Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Forty-Eight: The Constant & The Winter Soldier - The File

The Constant & The Winter Soldier - The File

You should be grateful. At least they find you something to do, something to keep your mind occupied.

You were woken three days ago and the Winter Soldier was woken twenty-four hours later. Since then, you have hardly seen him during the day time. The mission itself was a brief one but Jackson Caldwell wants to take the opportunity to upgrade the Winter Soldier's weapons training whilst he is out of cryo. The training is intense; he comes back each night shattered, but at least this time he remembers more about you than he has done before. He allows you to talk with him, share meal times, showers, and his bed. He even suggests getting rid of the single bed in the corner but you shake your head. He doesn't remember that there are times when he completely forgets who you are and then that is the only place you have to sleep.

Out of the many jobs they have listed down for you to do at some time you have chosen the least interesting one. You just want to get it out of the way. You look around the room. It is unsuitably large for its purpose: the Records Room. The up-to-date records are pristine, filed beautifully; but there, in the corner, almost forgotten, are five old filing cabinets that were transferred here from the old base. Forgotten...for how many years? You don't want to know. You don't even really know what year it is now. Why should you? It is of no interest to you. If you do think about it, you find panic tightening your chest.

You really don't want to know.

There is talk that they are going to be adding a computer system to the room, and Caldwell is keen for you to learn about using one. You aren't. But it is something for the future - for now you will settle for plain old fashioned paperwork.

Several tables and chairs are placed at points around the room. Someone has conveniently moved a set to the corner where you will be working. Your back will be to the door but by a window so at least you can look out and see the daylight. You are still feeling fatigued from being in cryo, the tiredness seems to last longer these days and sometimes you never really shake it off before you are put back in your metal coffin. You wonder if the Winter Soldier ever feels the same. You know that the headaches he experiences are far worse than the ones you get...but then again, you do not have your mind constantly wiped and reprogrammed.

The cabinets you need to go through and sort out are old, grey, filthy, and of course locked tight with no keys available. It takes two hours to find someone who can drill the locks out for you, and you don't start looking in the drawers until late morning. You start at the top, meaning to work your way down, but one look at the folders and you know it is not going to be that easy.

These drawers hold all the paperwork from the old base. Everything from security reports to invoices for supplies. Doctors do not make good paper-pushers and they left a lot of that work to the nurses who were recruited from the Gulags. They didn't give a shit about their patient so what made them think they cared about the paperwork? The drawers are a mass of paper, torn, damp and even mouldy in places, doctors files are spilling out and mixing with receipts for ammunition rounds.

You gather the first lot of paper in your arms and drop it down on the table top, then taking a seat you start to divide it into groups. At the end of that first pile you are dusty, your hands filthy, and your back hurts. It's days like this you wish you had access to a bath as well as a shower.

It is 3pm. You don't know where the time has gone and you need to eat something. A quick visit back to your rooms, a wash up and a sandwich then, bringing a coffee back with you, you spend the rest of the day working through the rest of the drawer. At the end you have several stacks of paper and two bags of rubbish that will need burning. Nothing is ever just thrown away here. Everything not wanted is burnt, destroyed completely.