Fire and Ice

•21•

Agents surround him. He sits in the chair. Someone is working on his arm, fixing where the girl burned him. Images come to his mind in flashes.

"Sergeant Barnes," someone says to him.

"Bucky, no!" the man on the bridge shouts — but he wasn't on the bridge then. He was on a train. But he was in open air. There's singing, laughter, footsteps, voices. He can't tell where they're coming from. His hair is tousled in the wind.

Who is he?

He's in the snow, looking at a different man. He hears the first man's voice, sees a trail of blood where his arm should be. "The procedure has already started." They're cutting into him. "You are to be the new fist of HYDRA." His metal arm grabs a man by the neck. The first man comes back. "Put him on ice."

He sees himself in a window, his hair shorter, feels his own panic as he freezes, as the memory stops.

Memory?

He jerks his arm away, hits the man working on it. He wants him gone — he wants them all gone. They aim guns at him, and he sits there, furious, frustrated, about to explode.

Who is he? Why is he here? Who was that man on the bridge? He knew him. Not the woman. There were two, but the first one disappeared. The other one had fire. No one told him that. Why did nobody tell him that? He felt the heat of her hand on his chest, trying to burn through, to kill him. The flames danced inches from his face. He felt real fear for the time since...

Since when? The last time they wiped him? He lost his arm? He fell, looking up at that man? The man on the bridge...

The woman. Focus on the woman. She's mad at you. You're mad at her. You don't know her. You can kill her. You'll be prepared next time.

"Mission report," Pierce says.

But the man on the bridge. You knew him. I knew him. Who was he?

"Mission report, now."

Not him, her. Not him, not him. Think about her. Think about fire. You should've used the knife on her, even if you had to get closer. You should've risked it. You-

Pierce slaps him across the face, a sharp sting on his cheek. His mind settles. Her.

"The woman," he feels himself saying.

"What woman?" Pierce asks.

Fire, orange, talking, hitting, heat. He breathes in. Why did no one tell him? "Flames..." Her hands were in flames. She burned him, could've scorched his skin. And yet she couldn't burn herself — at least not again. There were scars on her face, her hands, her arms. Her hair was a flame tied back. It stood out against everything. She couldn't hide for long, but she didn't want to.

"What about her?"

What about her? Everything about her. He shot her. She lived. She was... She said... "I... killed her boss," he says. What else? "Shot her friend." Something about... an alien? Magic? And that phrase... 'I could do this all day.' Why does that seem... significant? "She tried to burn me."

Pierce snorts. "Well, that's no surprise."

He looks up at him. He knows her, then, as more than just a target. He knows what that all means. He risks it. "Who was she?"

Pierce waves it off. "An annoying scientist."

"Not a spy..." he mumbles, remembering something she said. She talked too much.

"What about the rest?" Pierce asks.

The rest. There was the other woman. She hit him, she ran, took out his other men. He wanted to go after her, but the scientist stopped him. There was the other man. He kicked him, shot his men, that was all. But the one on the bridge.