Even if the stars don't shine

Shadow

  She finished her tea quickly and took his hastily drunken mug to the kitchen. She set them in the sink for later and walked back out to see him staring down at his gloved hand. She waited a moment before speaking.

  "I'm going to bed, um, is everything in the room okay?" she asked tentatively as he stood and nodded.

  "Yes, thank you-" he stopped himself before saying something else.

  She waited a second in case he would and when he didn't she went on: "If anything happens, I'm just in the next room," she smiled. She sounded like a nervous mother at her child's sleepover.

  He nodded. "Thank you..."

  She smiled again, all she knew to do, and walked to her open room, she paused. "Good night..."

  "Night..." he observed her close the door behind her and was surprised when he didn't hear the click of a lock. Nowadays, he thought that's all he heard.
                                     **

  His heart beat fast. Hard beatings against his ribcage to the point where he couldn't lie down anymore. It was fear. He knew it well. The fear of screaming in the night. The fear of showing someone what went on in his head.

  He stood quickly and felt the head rush soothe him. A preview of what sleep felt like. He walked around the room for a few moments, he settled to sit on the edge of the bed, pressing his palms into his closed eyes until black spots appeared.

  The cold of his left hand still frightened him sometimes. He wasn't given a lot of time to get used to it when it was branded onto him. He spotted a mirror on the inside of the cupboard door, he walked to it and pulled down the collar of his shirt.

  There it was. Like something out of a tortured horror movie. The skin around the metal was seared and deeply scarred, vines towards the silver edge was made very obvious even in the dark. His first, un-brainwashed, attempts at tearing it off didn't help the terrifying look of it either.

  He wouldn't touch it. He couldn't bring himself to even entertain the idea let alone carry it out. He would only stare in abhorration at the concept of it. Who could have done the operation. HYDRA, of course, but what kind of specific human being could scorch metal into flesh.

  He remembered briefly waking up during. He grabbed at them, he was chiefly aware of the danger he was in, groggy and out of it, he still knew he had to do something. Instinct. Some primal thought deep inside himself knew what was happening. Knew these weren't friendlies.

  When he truly woke up he could feel the harsh and hollow and buried agony at his shoulder. Looking at it only made it worse. It's gruesome appearance only seemed to make the pain worse. As if tendrils had grown from inside the metal and spread out throughout his chest, making it that much easier to believe he was the monster they wanted him to be. The thing that crawled out from the bed.

  He never could truly discern his memories after that. It all became so blurry around the edges that even as he started remembering things decades later, he still couldn't be sure whether it was planted. Some paranoid days make him believe that even Steve isn't really his friend, that he isn't even who the exhibits say he is. That they've just made him see himself as that man. That good man.

  He couldn't forget those he killed though, he wouldn't try to either. Some disgusting way of preserving their dying faces made him want to remember them and try his hardest to. No one would truly know how they died, except him. Someone had to keep that encased or else it would disappear like he had.

  Would they themselves want it forgotten? The brutal bullets and savage slices? He had dwelled on it too long once and wouldn't stop screaming. A HYDRA enforcer had to knock him unconscious and they wiped him all over again.

  Ice ran in his veins though he always seemed to expel heat. The cold metal arm and his warm body. Such a contrast, in so many ways. The man he was before, the man he was afterwards and now whatever was left of him to be called a man. He didn't know what he was.

  Before he knew he was a good man, beside Steve, Jones, Dugan, Falsworth, Juniper, Morita, Pinkerton, Dernier and Sawyer... then they got to him and he knew he was bad. Now, there was this current shifting between the two of what he is supposed to be.

  He'd done all the horrific things and yet, he was no longer that man so, what was he now? It seemed less and less clear to him as the days went on. He could see in Steve's face that he wasn't sure either. He wanted him to be that happy good man from the forties but he wasn't anymore. He was a shadow, the ghost of who he used to be. A shadow as well of who he was in HYDRA.

  The flashbacks stopped and he could see the scars again. Made of their hands and of his. He contributed to this. What did he expect would happen if he could remove it? His arm would gush blood and he'd bleed out. Nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps that would have been better. If he'd died there and they disposed of his body carelessly. Steve would have found him eventually, he's be buried and none of the atrocities he committed would ever have happened.

  Sometimes he wished he could have gotten it together for just the few seconds it took to shoot yourself in the head. It would have been easier, so much easier for Steve, for all those families. But, in the end he was selfish, he thought so, it would have been easier on himself. He wouldn't have the pain of waking up each morning with the fresh memories of what he'd done.

  He didn't even care at the time. Each murdered victim was met with a blank face, if they saw his face at all. Some were met with a cold, black mask with hollow-looking eyes. Perhaps worse than his own empty, emotionless orbs. Stripped of anything remorseful.

  His heart fell hard again then rose to batter against his bones. God. He was religious before. Like Steve. He told him so. He didn't feel it anymore. He couldn't when this was what was happening to His creation. Oh, Lord how it hurt. Cast out and alone. Surrounded and alone.

  Was there a point? What could he even do now? He was expected to hide out by Steve. What did he think was going to happen in a few weeks, months even, of hiding? Even in no one catches him, what happens? He can't get a job or a house or a wife or kids. None of that could happen with all he held inside. With his history.

  What was he supposed to do in the face of criminal charges and no future?