James Buchanan Barnes isn't a killer. He isn't merciless, or cunning, or evil.
But something in him is.
*****
A wrapper crinkles, fabric shifts, and a small, open hand jerks in front of my face. The smell of powdery chocolate and oats meets my nos...
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The first thing I feel when I wake up is metal.
It isn't that of my arm, or of the tiny laced zipper below the hem of my shirt.
It's the metal that coils around my wrists like vipers and snags my ankles to the base of a large, thick iron chair. It's the metal that snaps over my shoulders and down to my chest like a cross. It's the metal that drowns and suffocates me in its own dull, silvery sea.
It's the metal of a cage.
My head rings, and something unfamiliar clouds the corners of my skull. Something unusually soft and vibrant, yet equally cold and unforgiving. It strains against the jumbled mess of memories, lies, and painfully relevant truths stored in the otherwise empty darkness. It calls to me in a whisper, but I barely hear it over the roar.
I inhale, and the bulge of my chest meets the inner lining of the thick, iron bars draped atop it. Fabric scrapes and my skin seems to loosen at the sound.
I blink through a foggy haze, and my vision clears just enough to see through the windowed plastic of my confines. Cloudy grey cement walls line four long corners of the surroundings, and almost nothing else fits in between. I squint, and glimpse a row of crooked, iron tables lining one far side of the room. Atop their horribly scathed surfaces lies a scattering of tools, machinery, and bits of some kind of glowing blue glass.
I press my eyes shut and curl up my top lip. I reach for memory.
Cold sheets. A speckled, white ceiling. Moving shadows of light.
My heart picks up.
A prick in the chest - short and discrete. A quiet flash of green, and-
I peel my lids open. My stomach twists and contorts beneath my chest.
No.
I curl and uncurl a hand of metal digits as my breathing picks up.
A boot clicks from somewhere to my right, and I nearly bang my chin into the iron of the X across my front as I try to whirl towards the sound.
A low, rushed laugh.
A brush of lavish fabric.
I'm certain my skin pales as Loki's smiling features sidle into the centre of the forward plastic pane. The fingertips of my right hand heat. Those of my left almost seem to creep towards the Asgardian of their own accord.
His smile - sneer - widens at the paleness of my skin.
"The Winter Soldier." The words drip from his tongue like wine.
My brows tighten into a line, and my eyes dip low as they look to his features. To the dark raven of his shoulder length hair, the ice cold blue in the gaze of his eyes.
So similar, that blue. So horribly, terribly similar.
Loki's arms swing to his front, and my eyes snag on the tall, gold scepter he holds in a hand. At its neck sits a long, horridly crooked blade and in its centre, a large, blue gem. It glows a fervent azure. Six inches below the jewel's bottom, another stone lies embedded in the gold of the scepter's hilt. A smaller, darker blue stone, barely the size of a peach seed.
