If the Wind Turns

It’s a tad ironic, you think, that time slows as you stare down the barrel of a gun. 

Ironic and downright cruel. To watch your inevitable death is awful enough, but in slow motion? That’s just heartless. 

The man before you doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch or look remotely surprised as you level him with the most defiant glare you can manage. He doesn’t move, which means his finger is still hovering over the trigger without touching it, and it doesn’t rest on the metal or squeeze like you’re expecting it to.

You know that can change in an instant, but a part of you doesn’t care, not when he’s fixing you with a hauntingly beautiful, icy stare that promises to pick you apart, to slice your retinas open and spill all the light you’ve ever seen across the floor. Something in your head recoils underneath the mist that clouds it, but your orders are stronger than your instincts.

The OSPREY will eliminate all non-personnel.

It’s a constant drone in your head. If you could dig your talons in deep enough to tear it out of your skull, you’re pretty sure you’d do it in a heartbeat. But you can’t, so you don’t, and you simply surrender to it.

And he still doesn’t pull the trigger.

The glint of the barrel is a familiar threat. You’ve been on both ends of it countless times. With anyone else, you’ve always come out on top—sometimes beaten and battered and certainly worse off than you started, but victorious and alive and compliant and that was all that mattered.

But you know that arm. You know those piercing eyes, framed by long, dark hair. You’ve never seen him in person until now, but you wouldn’t have needed to—it’s him. Someone that you don’t know if you can beat. The Winter Soldier.

The Winter Traitor.

He was a legend that Hydra recruits would speak of. A bloodthirsty, cold man, with a heart as hard as metal and an arm to match. You might have looked up to him, once, during a time when you had been caught up in the sweeping ideals of the organization. A time long before they had taken everything from you, before they had created a wonderfully efficient affront to nature from your body.

Not only had you looked up to him, you were created to be like him. Reborn in his likeness and pushed even further until you were nothing but titanium talons and sharpened teeth and winged fury. You became the legend in his absence. You became the silent assassin, the dutiful soldier, the tortured experiment. The serum in your veins might not be of the same caliber—the original serum was lost to time, and the strength it would’ve provided would have made it impossible to fly—but your blood is just as cold.

So when your programming urges your wings to drive you forwards and your crimson-stained talons to grab the rifle and shove the barrel down and away, you slip into it as easy as ever. You don’t try to fight it, either. The fog thickens in your mind, or maybe it clears, and you wouldn’t know the difference because there is a frigid rage swirling just under your skin that demands to be unleashed. The fact that your anger aligns with your orders is purely coincidental.

There’s a harsh crack that makes your ears ring as he finally pulls the trigger; you’ve already moved away from the barrel’s path. The Winter Soldier drops the rifle and tries to reorient himself, but your reflexes are just slightly faster as you lunge for his throat with outstretched talons. A metallic clang sounds as he lifts his arm to block the strike, leaving your claws screeching harmlessly against the vibranium.

You numbly register the punch his other fist delivers as it slams into your stomach, and you stagger a step back as it leaves you winded. 

But there’s something warm and wet where he punched you.

He hadn’t punched you at all, had he?

Your eyes flick downwards. There’s a copper scent that reaches your nostrils, strong and metallic and familiar. The mist in your head eases slightly at the shock, but the pain doesn’t register. Your clawed hand drifts towards your abdomen until it grazes against the small black hilt of a knife, but the Winter Soldier makes a warning grunt as your palm instinctively wraps around it.

"Wouldn’t pull that out if I were you," he advises. Your gaze slams into his, and you blink slowly as you release the blade’s hilt. His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, a flash of surprise reaching the surface before he can mask it. It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting from a Hydra asset—the hesitance. 

Your wings twitch for a brief moment as your gaze shifts to the cryo pod on the nearer side of the room. The Winter Soldier’s eyes follow yours, and his stance shifts slightly. It’s enough for your conditioning to snap to attention, recognizing the vulnerability, and a low, guttural noise tears from your throat as you launch yourself at him again.

His vibranium arm lifts once more to stop your talons, and his hand closes around your wrist before the blow can connect. 

You had expected that.

You step in and drive your left hand’s talons into his thigh, knowing you won’t be able to get a good hit on his armored chest. He tenses. There’s a hint of annoyance in those icy eyes as you yank your claws out from his flesh with a sickening tearing sound. That’s it. He doesn’t hiss or grunt or speak. It’s as if you did nothing at all. 

But the action is enough for him to loosen his grip, and you’re able to jerk your wrist away. Your wings beat to maintain your balance, and your gaze darts around the room in search of a weapon. There are a few guns left strewn about from the dead—or maybe unconscious—guards, but they’re a little bit closer to the Winter Soldier than they are to you; you’re not feeling fond of the idea of him getting his hands on you. 

Which leaves only one other option. It’s a choice you aren’t sure of, a gamble that could lead to your untimely departure from this mortal coil. You feint to the right and he follows the movement, his eyes tracking you like a predator. Then, with a burst of speed that you know he can’t match despite being your equal, you switch directions and dart for the metal trays stored next to the cryo pod. 

He might be fast, but you’ll always be faster.

Your vision tunnels towards the carefully placed syringes on the tray. Your programming thrashes in your chest, the thorns piercing some deep and vital organ as they demand for your claws and teeth to rend and tear, but you shove against the feeling as hard as you’re able and grab two of the syringes with a small clink of glass before whipping around to face your attacker once more. If you can land a hit, he’ll be out cold from the cryosleep solution long enough for you to fulfill your orders and kill him. 

The Winter Soldier is closing in. He rotates his black metal arm with a mechanical hum that sends a shiver down your spine, and you can’t help but notice that his eyes look angrier than they did before. His brow is furrowed and, though you can’t see under the mask covering his mouth and nose, you imagine his lips are probably drawn in a harsh expression. He moves with a grim determination. He understands your intent. 

He knows what’s in those syringes, you realize.

You hazard a glance at the vibrant blue liquid stored within them before yanking off the cap covering one of the needles. Your wings spread wide in a defensive manner, but you can’t back up any further—in grabbing the cryosleep solution, you’ve effectively cornered yourself against the pod. 

"Stay back," you hiss, your voice strained. You can feel a hint of the pain breaking through the thorns that bind you to your objective, a dull throb in your abdomen that makes you feel a little unsteady on your feet. An unreasonable part of you wants to grab hold of the knife embedded in your stomach and yank it out, but you know better.

You don’t want to die here.

The Winter Soldier continues his advance, but there’s something unsettling about the way he moves. Every step is slow, calculated, as though he’s approaching a cornered, feral little thing. His gaze is unwavering and resolute and dangerous because he can see right through you and past the shell of the weapon Hydra so desperately wanted you to be.

He can see something in some corner—some small cavity that the thorns couldn’t touch—that even you can’t, and you aren’t sure if you’re terrified or angry.

You throw the capped syringe, a last minute distraction to buy you even a few seconds. He only pauses and raises his arm—the glass shatters against the vibranium with a sound that echoes your last hope breaking, splintering into a million pieces and filtering through your grasp like sand.

The uncapped syringe in your hand raises and you eye his neck carefully, waiting for him to draw closer.

And he does.

He lunges for you, and a glint of metal under the emergency lighting is the only warning you get as his arm reaches for you. You can’t move fast enough to jab the syringe into his throat before he wraps his hand around your wrist again, stalling the needle’s path. As hard as you try to force the needle closer, the Winter Soldier is stronger than you—there’s nothing you can do as his grip tightens until it’s almost crushing, forcing your hand to drop the syringe.

He deftly catches it in his organic hand and raises it.

A dizzying wave of panic hits you. Stronger than your conditioning—the will to survive. It consumes every millimeter of your nervous system until you feel sick and sets you into motion. Talons scrabble uselessly against armor as you try to pull away, create distance, get loose. 

But he ignores your futile attempts at resistance. With a swift, decisive movement, he positions the needle against your neck and presses the plunger until the cryosleep solution is fully expelled from the syringe.

You never liked the feeling that comes next. Drowsiness settles into you like a cloud over everything. A part of you wants to sink into it, but you’re never allowed to want for anything, so you fight against the drug swimming through your system.

But you were never good at fighting for the things that really matter. You—the real you, the version hidden away somewhere dark and hopeless, not the Osprey—always give up too soon, or lose sight of your main goal, or get beat down and don’t manage to find your footing in time to get back up.

So when the Winter Soldier’s face swims in and out of focus, his eyes filled with a strange mixture of resolve and something that almost looks like pity, you surrender. The thorns that control you like a puppet, so desperate in their tenacity, tighten at your refusal to comply, but it’s already too late. 

The man catches you with one arm as your wings droop and your body slumps against his own. It’s funny, you think, how surprisingly gentle his grip is. He’s holding you carefully, as though you aren’t a thing but a person, and you aren’t built to become him but are forced to play his role. He holds you as though you’re marked fragile, do not break and covered in warning signs, but not the kind of warnings that would send most people away screaming.

The Osprey doesn’t know how to feel about that. For once, you think you might be on the same page.

"I’m sorry," he murmurs. His voice is uncharacteristically soft and barely audible, but you can’t tell if it’s him or you that’s to blame. You don’t even get a chance to respond as the cryosleep solution forces you past the wall at the edge of your consciousness and leaves you limp in his arms.

The Winter Soldier spared you. 

You aren’t dead, because he spared you, and you’re awake and breathing and none of that matters because your mission failed.

Failed.

Failure is not something you’ve experienced before. You’ve had close calls, sure, but never outright defeat. The voice of your conditioning that clouds your head almost feels like it’s mocking you at this point.

Target unable to be neutralized. The OSPREY will return to its designated Handler.

Something tells you that you won’t be going anywhere soon as you look around in an attempt to get a better sense of your surroundings. But the voice doesn’t know that. The programming doesn’t particularly care.

A cursory glance makes it immediately obvious that, well, you have no fucking clue where you are. The room is almost entirely bare, with only the bed you woke up in and a plain drawer. You swing your legs over the side of the bed, hissing at the pain that shoots through your bandaged stomach, and stand on shaky feet. When you rifle through the drawer, it’s clearly filled with nothing but clothes—all in your size, you realize numbly. You shut the drawers quietly despite the annoyance you feel and stretch your aching wings.

Except you can’t stretch them at all.

Thick metal—at least, you assume it’s metal, based on how cold it is against your feathers—encircles each wing, preventing them from extending properly. The result is a harsh cramping feeling in the muscles, one that has you wanting to claw your own wings off just to relieve it. Clearly leaving wouldn’t be an option for you.

You can see through the shimmering walls of your cell, which isn’t any consolation because there’s nothing but lab equipment outside and you know damn well what that means for you. You’ve been a lab rat for long enough that you couldn’t forget the gritty details if you tried.

But there isn’t anything you can do, so you wait.

As it turns out, waiting is the worst hell you can imagine. Not because you’re impatient—years of your programming leaving you standing around idly had quickly drilled patience into you—but because the programming in your head won’t shut up.

Nonfatal injury sustained. Target unable to be neutralized. Reconditioning required.

The OSPREY will return to its designated Handler.

Unable to establish connection to designated Handler. 

You’ve never heard that before. Your handler has always been around, an ever-present force that pummels you into submission if you ever dare to step out of line. You aren’t sure if it’s panic or relief that you feel as it floods your veins and leaves something cold and numb behind like toxins in your bloodstream.

You don’t know where to report to when you get out. You don’t know who to report to. That thought is terrifying—you’ve never had a lack of instruction, nor have you had any bodily autonomy for years on end. You were merely an extension of Hydra’s will, a means to an end. 

You would keep nothing. You would want nothing. You would be nothing.

But there’s something selfish in that tiny part of you that your programming can’t quite reach. There’s something delusional, a piece of your mind that picks over the last moments before you woke up here and holds them up in the glaring light until you have to acknowledge them.

He caught and held you like you were something. You would lose this memory in your eventual reconditioning, but you selfishly want to hold onto it for as long as you possibly can—the feeling of being anything, of being anyone at all. You aren’t meant to want anything, but you do, and the crippling weight of wanting is heavy enough to pulverize even the tallest mountains and carve deep ravines from the rubble.

Psychological condition critical. Reconditioning required. 

Unable to establish connection to designated Handler. 

Bucky feels like he’s watching a car crash in slow motion. 

He can do nothing but watch the security feed as the Hydra asset within the containment cell digs Her fingers into Her own scalp as if trying to claw something out of Her head. A raw and pained and guttural scream tears through Her throat, a sound that spoke of pure agony. It isn’t the same rage he’d seen in Her eyes before, the kind that made those brown and white wings tremble and those titanium claws shake. This is something more primal, more unsettling.

Because he’s been in Her shoes before.

He’s seen the way Her features are haunted in his own gaze, in the mirrors he couldn’t stand to look in and covered as a result. He knows the effects of Hydra’s conditioning on people like the back of his own hand: the blank stares, the unwavering obedience, the way they stand as though they’re always poised to strike, tension like a taut wire stringing their bodies.

This isn’t that at all.

This feels like watching a formerly well-oiled machine blow itself to pieces in a critical and spectacular malfunction, gears grinding together until the whole system threatens to seize. And Bucky can do nothing about it. His metal fist clenches involuntarily as Sam speaks up beside him.

"What the hell is happening to her?"

Bucky doesn’t answer for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the video feed. He wonders if he should answer at all—there aren’t any accurate words to describe what he’s seeing, even though he’s experienced it himself.

"It’s the programming," he says finally. His voice is measured, his expression masked by impassive features. "She’s fighting it."

He knows exactly how hard it is. He isn’t ever going to forget the phantom commands echoing in his mind, their crushing pressure to obey ringing in his ears. But his own struggle had been a relentless climb into the man he’d been before, aided by Shuri and the rest of the nation of Wakanda.

She had no one. 

"Fighting it?" Sam asked, a hint of disbelief seeping into his voice. "I thought it was unbreakable."

Bucky’s jaw ticked. "Nothing is. Just takes a hell of a price to crack it."

He remembers the pain and disorientation and sheer will it had taken to push against the Winter Soldier’s ingrained directives. He wouldn’t put anyone through that particular brand of suffering if given the choice. Not even his worst enemies.

Sam shoots Bucky a sidelong, concerned glance as the man pushes himself off of the viewing room’s wall and makes for the door separating the lab from the observation chamber. He makes a move to follow, but Bucky shakes his head. "Stay here," he instructs.

"She could still be dangerous—"

"And still caged. Stay here."

Bucky’s tone brooks no argument, and Sam relents after a moment without another word.

He enters the lab alone.

Her eyes snap towards his, and all he sees is unadulterated rage within them. Her gaze flicks to his metal arm before settling back on his face. 

"Come to finish the job?" She snarls, the sound low and still perhaps not as frightening as it would be if She wasn’t clutching the bandages around her abdomen as though She might pass out. She makes no move to stand or fight as Bucky approaches the energy barrier separating them.

"No, ‘m not gonna hurt you. We," he says, jerking a thumb towards the observation room just outside the lab. "just want to help."

That earns a harsh, bitter laugh from the woman before him. Her eyes flash with a certain intensity that could force a mountain lion to drop dead at the sight. "Help me? You cage me, you bind me, and you call that help? You’re no better than the people you took me from."

The accusation stings a little, because She does have a bit of a point. 

"We aren’t Hydra. We’ve been trying to crush them for years."

"And you think I don’t know that you’re not Hydra?" She pointedly jerks Her chin towards Bucky’s metal arm. "I’d recognize the Winter Traitor anywhere. Especially when I’ve been told to put you down like a dog."

Bucky’s laugh in response is dry and mirthless. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that, little bird. But you aren’t in any condition to be fighting much of anything, so you can drop the tough act.”

He takes a slow and deliberate step closer to the barrier, earning another defensive snarl as his gaze shifts to Her wings.

"They were using you. Against people that didn’t deserve it."

"I don’t care. At least I had a purpose."

"You wouldn’t be trying to fight it if that was how you really felt." Despite his impassive expression, Bucky knows his voice is tinged with a hint of hope. He stops a few feet away from the energy barrier as he assesses the weapon Sam had been hunting. She merely tucks Her head against Her knees without gracing him with another poisonous word. 

She doesn’t speak for a long, long time.