He considers either flagging another vehicle down or stealing one. The Soldier can probably operate a car; he has no memory of doing so, but it seems a skill set that would have been worth programming into him. Transport would cover more ground more quickly, help him continue to evade pursuit. But if he were to steal a car, a report would be filed and the authorities would be looking for it. And if he travels as a passenger, in this current state, the Soldier thinks he may kill someone.

He's deciding that he doesn't like—never liked—killing people, even more so without orders.

The Soldier is wandering and aimless. His eyes have not stopped spilling liquid and he is hyperventilating. Each step is a struggle, his energies divided between wanting to put as much space between himself and Steve as he can and wanting to run back. He isn't sure which part of him wants what. He's finding it difficult to focus on either line of thought long enough to distinguish between them. His heart won't stop hammering and he wonders almost idly if this latest stress will cause it to fail.

It is not heart failure, but abrupt retching, that pulls him out of the fog.

There is nothing in his stomach save for water and acid, but that doesn't prevent the convulsive push that forces them out and puts the Soldier on his knees. The glove of his left hand wipes at his mouth as he struggles to steady his breathing. He has to get back up, keep moving. Every second wasted without movement is another opportunity to be caught.

Enough, the Soldier thinks, and he finds that there is a clarity that comes with total desperation, similar to the way staring through the scope of a gun and focusing on the target mutes any screaming and chaos from bystanders.

He stands, exhales.

I am broken.

His heart tries to race again—a broken machine should be melted for scrap—but he swallows it back. The Soldier cannot function when driven by emotions. But he understands facts, and that facts are that something within him is broken and in need of repair. The symptoms of the damage are fatigue, water from the eyes, shallow breath, heart palpitations, stomach pains, vertigo, emotional duress, vomiting, and, judging from the vast difference in temperature between his skin and the metal arm, a much larger disparity than is typical, лихорадка.

It is almost quieting to see it laid out so clinically, the way the doctors used to list his injuries before setting about to fix the problems his body couldn't handle on its own.

The Soldier can ascertain no reason why his body cannot handle these damages without aid. Surely he has recovered from worse. The only thing his body cannot self-maintain is the metal arm, and there is no harm to it. The limb feels heavy now, but all of his body feels heavy. He must be missing a component that he needs to properly function. Something in the tubes and needles other than water was fueling him, and now he has lost that.

So what options are there? He can return to HYDRA for maintenance or try to steal the required additives from his last rendezvous point, assuming it is still there. He can accept Steve's offer of aid and likely become either a weapon for Steve's government or a prisoner. He can seek out some other interested party, of which there must be no lack, and become their asset in exchange for repairs. He can simply wait and see if his body is able to adjust and heal in these new circumstances. Or he can die, which may be the case if he continues in his current state.

He can see the choices laid out before him like a list, can see the slashes of ink through the unworkable options.

He will not return to HYDRA. He does not want to and with everything he is experiencing, he has ceased to care whether or not he is meant to want. He will allow himself to die before he willingly returns to that chair.

Infiltrating HYDRA is similarly unworkable. Even in his current state, the Soldier believes himself capable of forcing his way into the bank vault successfully. It is not the force that causes him hesitation. But he could hardly listen to Steve without collapsing and swearing allegiance, and he has not spent the past seventy years with Steve as his sole provider and handler. If he returns to that room with that chair and they speak to him, he cannot swear that he will not be persuaded.

Steve. This is the option that makes the English voice start, makes the Soldier's teeth press into his lips until he tastes copper. He wants to go with Steve, yes. He has never wanted anything more. He wants to be whatever Steve requires of him, be it James Buchanan Barnes or a weapon, and just thinking of Steve nearly drives him to turn around and seek the man back out.

But wanting and being are separate things. He cannot be James Buchanan Barnes. Even the part of him that knows English cannot argue that point. There is a sense of recognition when he thinks of Barnes, a feeling of "I am, I should be," but it is something he can only brush against, not grasp. The faint and few memories of Barnes's life that he retains, thin and fragmented like loose strands of spider web, do not give him hope of regaining more. They only throw the lack of the rest into sharp relief.

The Soldier cannot be what Steve requires, and so he would only serve as a disappointment. From the way Steve looks at him, he thinks it would kill Steve to have the Soldier there as a constant reminder of what he has lost. He thinks that killing Steve is a mission that would kill him as well, pull him apart from the inside and out. He could possibly pretend to be Barnes, study the man until he can act as though they are the same person, but that would be lying. He does not believe himself capable of lying to Steve.

He could be Steve's weapon. He could defend him and keep him safe. He could be another's weapon if serving for Steve still proved too painful.

But he doesn't want it. He can't classify himself as a person. He doesn't know what it is to be human, but whatever it is, he cannot feel it. Yet the Soldier is awake now, aware of whatever state of being he finds himself in, and he doesn't want to return to the haze of orders and corpses. No matter what comfort it would provide, and he knows it would numb the pain. Living hurts, but it is a hurt he can't bring himself to carry on without. There is no logic to it, but it is true.

So his options are to wait or to die.

The thought does not rouse any sense of self-preservation within him. He cannot say he wants to die, but he is so very сонный, and to rest without dreams would not be horrible. He may live. If his body does not cease to function, he can continue, work out a plan for the future without the malfunctions. If he does not die. It comes down to the waiting.

The part of him that is an asset does not know what to do with the waiting time.

I want to be, is the only suggestion that the other part can offer, now that he has stopped listening to the desire to return to Steve. I can be a person again, I want to be.

He does not know how to be a person. The Soldier's mind returns to the Smithsonian, the film footage. Barnes's face, glowing. Laughing. Living.

He can't be James Buchanan Barnes. But perhaps he can learn to live from him, rather than learn to be him.

The Soldier walks back to DC. He is not pursued. It is a three day journey made without incident, even when he must pause to retrieve water, and by the time he has arrived, the pain in his stomach has ceased and the лихорадка has broken. He thinks that means he may live, and he remains cautiously optimistic until the end of his first day back in the capitol.

At the end of that day, his left arm ceases to function.

A/N: Okay, so. I know I'm saying this right after a chapter of Winter basically deciding "eh, maybe death would be pleasant," but I promise things are about to start looking up for him, within a chapter or two. Because even I have limits to just how much torture I can put a character through.

The fever, dizziness, and vomiting are symptoms of drug withdrawal. The first few days a body is deprived of food, there is pain and hunger, but after that, the body starts to become numb to the starvation for a period of time. Not that it feels good, or even okay, but not tortuously hungry anymore, either.

Translations for the Russian are as follows:

лихорадка = fever

сонный = sleepy