Road to War Part I: Terrible Lie

Hey, God, I Think You Owe Me a Great Big Apology

1.     Hey God, I think you owe me a great big apology.

Getting to the museum is difficult.  He isn't all that adept at gathering detail on his own, but he can manage.  His handlers may have turned him into a ghost, but the fact that he was frozen between missions only partially influenced that reputation.  He was well-trained at infiltration and staying off the grid.  It wasn't until recently that he had started being used to send a message.  Well, recently for him; such words become difficult to quantify when applied to his situation.  In any case, he has the requisite skills to gather the information he needs, but also has a significant amount of factors to cause him to deviate from his task.

The Winter Soldier follows orders, the Winter Soldier doesn't deviate.

Except what does he do without any orders?  What does he do when there is no one left to pull his strings?  Other than a man he doesn't know, but some part of him insists that he does.

After he pulls the man, Steve?, from the river, he pauses on the bank to make sure he breathes.  Then he walks away.  He doesn't know where he is going.  There was not an extraction plan for this mission.  Perhaps his masters did not expect him to survive, or they didn't care.  Or assumed they would find him if he was successful.  He has failed the mission, though, so he does not want to return to them.  Has he ever failed before?  He doesn't think so.  To have failed this mission, and so spectacularly, would make him at best an unreliable asset.  At worst, a liability.  He glances at the smoking wrecks in the river and decides he doesn't want to discover which of those categories he will fall under if he returns.

So he doesn't return, not the bank vault where he was kept or to the house of the man who gave him orders.  He disappears, perhaps not as thoroughly as he has been doing for the last unknown number of years, but well enough.  His clothes he switches out at the first opportunity for ones less devoted to combat.  Jeans and t-shirts are what people wear, so he gets himself a pair and a black shirt.  Other people without homes wear coats all the time, even when the weather is warm.  He gets himself a long-sleeved plaid shirt and a denim jacket.  Gloves are also necessary; his metal arm attracts too much attention.

He has seen a great deal of technological advancements in his time as a HYDRA agent.  Not that he was often trained on these, but a rudimentary understanding of his resources was necessary and encouraged.  It seems, though, that the rest of the world was not advancing quite so quickly in that department.  He sees other people missing limbs, wearing prosthetics.  But none are like his.  None so accurately represent the absent appendage.  He is unique, like he had been told all those years.

Eventually, his boots are replaced by tennis shoes, which are very common.  His beard grows and he does nothing to address it.  It masks his face well, with the benefit of not being an obvious mask.  Not like he had before.  Still, he feels better hiding more of his face using a baseball cap, especially as it keeps his hair back and out of his eyes.  People do not have their faces covered by their hair if they want to avoid detection.  It is somewhat counterintuitive, to cover something up in order for it to be noticed.  But it is the trend he has seen, at any rate.  And seems to hold true.

Food is not hard to come by in the nation's capital.  There are numerous charities devoted to keeping the city's homeless population from becoming too obvious.  For a while, he sleeps in a bed provided by one of these places, but then the nightmares come and that is no longer an option.  The meals are still available, and he usually does not search out any other means of sating his appetite, which is barely noticeable anyway.  He cannot recall eating when he was an asset, so it is an adjustment.  Everyone else eats, though, so he is sure he must.