Memorium Parade
The Winter Soldier awakes to pain. It’s the most familiar thing in the world, especially this one. Currents course through him, his muscles spasming, cramping up, all the strength of him channeled inwards, against his own nerves and mind. He screams, his voice hoarse in his own throat, from cold and lack of use and so much screaming. Cold eyes watch him, cold red eyes watch him scream and he knows this is not good enough. They are staring, watching him writhe against the constraints of the chair, the leather straps biting into his skin, he’s biting into the mouthguard, muffling his screams and making sure he keeps his tongue, keeps his ability to report back.
Something is wrong.
Another familiar instinct for the Winter Soldier. Something is wrong. He shifts as easily as snow in the wind, moves across the room and draws the hidden blade strapped to his wrist. Something is wrong. Poisoning will no longer work, he has to change tactics. He shifts like snow, like shadow, the suit that isn’t his giving him an identity that doesn’t exist, and he slides the blade between the target’s ribs like he slides a smile onto his face. He says something to the company, something suave and charming, they laugh as he escorts the dying man away. He says something. His mouth moves, he has a voice, he says something. He says. Something he says a thing some thing he says.
Where am I?
It’s so cold. The Winter Soldier would laugh if he knew what laughter was. If it was part of him. It has never been. He’s only ever been this, a machine, moving, plowing through the russian winter. He is cold, his gears creaking, his chassis exhaling exhaust in little white cloud that trails from his nose. He is so so so cold. The Winter Soldier doesn’t feel the cold. He is so cold. His feet are dead. He plows through the russian winter snow, shifting, the cold shifts, he shifts, no, his feet are dead. He calculates whether the mission parameters allow for maintenance of the asset. The asset is important, valuable, he is so cold, but never more valuable than the mission.
I am cold.
The Winter Soldier is never cold. The cold doesn’t matter, so it doesn’t register. Pain however registers. The slow creeping pain of frostbite registers. He takes care of it. Makes sure it won’t get worse, the assent can’t lose limbs. Any more limbs. Anything that isn’t lost can heal. He always heals. It hurts. Of course. Everything always hurts. But the Winter Soldier knows pain. Pain is familiar. His flesh hand turns red with the cold, red blood red.
I never did this.
The Winter Soldier doesn’t know all his kills. The pain does that. The chair does that. The cold does that. He loses time, what little time he has. Minutes. I had minutes. And then he’s there in front of a man that fears him, that he’s never seen before. The Winter Soldier doesn’t know anyone, he’s never seen anyone before. His memory spans two days, one indonesian palace, and a cold bunker with a chair.
I remember more than this. Minutes. I felt–
The Winter Soldier is falling through the sky. The cold hard water of the Pontmac is beneath him, a falling metal sky above. He is in pain, from a fight, from his arm, from himself. Then from the water. He is falling. I’ve done this before. I’ve fallen before. A woman is falling with him, a woman with red eyes and red blood red hands. This is wrong.
She doesn’t belong here.
The Winter Soldier breaks the woman’s neck with his metal hands. He doesn’t feel her, only feels the breaking of her bones reverberate through the metal up his shoulder. I don’t have a shoulder, it’s gone, it hurts. The vibrations cause pain. It was painless. Killing Maria Stark cost me nothing. The moon shines red above him.
No.
He is alone. Cold, in the dark, alone. The cryo didn’t take properly that never happened, that’s not real the cryo didn’t take properly. The Winter Soldier is alone.
And he does not want to be alone. He pushes.