Winter's War || The Winter Soldier

Chapter One: Liberty Restored

Music is "Immortal" by Marina & the Diamonds.

Picture is Tatiana Maslany as Emma Jane Barnes.

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CHAPTER ONE: Liberty Restored

Something Natasha told me a few weeks after the battle of New York has stuck with me for the past two years. She told me that she has red in her ledger, that she tries everyday to wipe it out.

I have red in my ledger; that much is absolutely true.

After nearly two six decades of assassinations and espionage, I'm not the person to be declared a saint. I've spilled more blood than the martyrs of old. I've hunted the Nazis and remnants of HYDRA to near extinction. I've been behind the tipping points of war, and manipulated more men than any army general. That does not make it right; I've made more mistakes than I can count.

How does that poem go? "'Come into my parlor,' said the spider to the fly." Lady Justice is a name that people fear. They are wise to. There is a scarlet trail behind that name. Those who follow never last for long, not even my own flesh and blood.

Emma Jane Barnes has red in her ledger, but here's the secret: I'm not the only one who does. I'm not the only World War soldier lost to time.

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I barely remember what it was like before joining the Army in 1943. Before I met Peggy Carter, before I met Colonel Phillips, before I met Howard Stark. Before she went on the grandest mission of my life to take down HYDRA and its leader, Johann Schmidt. We were starry-eyed and idealistic back then. It seems like a lifetime ago.

I still keep in touch with Rose and Peggy, the only two people (other than Steve) to live through my entire life. My loving sister-in-law, the sole survivor from the Barnes family. She still lives in New York, and I visit her often. Peggy is in a nursing home here in Washington D.C. She barely remembers me anymore, and it's hard to visit.

But Steve, my adoptive son Grant, and I have moved on. We've moved away from New York City to Washington, where Steve and I work alongside Natasha Romanoff in the STRYKE Team in SHIELD. Director Nick Fury has made certain that we have the Team all to ourselves, and we've been able to do a lot of good over the past two years. Steve has adjusted fairly well. He spends most of his free time catching up on history, politics, and pop culture. Rose, Grant, and I have been helping him along. Natasha would argue that she, too, is helping, but she mostly pranks him about things he doesn't know, such as the archaic nicknames and sly comments about his "ability to perform."

Natasha and I are currently on mission in San Francisco Chinatown. Over the past two years, I've slowly re-adapted to the way SHIELD does things. The right, legal way. I've spent years being judge, jury, and executioner. Natasha has taught me a lot of the ways of SHIELD in the 21st century, but there are some things that even she doesn't know as much about as I do. Like the art of blending into plain sight. While the Black Widow may be considered an expert in this field, I spent decades perfecting the art of looking like someone else. Acting like someone else. Becoming someone else.

It was difficult at first, playing by the rules, but I caught on quickly. The streets of Chinatown is a good place to practice, even though this situation is very real. "What are we doing in Chinatown looking for a German terrorist?" I ask, taking a bite of the oriental food I ordered from one of the take-out stands.

Natasha and I are staking out the building next to the small, Chinese market across the street. A man named Kalliovski is basically the German Al Capone. He's been on Germany's Most Wanted for decades; his forte is embezzling money from Germany to Russia and back again. "Just eat your take-out. I've had it here before. The chef's talented, but the setting is a bit iffy."