Chapter 2
The soldier does remember things, even though they try to make him forget.
He remembers every mission, he sees every victim every time he closes his eyes. He can't forget, he’ll never forget, no matter how many times they fry his brain and put him on ice. The memories are always there, lingering behind his eyes.
There are others too though, ones the soldier can never quite grasp. They hit him unsuspectingly out of nowhere and confuse him, leaving him not quite sure what they mean.
Like when he's on a mission and it's snowing.
The soldier knows what he's here for, he just has to wait, but then the snow starts to fall. It falls soft and slow and flakes flutter into the hair falling across his face. He can see the tiny snowflakes small and white, a dramatic contrast to the dirt road and dying trees surrounding him. The soldier reaches out to touch one and for a second he doesn't see his own gloved fingers reaching out, but instead small, skinny fingers tinged blue reaching out delicately only to pull away the minute they touch the snow. The soldier thinks he hears a laugh too, a very familiar laugh but it's cut off by the sound of a car.
The soldier snaps back into focus then. The waiting is over, his mission is here and he sets off ready to do his job.
The fingers and the laugh sit at the back of his mind, too far to reach or grasp onto and he doesn't think about them again because stupid things like that shouldn't have his attention.
-
This time the soldier is in a bunker. He isn't sure of the exact location, he was just told he was to wait here with the squadron until his orders were given.
He sits at the back alone while the squadron sit together huddled around a table. It's cold, very cold so they sit close together as they laugh and drink.
Watching the squadron makes the soldier narrow his eyes and cock his head slightly. This seems familiar. He thinks he remembers something similar, although then it wasn't a bunker and there was only one other person. He remembers the closeness, being draped across someone, someone small? There's a feeling in the soldier's chest, something he thinks was there before but before he can grasp onto it, one of the squadron has caught him staring.
They shout at him and he turns away in hopes of avoiding a punishment. He's lucky tonight, the squadron seem reluctant to leave the heat they've accumulated so he receives angry threats and a promise of worse if he doesn't stop.
The soldier doesn't look up again, there's no need to. He keeps his head down and doesn't think, it's the only way to avoid punishment.
-
They're doing work on his arm again, modifying it to make him better they say. The soldier doesn't care, as long as he can do his missions.
He zones out during these times, the pain doesn't really bother him anymore. He looks around and evaluates the room. There's only a single door blocked by two guards and no windows. There are four doctors, two working on his arm, the other two working on something across the room. Nothing is dramatically different, they do like to keep a routine with him.
He looks at the medical table next to him, looking over all the tools they stick into his arm. This time there's a little notebook next to the tray of tools and a yellow pencil lying next to it.
The soldier can't read what's been written but that's not what his attention is on anyway. No, he's more interested in the pencil shavings littered across the table. Because when he looks at these shavings, he doesn't feel like he's sitting in this chair.
It feels like an apartment and he's sitting against a couch, maybe an arm chair. There's pencil shavings across the floor and he's counting them, restarting after every time someone brushes more onto the floor.
Then one of the doctors pushes a tool in too hard into his arm and he's hissing in pain. He gets a slap over the back of his head for making noise and everything goes back to the way it was.
The soldier doesn't look at the pencil shavings again because they're stupid and not worth his attention.
-
It's one of the rare times the soldier is allowed to actually sleep as opposed to just being put back on the ice.
He's been given a small cot that's barely big enough but the soldier crams himself into it, desperate to have a normal sleep for once.
It turns out though that sleeping like this is a lot worse than being on ice because he doesn't get to avoid dreams this way. He sees every kill and every mission replaying themselves in front of his eyes and there's nothing he can do to change it.
He moves around a lot and the cot creaks and whines under him. At one point, just as he's come out of one dream and is slowly drifting into another, the soldier finds himself reaching out for something. He's not sure what, all he knows is that it should be small and that he can wrap his arm around it and feel the rhythmic heartbeat beneath his fingertips.
He never reaches it, instead falling into another nightmare full of screams and tears and pleas to please stop.
The next night he's put back on ice because everyone in the bunker complained he made too much noise. It's better this way anyway, no dreams and no reaching out for things that aren't and never will be there.
-
There's a mission. He's being briefed on the details and the soldier gives it all his attention. He understands what he's supposed to do. It seems straightforward enough, something he's done a million times before.
What throws him off though is when Pierce says the name.
Steven Grant Rogers
The soldier remembers that name, he does, he knows he does. But he never heard it said like that.
He can remember a woman saying it scoldingly, telling Steven Grant Rogers to stop disturbing the class. And he remembers another woman, one with a softer voice but just as firm telling the soldier as well as Steven to stop getting into trouble. And he remembers another voice too, this one a man’s, maybe, maybe his own? But it's laughing the name, it's not angry like the others and it's laughing and there's more laughing and the soldier doesn't know what this means.
Pierce is glaring at him, shouting at him to get ahold of himself and before he knows it he's being forced back into that chair.
It hurts and it burns but there's nothing there after. He's ready now, nothing in his way. No stupid thoughts, no stupid little things wracking his brain. Only the mission is important. Only the mission.