girl was ok. One more time."

"But she wasn't!" My voice splits. The canyon cracks open, and the flood, filled with all my regrets and sickness, spills out. And all onto poor Steve, who probably needs a hug more than I do.

"Bucky killed that girl! And now he's confused… I just know! Stark told me, he told me. I was just so desperate, and I don't know what to do." I grab Steve's gray shirt, and my tears slide down the sweat retardant fabric. "Why did you bring me here Steve? I can't, and haven't done anything, and I never will. I… I thought I was a good therapist. It was part of who I am, understanding people. And I feel like I've lost that."

The monologue is finished, and I just hold on to Steve. We simply stand there. I begin to rock my feet on the floor ever so slightly. Something me and my mom would do. It's like a small dance.

"Ella, you are so much more than that. You are not just your job, or what you think makes you good at it. I-" He pauses. "I know what it feels like to lose your identity. And the thing is, who we are is not found in what we are good at, and most of the time, not even what we do. It's in what we believe." Steve pulls away from where I was hugging him. He looks looks me straight in the eye. "And ya know what? I believe in you. I've seen what you have done already. Everybody has felt… Like they will get better. That their problems were not impossible wars, but ones they could win. Maybe you haven't 'fixed' them yet, but some things come with time."

Pathetically, I sniff. When I look into Steve's eyes, I see he is not even looking at me.

"What happens to Bucky is beyond us. I know you're doing your best. Let's just let him cool off, then we can get in a session for you to asses the changes."

Steve straightens, and I wipe my sodden face. A tender look flys across his face, and Steve puts his hands on my shoulders. "Alright?"

"Yeah," I cough out.

Barely.

/

The pits of his eyes seem to shrink smaller and smaller, until they are mere pins in a sea of dull blue. Even if Bucky does look me in the eye, there is no depth. All the life has been sucked from him.

"Well, how do you feel about it now?" I try to continue.

Bucky has stared at the same place for some time now, never shifting in his chair. His breathing remains mediocre. If he was frozen in time, I wouldn't be surprised.

"I… I…" Bucky mumbles. "Can't remember. Was I…"

"You were on the roof. How do you remember it?"

"It's all… Jumbled. I don't know what's real." Bucky mumbles, rubbing his forehead in circles.

"You don't have to, Bucky," I say earnestly. "I just want to know how you remember it now. To see how to move forward."

What he doesn't know is that I'm worried. Most of Bucky's memories transformed in ways in which the person still died. So it didn't fully replace the memory. That was the glasses job. But that first one, was wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen that way.

The machine completely replaced the memory. Steve and I tried to figure what had gone wrong. Was something messed up with the machine? It worked fine with all the other ones, though. We finally reached a conclusion.

There was absolutely no other way to reconcile the memory other than that Роза wasn't killed. No funeral, no sorry, no dirty revelation about the victim, could reconcile Bucky. A pure, innocent child was killed. The only way to make it better, was to save her.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Bucky shouts, standing up from his chair. "I LOST MY MIND again!"

He points at me, his hand shaking. Voice cracking, Bucky says in a whisper, "I don't remember. So stop asking. I know I killed her. But I can't see it anymore. None. All of the memories are FAKE! I don't feel anything."

Tears well in my eyes. "I'm sorry. If you let me-"

"You can't change this! You see into my soul, Ella. What do you see now?"

It's not a taunt. It's a question. A challenge.

I run to the desk, wiping tears off my cheeks. Bucky stands back, watching me with cold eyes. The smooth lacquer makes no sound. Everything is in complete silence when I pull out the blue leather journal with a red star.

"No."

I begin to read the words.

Bucky sinks to his knees.

One by one, the letters peel off my tongue, and hiss when they touch the air.

Bucky clutches the chair.

I come closer, stomach churning, tears tumbling down.

All the words come from within the cracked crevices of the crumbling pages, and are pushed out by mere air. These words, that cause such harm, can be thrown around like the wind.

I hate myself for this. But I need him to feel… To know that I've done SOMETHING to help him. That he has made some progress, like Steve said.

Dear God, please…

The last words are bitter on my tongue, but the room savors them.

Bucky is clutching the white leather, squatting on his knees. He doesn't move, except for his body quaking.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. With jerks, my muscles fall down to the ground to meet him. I move across the floor to his body. Bucky's hand is like a claw on the chair, so it takes all my might to pry it away.

"I… I…" Bucky chokes.

I gently stroke his hand, waiting for his head to raise. Tears stream down both our faces. When he looks up at me, there is something in his eye's I've never seen before. Instead of agony, Bucky's never ending pain, it's like the tears washed that away. Like, the shattered glass has been glued together to become even more crystal clear, because of its flaws.

A wave of heat flushes over my body, as I feel Bucky's strong hand on the back of my neck. It is course, albeit warm and strong, from all those years of fighting. His eye's gather in my face, and focus on my lips. Bucky draws his forehead to mine.

"Thank you," The Winter Soldier breathes lightly onto my lips.

And with tear stains still on our cheeks, we kiss.