Memories were not supposed to be perfectly clear, that Noelle knew. Much like the rippling water she was staring into, they were supposed to be a little murky, easy to warp and change in your mind as you recalled the instance with fondness. Reliving memories should be something akin to looking through a funhouse mirror, letting the glass and distance twist and blur the image in ways that make you laugh, tummy swelling with warm nostalgia.
The scrawny brown haired girl in the water, however, couldn't entirely wrap her mind around that, as the waving shape of her body reflected in the gray-blue, oil spattered water. This assignment had raised a lot of questions, questions she usually knew better than to ask herself, afraid of the answers, or lack thereof, she may find in the empty recesses of her mind. However, her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and Noelle had recently come to realize that there was a whole lot of nothing in the reflection of her funhouse mirror, just her own face, twisted and distorted by years of pain she couldn't entirely remember.
She knew they were there, these memories she supposed she ought to have. Ideas cannot simply cease to be, that was something HYDRA had always been so keen to remind her, and Noelle figured that memories had to be much the same, too abstract to ever be washed away in their entirety. However, hers were hidden behind a thick veil of darkness she didn't know how to lift or illuminate. It was an ocean she couldn't part.
Noelle had never seen the ocean, and as her heartbeat began to pick up in her chest, unsure of when the familiar face of her companion would surface from the dark pond of introspection in front of her, she wasn't sure she wanted that to change. It then occurred to her that maybe HYDRA had tied weights to her ideas, set them on the water and watched them sink into the deepness. Maybe there was no veil to lift, or darkness to break with a lantern, instead a swaying body of water to breach the surface of and struggle through.
That didn't matter anymore.
Silver glimmered just beneath the surface, and Noelle's chest swelled with instantaneous relief. She had watched earlier as the water swallowed an entire ship, one that had come from the sky, and one far bigger than Noelle would be able to truly comprehend for quite some time, but it had not swallowed her Soldier, and that comforted her, just as it always had.
However, as his familiar figure emerged from the frightening unknown, Noelle quickly noticed that he was not alone. She took an instinctual step back into the muck, watched with narrowed eyes as a mess of bloodied blonde and star spangled stripes was hauled too in her Soldier's wake. Captain America. That was what they had called him, the man in the patriotic suit.
The Winter Soldier clambered ashore, dragging himself through the tough surface tension of the water, and dropped the injured man at his feet. He didn't look at Noelle, instead he looked at the face of Captain America, struggling too with the blackspots that surrounded his recollection of the past. His past. He couldn't place where in his repressed memories this face came from, but with just about as much sureness as he could muster, the Soldier had known Steve Rogers.
As water frothed from the unconscious blonde's mouth, a vague sign that he'd be okay in the long haul, the Soldier at last took a short moment to heave a labored breath into his own tired, and terribly aching lungs. He was not HYDRA's pawn anymore- when that had become clear, the Soldier didn't know. He didn't know a lot of things, far fewer with certainty, but he decided that he was going to go with that one.
Noelle wanted to speak to him, to ask the only figure she recognized what came next, but no words escaped her parted lips- only a short puff of air, remnants of the unconscious gasp she had taken at Steve Rogers' unexpected arrival. Noelle didn't have answers to her questions, and the most logical part of her knew her Soldier didn't either. HYDRA had trapped him just as they had trapped her.
This mutually shared lack of critical information was one of those unspoken facts she was merely aware of in the most unshakable foundations of her mind. He was like her. The Soldier was a rat on a wheel too, running through the plastic walls of a maze he couldn't comprehend because that was the will of the forces beyond his control. He was a beacon of safety. Noelle did not have to fear the Winter Soldier, that metal arm would cause her no real harm, merely pull her along when she lost her direction. Those were the important things, the given variables that she held tight to her chest like precious jewels.
The Soldier turned away from Steve Rogers with a certain apprehensive slowness, a hesitance to desert the star spangled man who could answer all his seemingly impossible questions. His thudding heart, still reeling from the fight that had nearly ended him, wanted nothing more than to stay, and learn all about who he'd been. But his heart wasn't in control, his fractured mind was, and his mind was screaming one thing- survive. So, with the subtlest of movements, he extended his flesh hand in Noelle's general direction, still dead silent and expectant.
Noelle didn't have to be told what that meant, the mundane action and her immediate reaction falling under the category of simple muscle memory. She was at his side in an instant, allowing her small hand to be enveloped by his own larger, and calloused hand. It was like being anchored, moored all at once, and kept from going adrift. Suddenly the subtle rocking of the water to Noelle's right wasn't so frightening, it simply was.
No words were exchanged between the pair of newly emancipated assets, none needed to be uttered at all. The Soldier didn't know where exactly they were going other than away from the giant ass mess left in their wake, and Noelle merely trusted that he'd get them where they needed to go- he was a beacon of safety. He didn't have the answers, but Noelle was more than confident in his ability to find them, just like he found targets, just like he always found her.
Hand in hand, lock step, each pair of big boot prints accompanied by a smaller pair a mere foot or so away, the pair made their way down the muddy bank. They needed somewhere to sleep, somewhere to hide, somewhere to lay low and disappear into the steady hum of everyday noise, even as their faces were plucked from the darkness HYDRA had hidden them in for so long, and broadcasted to the whole world by Natasha Romanoff. That was what The Soldier was working towards, he decided.
They were not HYDRA's, they were their own, and they were going to find a home. They were going at long last. And all at once, beneath the government's noses, and under the blanket of gray clouds, they were gone, just two ghosts swept up in the spring breeze. Going, going, gone.
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