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

XXI: The Breakout

January 2011. Arlington, Virginia.

Winter Phoenix's POV

Flashback

The whip cracked across my bare back.

'No! Please - just stop! I'll do anything.' The whip cracked again, making me let out a guttural scream of pain.

'What did you remember, soldier?'

'I don't know!'

'What did you remember?!'

'Just stop! I'll do anything.'

'What we want is what we're asking you, soldier,' the voice of the colonel spoke. 'What did you remember?' 

'It was him, okay?!' The whip stopped cracking. 

'What was that, soldier?' 

'I don't know his name. But it was a man, and he was speaking to me. He sounded kind and thoughtful.' The colonel knelt in front of me. 

'Look at me.' I looked up at him, my body shaking from the wounds freshly burning on my back. 'There is no room for friendship or kindness here. Whoever you saw or whoever you think you remember, is a lie. That was someone else. That life was a dream. This is your home. HYDRA is your home. It always will be.' He stood. 'Soldier!' I heard the heavy footsteps of the Asset as he walked into the room. He had no voice, but what I felt was the silent question of one who was asking what to do. 'Take her back to your shared cell.' He came and unlocked my chains, then pulled me up and looped my arm over his shoulder, half-walking me, half-dragging me out of the room. 

'You shouldn't have let slip that you remembered something,' the assassin grunted as he carried me into our shared cell. He laid me on his mattress, then got a washcloth from the sink nearby, wetted it, and brought it over to bear on my wounds. I hissed in pain. 

'Have you ever remembered?'

'Yes.' He said it quietly. He was afraid that they were watching. They hardly ever watched this cell, though. We weren't prized, but we were most certainly valuable, which is why we were never watched being in this cell together. Our shared cell. 

'What did you remember?' 

'I don't know.' 

'Well maybe someday we will. You know, remember who we are.' He sat on the bed, having finished cleaning and bandaging the injuries, and looked at me, brushing some sweat-matted hair out of my eyes. 

'This is all we are. We don't know anything else because there was nothing else.'

'You don't believe that, do you?' He sighed and I heard the squeak of the mattress as he lowered himself onto the other bed. 

'I don't know what to believe. I just do.' 

I awoke with a gasp, feeling someone shake me gently. 

'Wake up.' The voice was familiar, and I felt a piece of hair tickle my cheek. I looked up, seeing a mask first, and then a pair of startling blue eyes. 

'Winter... how did you get in here?' 

'The guards are dead,' he said blankly, unlocking my handcuffs and letting me stand. Then, he took out his gun and handed it to me. I took it and we stepped through the broken sliding glass door and out into the corridor. We traipsed through the halls, still and silent like the assassins that they made us. That made me think back to the dream I just had. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to remember stuff like that. But why was I remembering the stuff from Brooklyn? The old people, the twin flat, the letter, the necklace? Why? What was so magnetic about it that made me remember things? Brooklyn was a dangerous place. All of New York was. 

'Winter, the mission. I failed.' 

'I completed it myself. The Pearsons are dead. Not the agents, I'm afraid. I fought Agent Romanoff, but the other was nowhere to be found.'

'Barton,' I said softly. 'HYDRA sent you for me?'

'Yes. Consequences are in place, though. You failed your mission. At least any and all reminders of that past have been burnt to ash. We destroyed their home after I killed them.'

'You burned down their home?'

'Why so sad?' 

'Why so emotionless?'

'I did what I had to do.' 

'Two innocent people?'

'You've grown soft,' he snapped. 

'No, I -'

'Замолчи (Shut up).' He held up his hand, and the Winter Soldier investigated his surroundings with a trained eye, like a hawk studying the mouse for prey. 

'Freeze!' a voice shouted. 'Come out with your hands -' Winter shot the male agent. He fell to the floor with a thud, never to get up again. 'Пятьдесят четыре (Fifty-four).' I flinched, almost as if someone had struck me. 'Отец (Father).' I flinched again. 'Жажда мести (Revenge). Церебральная (Cerebro). Пляж (Beach).' I let out a groan. Only five more words left before my mind succumbed to the dark. I felt myself slipping. And I didn't even know my own name. 

'Please stop,' I gritted out, my knees hitting the floor, holding my head in my hands. I groaned. 

'Предательство (Betrayal). Феникс (Phoenix).' 

'Stop.' 

'Пожар (Fire). Темнота (Darkness).' I screamed out loud. 'Домой (Home).' My breathing went still. I was still on my knees and then I stood, staring him directly in the face, my eyes cold. 'Солдат (Soldier)?' he asked. 

'Готов подчиниться (Ready to comply).'