Buzzkill [Winter Soldier]

Chapter 26

That night, James took a watch shift while Ruth tried to sleep for a couple of hours. During a job, she rarely slept at all, so two hours was plenty.

It took Ruth a while before she actually fell asleep, and when she did, the night terrors started. The terrors began with a vivid replay of the first people she had killed. It was like every agonizing part was slowly reenacted all over again but the screaming was louder, the gun shot heavier, and the blood was everywhere. She would look down at her hands to see them covered in blood, not knowing if even a little bit of it were hers or not. Ruth would desperately try to wipe the blood off her hands and onto her pants, but not even a little would rub off. The more people she killed, the more she would try to save them. She would hold one in her arms as blood flowed and surrounded them, trying to get them to wake up, but they never did. The terrors grew worse, going then to the gun in her hand pointed straight at Ryker. Ruth could feel her chest heaving from crying so hard, she was hysterical. She looked to the Woman, pleading,

"Please, just kill me instead. Please just kill me! Please!"

But all she could see was the Woman laughing, and then shooting Ryker, repeatedly. Ruth kept screaming for her to stop, to shoot her instead. But the gunshots just kept ringing out, the echoes getting increasingly louder with each shot fired.

James first heard Ruth scream about an hour after she laid down. There was no one else in the building, so he knew he didn't need to rush to keep her quiet, but he ran over to see what was happening. He knew Ruth well enough to know if she were in danger, she wouldn't shout for help, it had to be something different.

When James got to her, Ruth was curled up in a ball, sitting up at the end of the beaten up couch in the back of the apartment. Even in the darkness he could see she was hysterically crying. It looked like she was in distress, in pain. For a moment, he didn't know what do to, and in that moment it hurt him to watch her like that. Between the screaming, she was mumbling something over and over.

"Please, just kill me... Kill me instead, please..."

James sat next to her on the couch. Still not knowing what to do, he grabbed a hold of both of her shoulders and tried to wake her up,

"Ruth...Ruth, wake up. Hey, it's just a dream."

Ruth woke up suddenly, startled by reality and from James holding onto her. Her short, sporadic breaths made her feel faint. Her heart raced out of her chest and fear gripped her entire body. In the dark, she could still see visions of people standing around the room as if they were hunting her.

"What...What are they doing?" Ruth asked James as if he would know the answer.

James glanced around the room, "There's no one else in here. Are you ok?"

Ruth blinked repeatedly and looked around to see the figures faded. It was just them.

"Ruth, what happened?" James asked again.

Ruth was still distraught, her eyes searching franticly around the room as if she were in another world. "I killed them. She told me to and I killed them." Her eyes watered, her breath was still short, and she kept looking down at her hands. It was dark, but it still looked like blood was covering them.

"Who?"

"Those kids...Those children. My age, younger, older, friends or not it didn't matter. She was eleven, he was twelve, and I killed them."

James gently let go of Ruth's shoulders and continued to listen. He knew this wasn't recently, it must have been from before she arrived at this Hydra base.

"They were with me. They were brought there just like I was. But they were innocent! They didn't know what they were doing."

There was a pause where Ruth tried to get her mind out of the disassociation, and James continued to say sit in silence. The pause startled her, realizing that she just told someone this. Ruth stood suddenly and walked across the room in a panic, feeling dizzy from standing so fast.

"It's the serum... The serum is doing this to me. It's messing with my mind and I've just told you all this." Ruth cursed at herself for doing so.

"Why is it bad that you've told me?"

"You know why! You're monitoring me. You're the one who is going to tell them what I've been doing and you're the one who will be ordered to kill me if you deem it necessary."

James wondered for only a second how she knew that.

"When you tell that doctor what's going on, he will immediately put me on another dose." Ruth anxiously ran her hands through her hair while pacing the floor. She gave a nervous laugh, "I don't know what's worse. Inevitably losing my mind, or knowing that I'm going to get another round of those injections that will kill me." Ruth scoffed at hearing herself, "And look at me, I'm psychotic! I sound like a child."

"I won't tell them anything yet."

Ruth stopped suddenly, glaring over at James. "Why not?"

"Because for all I know it could have been a nightmare. I don't know if it's the serum, so I can't tell them that definitively." James' words were straight forward.

Ruth didn't believe why James would say that, or do that. "What do you want from me, really? What good does it do for you to help me?" She asked.

"I don't know, Ruth." James looked down at his hands.

She moved closer.

"Yes you do. If you didn't know, you wouldn't care."

"You took the blame for me!" James exclaimed suddenly, his voice raising. "No one for as long as I can remember has ever showed me any hint of concern."

Ruth suddenly felt small. James' voice boomed throughout the room, telling her she was something she had never thought of herself. She shook her head.

"You're the only person that has given me any hope that maybe there is an end to this," James continued. Ruth couldn't believe it.

"But I can't get you out of here...I can't." Ruth's voice cracked and her heart sunk. He was just like Ryker.

James shrugged, tension leaving him, "Maybe the person who has that voice in my head will get us out."