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

Chapter Seventy-Four: Project Insight - Inception Day

Project Insight - Inception Day

How did it all go so wrong?

How did he fail his mission? It was the words. They were to blame. Not the words that make him destroy - Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak, Furnace, Nine, Benign, Homecoming, One, Freight Car – nor the ones that take away his willpower, make him sleep when he needs to escape - Red, White, and Blue, time for you to sleep now Soldier.

It had been the other words. 'I'm with you until the end of the line.' They are what stopped him.

He repeats those words softly to himself as he huddles down, cold and wet. He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know who he is, and he doesn't know why his head is hurting so badly. He just knows that by repeating those words over and over there is comfort, comfort for him alone.

*

Felix is waiting for him when the Winter Soldier emerged from the accommodation part of the vault. Two guards in civvies are nearby, everyone is gearing up for later today. Felix feels nervous: this is it, the big day. By the end of the night they will know if it has all been worth it – if Alexander Pierce and Hydra have brought order to a new world. Their world.

He looks at the Soldier and almost recoils. The look in his eyes is one of insanity, anger, coldness. There is blood smeared down his cheek. He ignores Felix and instead tells the two guards to follow him as he walks back down the corridor. Felix knows what has just happened; knows the Soldier was sent to kill his Constant. And now he knows the mission has been completed – he can see it in the Soldier's eyes. He can feel the unhinged madness there.

He feels a pang of conscience. He knows about the lies the programmers told the Soldier but there was one thing they told him that was true: she had met up with Steve Rogers, she was in league with SHIELD – somehow though he just cannot believe it. He had seen the film of the two of them at the Smithsonian, had told Alex they should ask her about it, give her a chance...but, no, Alex was adamant. She was to die and at the hands of her Soldier. But Felix knows how much she had cared about the Winter Soldier: it had to have been something to do with him.

Perhaps she had the idea of a rescue?

His thoughts are interrupted when the Soldier returns on his own.

"Ready?" Felix asks. The Soldier nods and pushes past him. Felix takes a deep breath and follows him out into the early morning sunshine.

*

Bits and pieces keep coming back to him, and he rubs his eyes.

He is sat in a derelict building. He doesn't know where it is. His back is against a wall, he is freezing cold and yet he also has a temperature. His clothes are soaked, his right arm broken, and his head – his head is splitting apart. He is seated on cold concrete and he doesn't know how long he has been there but it is dark. If he looks up he can see the stars in the black sky; black because wherever he is does not have any street lighting.

He needs help but he has no-one to ask. He knows he should be heading or have headed to a Hydra safe house but that is the last thing he wants to do and he is fighting the instinct to go there. He can hear noises outside; there is a bank of trees, bushes and the noise sounds like someone moving about and he whimpers, pushes the heel of his hands into his eyes and rubs again. Then he is speaking to himself, repeating his programming, but he does not move.

Then a thought out of nowhere.

"I shouldn't have left him. I made a promise."