My Heart's A Wall of Stone

Chapter One

[disclaimer: I wrote this before I knew how to write, so blame 16-year-old me. I am now 24. I have learned a lot since I wrote this.] 

   When I was hired at HYDRA, I was only 24 years old. Naive, stupid, ignorant 24-year-old who could barely take care of her parents, let alone herself. I met Alexander Pierce the day my father died when I found his corpse inside our house with his blood pouring out onto the carpet of our living room. "Ah, hello Miss Carver. Shall we have a seat?"

The next thing I knew, he was ranting about the greater good and how SHIELD was trying to poison the minds of millions around the globe. He offered a job working with The Soldier at HYDRAs secure base. It sounded peculiar. Intriguing. Something I would love to do. I almost said yes. Had they not threatened me with my mother at gunpoint, I would've immediately said yes. "Let her go Pierce, and then I'll say yes."

"See, I can't do that Alexia. Once I do you'll try to run out of here with your mother just like the others do, and then we'll have to kill you both. All you have to do is say yes. We need someone like you." I glanced back at my mother who was completely silent, trying to pry the arm of her captor off around her neck.

"Yes." A shrill scream escaped my lips as a gunshot rang clear through the air, and my mother fell to the ground clutching the area of her chest just above her heart. "Mom!"

An agent who'd been standing guard by the front door took a step forward as I lunged towards my mother, but as I reached her body, Pierce stopped him. "Let her go. She has five minutes. If the mom isn't dead, kill her completely and burn the body. I can't have her trying to contact family."

My mother stared at me with wide blue eyes, the same eyes that my sister shared whenever she was still alive. She was the first person they killed when they came to find me. She was only 11 years old. "Alexia," Tears streamed down her cheeks as she clutched my hand, now sticky in her blood. "My baby, I'm so proud of you... Listen to me. I know these men. They will do whatever they can to break you, to turn you into what you're not. Don't let them, sweetheart... Be the strongest person you can be... Don't fall-" She smiled sweetly at me and her breathing immediately stopped, and her eyes stayed open.

They drug me out of my house kicking and screaming.

****

''Alexia, hon, you can go home. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of Steve and taking him home whenever he gets discharged." Sam murmured, laying a hand on my back as I sat up from my position where my head had been on the bed. "Please? Or go see Tony. You look exhausted."

I was exhausted. I'd been with Steve since Nick Fury's death and I felt like I was on fire from excessive use of my power. "Alright. I'll go home." I stood up, shouldering my purse and pressing a small kiss to Steve's forehead. "Have him call me whenever he wakes up." Sam nodded and murmured something incoherent under his breath as I exited the room.

I couldn't stop thinking about The Winter Soldier and what he'd done when he'd seen me this afternoon. I ran over to Steves's unmoving body, tears blurring my vision as I collapsed in the mud. "Do you know him?" My heart nearly stopped as I glanced into a pair of electric blue eyes. "Do I k-know you?"

I have only ever been paralyzed twice in my life. Once when I was torn from my family, and again when I met the Winter Soldier after months of no contact. Quite frankly, I was surprised that he was the one to rescue Steve from the hellicarrier. ​"Yes, y-you do k-know me. Don't you remember?" He furrowed his brow together and threw his mask into the Potomac. "I'm Lex. You gave me that nickname. Do you remember? All the time we spent together at HYDRA?"

As I got into my car, I pulled my lip in between my teeth to keep the tears from falling. I'd fallen in love with that soldier while captive at HYDRA, and he couldn't even remember who I was. "Your voice.." He whispered, glancing down at Steve as he began coughing up river water. "You were the nice girl. The girl who made me happy." His face fell as he met my gaze once more. "You ran away. I killed more people. I'm not happy anymore. Can you-"

"I'll make you happy again, Sergeant Barnes.," I whispered, pulling into my apartment complex parking lot and shouldering Steve's duffel. "Once I find you again." I couldn't even respond before he vanished. Exhausted, I stumbled into the apartment complex and found myself staring at Maggie, the woman who worked the front desk. We had come to develop a close friendship over the time I had lived in the building. "Hello, Maggie."

'There you are!" She exclaimed, standing from her desk and taking a sip of her coffee. "I was looking everywhere for you! Were you at the hospital with Captain America? I know you guys are close."

"Yeah. He took quite a fall from that Hellicarrier, but I'm sure he's going to make a full recovery. He has always healed nicely." An uneasiness settled into my bones when I noticed that her gaze was everywhere else in the lobby but refused to meet my own. "Maggie, what's wrong?"

"A man came in here earlier asking for you." She replied softly, running a hand through her hair uneasily. Whoever had come in had shaken her up more than she had anticipated. "Said his name was Bucky?" My heart crawled into my throat as I took off towards the elevator. "Who is he, Alexia!!"

I ignored her question as the doors slid shut and the elevator rose a level to where I lived. The moment that the doors opened, I immediately saw the blood on the floor. It wasn't a lot, but it was there. Staining the rich carpet until the trail abruptly ended at my door. Soft music from what could only be my radio seeped through the door which was ajar. "Hello?"

Gripping my knife I always kept on me, I slowly made my way into the apartment. It was just the way I'd left it a few days before, but now, a masculine outline took up most of my couch. "I remember you." He whispered, slowly rising out of the shadows to give me a good look at his face. "You're the reason I'm still alive."

Sitting in front of me with a blood-stained outfit on was The Winter Soldier himself. Bruised, beaten, broken, alone.