𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐀 𝐃𝐄𝐂𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑
━━━━━━━━ 𝟏𝟗𝟔𝟎.
𝐈𝐈𝐈. THE SOLDIER & THE TARGET

THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE.

Her pale hands were still tightly clamped over her ears, teary eyes frozen wide on the blood spreading and staining her worn holey shoes. She looked prepared to start hyperventilating, or perhaps start screaming.

"Tikhiy." The soldier's voice was like gravel, coarse and threatening, "Tishina." Quiet. Silence.

The target jumped, choking back a cry as if she had forgotten he was there.

He stared back blankly, "Ponyal?" Understand?

She slowly nodded, hands beginning to lower, now staring at the sniper rifle in his grip.

"Nam nuzhno idti." We have to go.

She blinked harder, and in the dim flickering street lights, she could now truly see him for what he was. He was terrifying, dark and covered in blood that was not his. Eyes even more hollow than her own.

"U menya net deneg. Nikakoy narkotik." Her voice cracked and her bottom lip trembled, "Eto to, chego ty khochesh'?" I have no money. No drugs. Is that what you want?

"Net. Teper' priyti. My dolzhny eto sdelat'—," No. Now, come. We have to—,

She interrupted suddenly, accent thick and eyes watery, "I speak English."

The soldier stared at her. He wasn't used to talking this much, but for some reason, he felt the strangest urge to reassure the target. Convince her that he wasn't here to cause her harm. At least, not yet, not until ordered to do so.

"I am not here to hurt you. I will protect you. That is why I am here." The English felt strange on his tongue, like something rusted he was dredging up from within the depths of himself, "Now, come."

She was terrified.

The target fought to make sure her gaze wouldn't break from his. And they didn't. She stood suddenly, enough for him to think she was about to bolt. But she wasn't, she hadn't even thought of that. She only stood because if she didn't, she would burst into tears. Because she knew if she started crying, she wouldn't be able to make sense of this.

Looking at the dead bodies around her feet, she simply murmured, "Yes."

"They'll send reinforcements. We have to go now."

He took her wrist, metal fingers pressing firmly into her soft flesh as he led her down the grim misty street. Shocked and disturbed, the target wandered after him aimlessly, her too big of boots scuffling on the damp concrete.

Until the stench of blood filled the cool night air.

The target suddenly stopped, startling the soldier when she said, "You're shot."

His entire body stiffened when she touched his wounded arm, but for some reason — he didn't pull away. He didn't understand why, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. He hadn't felt the pain, he felt hardly anything but the warmth of her hand on his skin. She slipped off her coat, tore a strip from her baggy shirt, and then began wrapping it around the bleeding graze of a bullet on his arm.

The soldier watched her focus solely on her task with a strange fascination; the narrowness of her eyes, the minuscule scrunch to her nose, her tongue swiping across her lower lip. These were only observations, the soldier determined; merely an attempt to further understand the mission and the target — her mannerisms, her reactions, her behaviors.

"Shame we don't have any vodka, yes?" The soldier stared at her with those same blank eyes, and the target raised a brow, "To sterilize the wound and prevent infection. When I was in the war—," she cut off quite suddenly, eyes flashing up to his as she had revealed something she hadn't intended too.

The soldier said nothing, eyes simply darting back to his wounded arm where she was now shakily tying the strip in a knot.

The war.

He tried to think fo what war she could possibly mean. The Cold War currently raging on around them between the USSR and the devil America, of course, was an option. But not in the way she had meant it. The Second World War could be the only other option, but she looked barely old enough to have born in those years, let alone to have taken part.

There was something strange about the target, something by strange and yet almost... familiar.

He refocused only when he saw the target's eyes trailing down from the blood on his arm to the blood on her hands and clothes and face and shoes. Her breath hitched and she started gasping again, her chest heaving in a desperate attempt for oxygen.

He had to make it stop. He wanted her to just stop.

"What's your name?" It didn't sound like a question when he said it, so flat, so grim.

He wasn't supposed to ask that.

He shouldn't have asked that.

The target lifted her red head, eyes meeting his in the flickering yellow streetlights.

"It's..." Her voice cracked and she hurriedly cleared her throat, blinking away what he nearly thought were tears, "It's A—Anya. Anya."

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"Last name?"

Her ruddy brows bent and her gold eyes narrowed a bit, "No... I, well, actually, this may sound strange, but I don't know my last name. I was found wandering around when I was thirteen years old."

He shouldn't ask questions.

He wasn't permitted — no, programmed — to ask questions.

And yet, "Before that?"

"I don't..." The target scoffed and shook her head, shivering in the coldness of the air, "Look, I know it is strange but I don't remember. I have very few memories of my past."

There was something familiar tugging in his chest, a sense of understanding, a desperate need to commiserate. The soldier had no choice but to immediately shut it down and lock it away, unable to function unless everything was compartmentalized.

"Anya." The name felt strangely right on his tongue, like a sigh of relief, "Is this the name your parents gave you or one you were given by the Motherland?"

She didn't answer straight away, and she only did once her head was held high and her voice was snide, "Does it matter? It's mine now."

There was a flicker of something in his chest again, an odd twitch to his lips. There was a streak of confidence in her, a kind of certainty of self despite the fact that she apparently knew nothing about herself. Confidence and petulance in one strange package of a target. She was nothing but a child, a waif who needed protection. He felt the strangest connection that he knew he couldn't allow.

He could hear the question building now.

Was your composure compromised?
Was your composure compromised?
Was your composure compromised?

He shook his head as if to answer it, feeling the tension rise up in his shoulders and jaw set. His fingers twitched at his side, feeling the bitter cold on his arm from where her hand had left his skin. He had to look away, knowing that she was really, truly looking at him now.

Fear overwhelmed by curiosity.

For a soldier who had been forced to find safety in the shadows, this target made him feel exposed under her piercing wide—eyed stare.

His composure would not, could not, be compromised.

"Wait here."

The target stiffened at the tone of his voice, or rather the lack thereof.

"I must make a call."

The soldier strode across the dark empty street, confident that if he left her on the other side that she wouldn't run. He had her right where he wanted her... Somehow he couldn't shake the nagging concern that it was the other way around.

His composure would not, could not, be compromised.

The Winter Soldier stepped into a rickety silver phone booth, fingers stabbing at the metal keypad in a quick rhythmic beat — 5 6 8 9 8.

Dial tone...
Dial tone...
Dial tone...

The static buzzed, and a high—pitched voice squeaked, "Operator."

The soldier's voice scratched, "Check in."

"Please hold."

There was a brief pause. The line switched. And then, there was a man's voice, low and unfeeling.

"ID check. Code in: 'HYDRA'."

"Asset: Winter Soldier." The words were immediate, said without thought or hesitation, "Code response: 'Red'."

"Asset confirmed." Formality dropped only minimally, and the voice on the other end asked, "Mission status?"

"Target apprehended. Extraction imminent. Met with moderate interference." His cold eyes darted outside the telephone booth, gaze searching through the sickly yellow street lights to find the target. "There was... a complication."

The other line crackled, and he was met with brief static. Then, "Elaborate."

The soldier swallowed hard, grinding his teeth while his cheek brushed the cool cup of the telephone, "I was not briefed on other interested parties."

"No. You were not. The information was not vital to completing the objective. You dispatched of the interference and still apprehended the target. Is there a problem, Soldat?"

The soldier didn't respond, eyeing the blood on his boots and the blood on the target's face. Speaking practically, she wasn't much to look at. All skin and bones. Ruddy hair and sharp features. Hollow cheeks with clothes that never seemed to fit right. Hungry eyes like gold.

An innocent, a non—threat.

"What does Doctor Zola want with the target?"

The question spilled out of him before he had even fully thought it through. There was a sharp intake of breath echoing through the telephone, but the soldier couldn't register the emotions behind it. Was it shock? Irritation? Disappointment? He never knew. He wasn't trained to understand human emotions. Behaviors, tactics, reactions, but not emotions.

The voice on the other end had grown harder, fiercer, "Have you forgotten the mission, Soldat?"

"Net."

"Was your composure compromised?"

There it was.

The gears of his hand whined and creaked as metal fingers slowly curled to form a vicious glimmering fist. He felt the strangest sensation creeping up from the pit of his stomach up into the center of his chest, small sparks flickering into a raging forest fire, sucking the oxygen from his lungs.

He knew better. He wasn't permitted to ask questions... if he asked questions... There was a searing pain within his head, ringing in his ears, aching in his brain. He shut it down. He couldn't follow that path. If he grew too close to the memories, the alarms would go off. They always did.

"Soldat?"

"Ready to comply."

The target sensed the change the moment the soldier emerged from the phone booth. His shoulders were hunched low and he didn't meet her eye when he stalked back across the road and grasped ahold of her arm.

"Mudak!" She tried to shake him off now, her feet now grappling for purchase beneath her, "What—What's happened? Where are you taking me? Get off—,"

She tried to break free, tried to get away, but he snatched onto her, roughly spinning her around and pushing her back against a cement wall before locking her in with flesh and metal hands on either side of her head. To the old truck rumbling by, they might look like a pair of lovers caught in some sort of trist.

Her golden eyes were as terrified as they were enraged, appalled almost. As if she couldn't quite believe he had the audacity. There it was again, that petulant confidence. She was infuriating as she was fascinating.

"I don't want to hurt you." He insisted through gritted white teeth, ocean eyes looking nearly desperate.

Unfazed, the target lifted her chin, shoved against his chest, and then drove up a knee as hard as she possibly could. The soldier barely flinched. The pale skin around her eyes wrinkled in irritated disbelief.

Their chests heaved between them, gold glaring into blue.

"What do you want from me? Where are you taking me?" The target asked in rapid fire succession, "Why were those men after me? Why did you save me? Where do you—,"

Suddenly a loud sound cracked into the emptiness between them, and she immediately collapsed to the ground in a terror, screams echoing across the lonely Russian block.

"No—!" The target stayed ducked, hands over her ears, arms pulled tightly to herself, "No, please—!"

The old truck finished driving down the street and rounded the corner, none the wiser to the fear it had left in its wake.

"It was just a truck backfiring, that's all it was..." The soldier eyed her for a moment more, voice softening beyond his control, "You... You're shaking..."

The soldier tried to help the target back to her feet, but she shrunk away, turned more towards the cool concrete wall. He stood uselessly barely a foot away, weapons for hands hanging limply at his sides.

Gold eyes shimmering, she turned her quivering face into the light, "Who are you?"

He stared at her.

The honest was simple yet so, so complicated.

The soldier was nothing. That was the only way to survive. A ghost story, a shadow, nothing. He was nothing and he had nothing but his orders, and without them... without them...

His mind blanked.

Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.

He couldn't shake the blankness away, "I—I don't know."

Her eyes softened and something changed. She stopped fighting and she simply stared up at him, truly looking at him, seeing him in a way that felt foreign.

"Neither do I."

It was against protocol to share the details of a mission.

"I... was sent to apprehend you. They don't tell me why."

It was against protocol to deviate from the orders of a mission.

"But you won't be going back to them, and neither will I."

A breath shuddered out of her chest, "And what do you get out of this?"

His jaw clenched and he swallowed back the bile rising in his throat, trying to ignore the sirens wailing within the coldest corners of his mind.

"If you disappear, I can too." It sounded like a dream when he said that, an impossible ridiculous dream, "They'll say I failed, you'll not be around to prove evidence of otherwise."

Rubbing her running nose on the arm of her coat, the target slowly stood, dusted off her bloodied palms, and stuck out her hand.

He stared.

She rose a brow, and he flinched when her warm fingers took his wrist so their hands could fold together.

"A handshake, durak. To seal our deal."

And as he shook the target named Anya's hand, the soldier could only form one coherent thought:

His composure was compromised.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━ annie speaks ━━━━━━

whooooo, boy, we're really in it now! "the target" has some serious trauma she needs therapy for as well as some serious attitude issues. her sass is like my favorite thing and it really becomes more evident the more they get to know each other. "the soldier" is beginning to make decisions on his own and is starting to feel actual feelings!! so, hooray for that.

i know this one was on the shorter side but i really wanted to dive into bucky's mindset through this whole experience and see who he is as a machine rather than a human being. i also felt a whole chapter needed to be dedicated to their transition from captor to fellow runaway. there is SO much drama coming up, ugh, i'm excited. next time we'll really begin to delve into the journey and learn a bit more about orphan anya's past *wink, wink*

any thoughts? feelings? theories?

ALSO,, I JUST FINISHED ANOTHER VIDEO FOR MY BABES AND I'M GOING TO BE INCLUDING IT IN MY GRAPHIC GALLERY BUT I WANTED TO SHOW Y'ALL HERE FIRST :)

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

i would love to hear your thoughts on it!!

until next time xx