[He can count the number of times he's slept through the night without nightmares chasing him on one hand. Sometimes, they're mild enough that he's able to sleep right through them. Able to bear the weight of those memories long enough to get a few solid hours in.
But more often, they're the kind that leave him twisting and turning. The kind that drags his mind back to a dark place. To a time he wishes he could forget but knows he doesn't deserve to. Deaths are relived. Blood and viscera flowing through all of them. But it's the faces that hit hardest. The lives taken, innocent, but marked as guilty by the one who unleashed him. By Hydra, and their ongoing agenda.
It's the pain he causes. The type that lasts. That lives on in the ones left behind. Those are the ones that sit with him the most. A son, a father, a wife. A leader. A president. Anybody who stood in their way, and all of those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But over the past month...
It's a familiar face begging for his life. For a wife to be left alone. For a son to not be left an orphan. There's a car, the hood crumpled, steam rising into the chilled air. And there's Bucky- No, the asset. The Winter Soldier, staring down at the man kneeling before him.
There's metal fingers curled around a pale throat. But there's grey hair still black. Wrinkles erased, and a body still young. It's metal turned flesh. Black leather is a blue jacket. And yet the fingers only tighten. Turn white in the power behind that grip. As the words begin to taper off, and white slowly begins to stain themselves red again.
The serum only enhances what's already there. Maybe the codewords were just an excuse.]
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But more often, they're the kind that leave him twisting and turning. The kind that drags his mind back to a dark place. To a time he wishes he could forget but knows he doesn't deserve to. Deaths are relived. Blood and viscera flowing through all of them. But it's the faces that hit hardest. The lives taken, innocent, but marked as guilty by the one who unleashed him. By Hydra, and their ongoing agenda.
It's the pain he causes. The type that lasts. That lives on in the ones left behind. Those are the ones that sit with him the most. A son, a father, a wife. A leader. A president. Anybody who stood in their way, and all of those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But over the past month...
It's a familiar face begging for his life. For a wife to be left alone. For a son to not be left an orphan. There's a car, the hood crumpled, steam rising into the chilled air. And there's Bucky- No, the asset. The Winter Soldier, staring down at the man kneeling before him.
There's metal fingers curled around a pale throat. But there's grey hair still black. Wrinkles erased, and a body still young. It's metal turned flesh. Black leather is a blue jacket. And yet the fingers only tighten. Turn white in the power behind that grip. As the words begin to taper off, and white slowly begins to stain themselves red again.
The serum only enhances what's already there. Maybe the codewords were just an excuse.]