Red Hand Annie

Red

*song for feels; not all lyrics of so apply to this chapter*

(Winter soldier p.o.v.)

Setting: on the road; Winter on his motorcycle...

Who is this Red that the kid spoke of; why did it seem to bug me so much when he explained W.03 to me...he said I knew her...that woman I met in the forest near base, was that her; was that Red? Thousands of questions race through my head as I ride towards this address. I make my way there feeling as if I already know where to go without having to stop and ask anyone. The kids words echo in my mind; my grip on the hand bars of the motorcycle tightens at the though of hydra having touched her, and will touch her again...but why? Why does this bug me? I work for them...my head is conflicted with thought as I come to a stop in front of the place of the address.

Removing my helmet, I stare at the sight before from my seat on my bike; I look at the address again and then back at the sight. I get up and slowly walk towards the giant square hole in the ground before me; by the shape of the cement square hole, I'd say it was at one point a house. I walk to the edge and stare down into the hole; I see black ashes along the cement...a fire maybe? There's cages, one intact, the other has melted bars and both are rusted over...why did he send me here, what's here? I notice the broken window on the opposite side of what must have been a basement at one point from where I stand.

I jump down into the basement like hole in the ground and walk around; I find that the rusted cages have numbers engraved into them...002 on the intacted one, and 001 on the destroyed cage. I start to think back to the woman in the woods, her changing eyes and wavy brown hair; her very pale complexion and a lingering feeling that she left with me when we parted ways...is she red? After looking around a bit, I take my bike and head back towards the diner, only to find it empty and dark. I flip through the sketch book and stop on a sketch of me in cryofreeze...where was this? Who's Falcon and...there's that name the kid mentioned...Steve...is it the same steve? Looking through the sketches she did of me a little more, I find something familiar about them...

Closing the sketch pad again, I get on my bike once more and follow my gut in a series of twists and turns till I reach a vaguely familiar looking abandoned building. There's an uneasy air about the place as I walk through slowly so as to not miss a thing. It's completely dark inside as I walk through with a flash light, I come to a familiar room with a chair; a very familiar chair. Images flash through my mind like painful volts of electricity. Each time, is as if I'm siting in the chair and seeing things-I see a woman, tears streaming down her face from her...gray? Eyes as she seems to be forcibly watching me in the chair-what was that?

I follow the images flashing through my head; allowing them to lead me where they will down a hallway, and into a room. Shining the flash light around the room; I see the lights in the ceiling, but no light switch on the walls...what is that...I think as I move closer to the walls with the light. Are these...words? I scan the light up and down each of the four walls and even the door, finding words carved into every brick; every inch of the room and to my surprise, that included the floor as well. Enticed by the sight, I begin to read the words written; drinking them in greedily as I learn things I feel as though I should already know from the walls and things about some woman. More images flash through my mind of a woman scratching the words into the walls and floors.

The woman is the same as the one that had been forced to watch me in the chair and was crying; images of us sparing, in this room, her laying on the bed closest to the door-motionless-I notice a second bed, further from the door. That bed is in pieces near a wall; more images of the same woman flash in and out of my head as I see her eyes-flash: gray; flash: red and even flash: blue, but mostly they're gray. She doesn't smile, only a fierce glare both in her eyes and on her face, along with pain and sadness too. She looks to be the same as the young woman I met in that I met in the woods and that dressed my stab wound. With all the images of this woman flashing through my mind, along with the words of that kid; I feel a strange tightening in my chest, almost an aching feeling as a the realization hits me...

"Red..." I mutter under my breath

The feeling inside of me only seems to grow with the vocal dropping of the nickname of the woman; my thought turn to the other things the kid said, and I suddenly start to feel an angry-protective like feeling take hold of me. She's carrying my kid and she knows Hydra's after her; the hell she putting herself in danger for? She knows Hydra wants the kid...I don't want mine and Witch's life for the kid. If she gets caught...thousands of different thoughts and emotions seem to flood my head as I hurry to make my way back out of the building to my bike. My stone face is almost reluctant to stay on and hide my many a strange emotions as I start back to Russia having failed my mission.

"Don't do anything stupid," I mumble to myself as I start my bike up, "not till I get there at least..."

Thoughts of her and the images she drew clutter my mind as I ride down the twisting, turning, winding roads back the way I came. Those drawing; they're mostly of me, and pretty erotic in some...no wonder why it's supposed to be her private sketch book, and why she wouldn't want to show it to anyone. I'm starting to remembering little bit of the things she carved into walls and floor. I recall the night I killed the Starks back in 1991; I remember Red's exceedingly rare, and sad smile as we had our one sided conversations while stuck together. I vaguely recall that Steve Rogers guy, and some trouble with him and others back in 2016.

I remember meeting Red; Annie-the scar in the center of her face, and burn mark on the right side of her face should've tipped something off in me-I remember how terrible our first meeting went and well, everything that happened between us two. I remember the last time we were in that room together and they took her-Witch stopped me from stopping them-she wouldn't stop trembling when I finally saw her again. That must've been when they preformed W.03 on her, she definitely wasn't the same after they took her that day. I recall trying to help her escape and it failing...then the chair, and then nothing until meeting her again in the woods. The words that she wrote on those walls that stay with me the most for some reason...

I know almost everything about you-things you don't even know