He has no mask.

The Soldier cannot bring to mind his previous missions, but he knows that when he completed them, he wore a mask. It is the same innate and ever-present knowing that he feels when he picks up a weapon and automatically understands how to fire, reload, field strip. He can almost feel the mask wrap around his face, as though it is a natural extension of himself. As though it were grafted in like the stronger arm.

The asset finds it unlikely that he lost the mask, because there is no punishment when they are readying him for the mission and the mask is not there. It must not be necessary to fulfill his objective. Perhaps it is a matter of stealth, though when they brief him, he is not told to conceal himself. He is given the name and face of his mission and told to prevent him from interfering with the helicarriers, to kill him at all costs.

There is a nameless sensation when the Soldier looks at the photograph, as if he ought to feel something but has come up empty-handed. He brushes it aside. Weapons should not be feeling at all, even if what they feel is absence.

The feeling that is not a feeling is easily pushed away, forgotten in its entirety by the time he is on the hanger that rises out of the Potomac. The mission and his comrade with the wings are already airborne when he arrives, each on a helicarrier. He does not know what they hope to accomplish. He does not care. It is not his objective to know what they are doing, only to prevent it, to ensure HYDRA's success.

He will not fail.

There are pilots approaching the Quinjets on the hanger. They are not his mission, but they aim to aid the mission, and so they must be dealt with. "All SHIELD pilots, scramble!" their leader commands. "We are the only air support Captain Rogers has got."

Then he will have no air support. The Soldier fires the grenade launcher and a Quinjet is crashing to the ground, exploding into a mass of flame that catches some of the pilots in the blast radius. He advances, firing twice, and rendering a number of them either dead or inactive.

One man approaches with a grenade, but a volley of bullets to the throat knocks him back, gargling and suffocating in his own blood. The explosive rolls toward the Soldier and he stoops to grab it, then lobs it inside the closing door of another plane. It blasts apart behind him as a member of the line crew fires at him. The asset knocks the gun from his hand and kicks him into the engine of a Quinjet just beginning to lift off.

Two birds with one stone, he thinks, without knowing what it means.

He jumps onto another jet, stands atop the glass of the cockpit and takes aim. Three shots into the pilot's head. The Soldier tears the door away from the Quinjet and slides inside, lifting off without bothering to fasten the safety belt. The mission and his man have reached two of the helicarriers and he will not be slowed and risk them doing damage to a third.

He arrives before the mission, exiting the jet and waiting amidst the storage containers. When the mission arrives, his ally with the wings is carrying him one handed before he deposits him on the deck. The asset wonders why the weight distribution does not tear the man's arm from the socket. Perhaps it is something in the wings, or he is built like the Soldier but the metal is hidden under flesh.

It is unimportant. There is no reason to be thinking of it. The mission is within striking distance now and the Soldier lashes out, knocking him over the edge of the deck.

The winged man shouts something, flies forward to retrieve the mission, but the Soldier has his wing. He throws the man backward, but the wings stabilize him in the air and his hands grab hold of guns, then shoot. The asset flips, spins away from the line of fire. He takes cover behind the nearest structure and the winged man is off again, but the Soldier pulls a grappling line from his belt and fires, latching through a wing.

He tugs his wrist and the man is pulled back to the deck. Another pull and the wing rips away. The asset is running forward as the man stands up, and before the man can regain his balance or attempt any sort of defensive strike, the asset plants his foot in the center of the man's chest, knocking him back.

It does not seem possible to fly with only one wing, but he watches the man's descent anyway just to be sure. It only takes seconds. The man is spinning through the air, off balance, and then the other wing goes flying away and a parachute emerges from the pack. It keeps the man from hitting the roof of the Triskelion at terminal velocity. He is alive, but grounded. Even if he finds a way back up, it will not be in time to prevent HYDRA's success. And that man is not the mission anyway.

The mission is not dead, as the asset had thought may have been the case when he knocked him off of the helicarrier. He knows this because he hears the mission shout, hears a

[familiar?]

voice below him. The mission is hanging from the very edge of the helicarrier, pulling himself up toward an exhaust vent. The Soldier's mind is running through every vent, exit, and entrance within the helicarrier, every place the mission could go or hide. He can be there before the mission, and he can strike before the mission realizes his presence. He is a призрак; they never see him.

The Soldier is turning to go when he hears the mission's voice again. Not aloud, not speaking through a communicator as he had been when the asset first located him after the fall. It is in the Soldier's mind, unearthed, like scabbing torn off of recent damage.

"Bucky?"

There is flood of impossible thoughts that follows the voice—the memory?—so sudden and strong his feet nearly give out beneath him. He feels human, feels

[like Bucky]

trapped as his body runs through emotions he cannot name, feels a connection toward the mission that he has nothing to compare to. It is not the imprinted trust he feels for a handler. Deeper, like

[friendship]

a programming that has always been there but that he has somehow never noticed. It is so immediate that he has no chance to protest these sensations, no choice but to experience them, and when he can finally think again—he shouldn't be thinking—all the Soldier can manage is a quiet, defeated

Oh.

Then, because he cannot fight HYDRA's orders but he cannot fight this new knowing either, he thinks

How can I kill him?

But how can he not?

A/N: Given that the Winter Soldier's standard method of attack displayed in the movie is to strike before his target can notice he's there, I have to assume that his just standing on the bridge of the helicarrier as Steve approaches means he was already starting to remember again and didn't want to fight. Hence the remembering here.

On a side note, after my grandmother watched the movie, she said that the way the Winter Soldier flips and spins when he fights reminded her of ballet, and now whenever I watch the action scenes for writing purposes I can't get that out of my head because she was totally right.

Oh, and as if I didn't already let the Winter Soldier take over enough of my brain, last night I made a Tumblr roleplay blog for him. So if any of you are roleplayers or would otherwise like to bother him, the link to the account is on my author's page.

Translations for the Russian are as follows:

призрак = ghost