After his failure to kill the traitor, the Winter Soldier returned into solitary confinement, the only world he had ever known. He was locked up and chained like a rabid dog. He didn't know where he was and couldn't tell the time or the day of the year. The only things that kept him alive were his missions. He focused all of his energy on succeeding, and if he failed any of them, he had to suffer the consequences.

And this time, he failed.

Punch.

The Winter Soldier clenched his teeth. He couldn't show any expression; that's not what his superiors expected from him. They expected him to take on all kinds of pain and not care. It had been such a long time since his last failure; why did it need to happen now?

If I could I would take all of your pain from you.

There it was again: another memory that was never his but why does he see it? There was a younger man who looked just like him proclaiming nonsense to a redheaded woman… Wait. A redheaded woman? She wasn't real. Why did she keep coming back for him?

His thoughts were interrupted by the hot burn of a fresh cigarette butt on his skin.

"You failed," the shadows told him.

Punch.

He hid his resentment and heard them ask, "Do you know what we do to failures?"

Leave her alone! She did nothing wrong; it was me. It was my fault.

As he ignored the soreness and pain in his body, the Winter Soldier thought of a time when he actually took the beatings for someone else's sake. It had to be a delusion, because he could never have done that. Who would the other person have been? There was no one here in this world but him; he was alone. Why did he have this memory? To distract himself, the Winter Soldier reflected on his last mission; that traitor's death should have been instant.

But something happened when he saw her through the scope. He blinked, not sure at what he had seen. He thought he recognized the red-haired princess from his dreams. At the time, he forced himself to kill her but his hands thought otherwise, so he missed her head and shot her at her side. Why? For the first time, he was inaccurate when he should have been skilled. It was unlike the Winter Soldier to be so bad at this. While the shadows continued to torture him, he realized that the redheaded princess from his dreams actually existed. But why?

His handler motioned for his tormentors to stop. "We will give you only one more chance," the man warned. "Use it wisely."

The Winter Soldier had been given another opportunity, but to do what? Find the woman again and ask her why she was real, or to succeed in his mission this time?

He did not know.