Winter Phoenix: HYDRA Is Your Place (A 2008-2012 Marvel Fanfiction)

Prologue: Winter and Phoenix

December 6, 2008. Black Forest, southwest Germany. 

Two figures, black against the mist, stepped into the morning light. Their faces were not yet visible, but you could clearly see the masks that covered the lower portions of their faces. They wore thick tactical leather gear, holding large M4s in their hands, pointed downwards, the black barrels threatening and empty, as if staring into an abyss. One was tall, about six foot one, distinctly male. His brunette hair hung to his shoulders, just touching. Cerulean blue eyes stared out, dead and emotionless. The second soldier was distinctly female, about five foot seven, and had chocolate brown hair that hung past her shoulders. It was greasy to the naked eye, and anyone could see that the soldiers didn't have any means of looking after their hair. Strangely, though, there were gentle waves in the female's hair, whereas the male's hair was long and straight, with a very slight wave. It often came over his eyes, and it was a way of hiding who they really were, hiding their soul. 

They say that a man's eyes are a pathway to the soul, or something like that. But not for these two soldiers. They had no soul. The female's piercing baby blue eyes were striking to look at, but not if she was going to kill you. The masks were cold around their faces, more like muzzles than anything else. Their soft breathing was barely heard through the mask as the morning cold penetrated their thick leather gear, but they barely felt it. Being in Siberia all this time helped with that. The male looked seasoned, ready, fit for the fight. The female was battle-ready, but there was a certain small apprehension that she couldn't seem to shake. All she'd ever done before this was take out a group of Americans and take a payload of mystery serum back to HYDRA. Get in, get out. No funny business. They'd learned not to ask questions early on, never to say no. Always to say yes. They didn't have a choice, not after it was stripped from them along with their memories and emotions. 

Emotion was not something they had the luxury of feeling, or acting upon. It was just constant cold, as cold as the cryofreeze that they spent weeks and months at a time in. The female been in cryofreeze for about 2 months after they took her out of the coma that they'd found her in. Then they fully woke her up. Soon after, the Soldier was assigned his female partner, and they formed a strong bond, albeit strange, for they had no emotions. It was not normal camaraderie among the two; they were often pitted to fight against each other, often to test the limits of their strength on the super soldier serum. The two shared a room, and would often lay with each other, but never actually sleep together. It was forbidden in HYDRA to do such a thing, unless a breeding program for new soldiers demanded it. The soldiers didn't see that happening any time soon, but there were plenty of surprises within HYDRA, and not all of them were good. 

They were cold, truly cold. To most they were ghosts, shadows, phantoms in the night. The very object of stories that were told to children at night to scare them, the object of stories that were shared for scary occasions. 

To the world, the two soldiers that were their former selves before HYDRA, those of James Buchanan Barnes and Adelaide Ruby Lehnsherr-Xavier, were dead to the world. 

Dead to the history books and to all who knew them. 

The world believed they were dead... but ghosts lived in their place, inhabiting what little was left of the empty souls of the Winter Soldier and the Winter Phoenix.