Chapter 1
Stevie could remember the way it was before everything. Before the serum, before HYDRA, before the war. Before all of the events that led to this moment right now. She remembered a before. It was all bubbly laughter, flowing dresses, soft hair and charming smiles. It was protection, friendship, home. That was not what she was seeing now. Now she saw hard eyes and ruthlessness. The face of her best friend had been completely transformed into a shell of its former self, a ghost, a shadow. Her soft pale skin had been covered in hard, black edges of knives, guns, and armor. What had happened to her?
The winter soldier could not remember the before. She had no memory of the laughter and friendship that had been shared. All she knew was cold, barbed edges. She was a killer, monster, beast, a soldier. That was all she knew. She couldn’t make sense of the expression that shattered the other girl’s face. Horror, grief, guilt, betrayal. Why was there a shake in the other woman’s voice? Yet she could feel something… some instinct, some bond, still there, deep within her, even after years of being nothing but a ruthless killer. There was something in her that made her stop. Why did she stop?
Both women just stared at each other for a moment, the anguish encased within their silence unspeakable. Stevie was thrown back into 1940, remembering the soft fondness of the girl she’d once known. The girl Bucky had once been. The soldier’s mind was completely blank. She had no recollection of the blonde standing in front of her other than what she’d been told. Captain America. Stephanie Rogers. Mission: kill. That was all she knew. That was all she needed to know… right? The blonde wore civilian clothes, her long hair billowing behind her unmoving shoulders in the breeze. She held the metal shield in front of her defensively, but her eyes were large blue puddles, saucers, circles of awe. They were the eyes of a child from the 1930s, and the soldier’s mind was thrown into a series of sudden flashes:
Stevie on the ground, bleeding.
“Call me Bucky.”
Stevie, so small, so frail, held in her arms.
Laughter singing from both girls hearts as they walked down a sidewalk together.
“Bucky!” screamed Stevie’s anguished voice.
Stevie’s hand, reaching out, grasping at the air, getting smaller and smaller.
The soldier had no grasp on what was happening. She… knew Stephanie Rogers. Somehow. This woman standing in front of her. She knew her… a friend. Stephanie Rogers was her… best friend. Stevie?
“Bucky?” The other woman asked, staring incredulously at the soldier in front of her.
“Who the hell’s Bucky?” the black-clad woman asked, snapping back to her cold reality. She pulled out a knife and lunged forward, crushing the brief moment of calm that had passed between the two. She was the Winter Soldier. She had a mission to complete.