Winter's Touch

Four; Direction.

{A Winter Soldier Fic}

You were laying in a dark room when you woke up, staring up into the only bright light that it had to offer. You covered your eyes and tried to look around, but the only thing you could make out was the bed beneath you and the solitary light source swinging above your head. The room smelled vaguely like a hospital—permeated with chemicals and the stench of dried blood. Disgusted, you move to get up, but find yourself bound around your middle (a force you didn't feel before). You begin to panic, trying to pull the confinement away from you, but it was metal, and stayed put—cold and deadly and constricting like a jungle snake around your waist. In a matter of seconds, you could barely breathe. You look around for someone to help you, anyone, but then stop trying. Who would be there to help you if you were put there in the first place? Then you try something else. Would there be a table with tools on it? Like some kind of surgical torture room? You try to move your legs but find them numb and unable to move, and your heartbeat seems to quicken and stop all a once. The light was still swinging above your head but any and all brightness was receding from your vision—you were fading. Finally being set free from your torment. How long had you been here? You didn't know, but you were sure your ticket out was on the wings of death. Your eyes flutter and you are almost enveloped by complete darkness, save the swinging light fixture above you. Then you hear the muffled sound of a heavy door opening and do your best to lift your head to see who or what is entering your death chamber. But as you watch the figures step inside, the metal stops, as if it was all a hallucination, and you can breathe again. You flinch when a weasely voice invades your ears.

"How are you faring, sweetheart?" It's more of a demand than a faint little question. You feel sick. Is that what you are to them right now? Faint and little? It's a terrifying thought, but that's exactly how you feel. You ignore him, not on your own part. Although the constricting of the metal snake was in your head, your loss of voice is no imagination. You are aware of restraints on your hands and feet and one small, lithe yet tightly tied cloth around your neck. So that's what's keeping your voice caged.

He smiles a little smug grin because he knows you cannot answer him. He walks from the foot of your bed and more into the light, and you feel as if you're going more and more insane. It was the man from the folder.

'Inside, there's a file on a man named Wyatt Cross. Open it and tell me where he lives.'

You can hear the man from before in your head—remember the car and the fire in his eyes when he told you to do such a simple thing. Now you wish you had. You didn't know nor care what this man had to do with your captor's mission, you just wanted to live.

Your captor! He seemed to be much better company than who surrounded you now. Your brain starts to twist and turn around this, but before you can continue in thought, Cross speaks again.

"Thinking about our little soldier, now are we? You should thank him. If you ever get the chance, I mean," the tiny little smug grin on his face makes fire rage in your chest. "He did lead you right to us." All hostility escaped you for one peculiar moment, and came flying back when you thought of him. Him! That son of a bitch! You knew it! He wanted to know where Cross was so he could deliver you to him. But why? Cross laughed through his nose.

"No, no, no, no, no, my dear, that's not it at all," he said, as if reading your mind, or quite possibly the look on your face. "He didn't do this on account of orders. He had actually meant to exterminate us all, in fact," he sat on the edge of the bed next to you and gestured to all of the shadowed figures in the room. You knew now. He had known these people, and was trying to get revenge for whatever they had done to him. For the first time, you found words. "Good."

The man smiled at you and tsked. "It didn't work out all that well, did it," he moved to brush a lock of hair behind your ear and you tried to jerk your head away. "He had grown quite a liking to you," he said softly, and your face twisted in confusion, "forgot who was truly there for him."

You wanted to ask so many questions. You wanted so many answers. But he got up and left your bedside before you could speak. "HYDRA is not fond of pawns that play their own game."

You watched him walk back into the shadows and towards the edge of the room, and suddenly the quarters were illuminated completely. You blinked back the wave of burning light from your eyes until they adjusted, and looked around until a glass wall came into view on your left side. And through it you could see him, tied in the same manner as you were, struggling to be free. You started to do the same.

"You see my dear (Y/N), this is what happens when you test authority."

You watched several armed guards enter his room and point animalistic weapons at him. He snarled in their faces and screamed at them from behind the mask, but you couldn't hear anything. The glass wall blocked his cries. You stared at him in horror as he turned his head to the side, catching sight of you for the first time since you'd been here. His eyes became hollow and his struggling stopped. It was as if you had rendered him calm. Your face was just going to grant him a warm, reassuring smile when one of the guards stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of a 45 to his skull.

"No!" You shot forward in the backseat of the car, his questioning eyes on you from the rear view mirror. You stared back at him for a few seconds before unclipping the seatbelt and hopping into the passenger side.

"What the hell was that? And what do you think you're doing?" He asked as he eyed you while you opened the glove box.

"You said you wanna know where Wyatt Cross lives?" You asked as you opened the file, turning your head to look at him. He looked at you with an expression you had held towards him in the last two days. Confusion.

"Take a left."