The Silent Shadow || marvel

21- right words to a broken mind

Longing, rusted, seventeen daybreak.

The sound of a little girl's laugh shatters his already breaking mind. It's light and airy, like a melody of innocence or a burst of sunshine. James grimaces at the voices colliding in his mind.

Furnace, nine, benign, homecoming.

Breathing, heaving, panting, James does it all. He feels his mind contorting into the familiar unmade feeling he hasn't felt in a bliss two years. It hurts, it's so, so painful as he fights it. It's like colors mixing in a tub of water- his good side and the killer side going toe to toe with each other in his head. It feels like he's being stabbed. Over and over and over again.

Homecoming, one, freight car.

No, no, no. Fight it, James, Bucky, Bucky, fight.

Fight for her, Svetlana, Lana, Svet. His baby, his girl. He needs to fight to keep his promise.

The man in front of him, a so-called psychologist, watches him with curiosity and anticipation. He feels sick seeing the look of satisfaction woven in his eyebrows and lips—is he really just a weapon people can control like a marionette?

Yes, yes, he is.

A couple of seconds go by, uncomfortable ones that Bucky can practically hear tick by. He tastes the sour, metallic taste of blood in his mouth from his tongue he didn't realize he had bitten.

James flexes his fingers and wiggles his toes to ensure he's still in his body. He is, but only partially and not for much longer- the mindlessness is in his midst, on his tail like a wolf on a rabbit. He doesn't have longer than a few seconds, and he knows it.

"Soldier?" The man says.

The voice sounds watery as it makes its way through the jungle that is James's mind. He feels the words crawling from his lungs and in his throat, the final ingredient to the recipe of destruction, which is him- or rather, the Winter Soldier.

He tries to choke them down, to swallow them up, and not let them escape, but it's no use. There's no discharge in the war.

"Ready to comply." Comes out of his mouth despite his greatest efforts. Only it isn't his mouth anymore.

And just like that, in just three simple words, Bucky Barnes slips into nothingness.

✪

Blood is pumping through Svetlana's veins as she runs through the halls of SHIELD. The sound of people's fleeing screams is easily drowned out by the thrumming of her heart. She's lost Natasha, though she doesn't know how long ago, she doesn't care either.

She resists the urge to growl at the fact that every fucking wall in this place looks the same. She hadn't run in the direction she had come from because that would simply be backtracking. Instead, she ran towards the screaming people.

Her arms and legs pump at speeds she's forgotten she's even capable of so she can reach her papa. She has to reach him before anyone else does because they'll shoot him, and if they shoot him, she'll lose him forever.

Anger runs through her as she realizes that people's first moves when they see him will be to kill, but those are people who lack the knowledge that he's good. Her father is nothing less than a good man who cares for everyone around him.

All anyone sees when they look at him is a killer. A cold-blooded killer who doesn't deserve to live. But they don't know him, not like she does. They don't know the good that's trapped within the iron-clad mind of the Winter Soldier.