Til Death Do Us Part.

Memories.

Washington D.C., past the decaying stone columns, and tarnished glass windows. Beyond the intricate details carved within the crown moldings, woven so finely like stitches in silk, the carvings blackened with wear over the years. Within the old abandoned Ideal Federal Savings Bank sat the Winter Soldier. 

Veiled inside of the banks vault, the walls around him nothing, but steel lockers, empty, without a purpose now. No longer being used to store money, or diamonds, or gold. The withering, decaying bank overrun with HYDRA guards, now used as a secret base to house him within in between missions. 

He sat still in the examination chair, a lab coat wearing technician at his side, working on the exposed inner mechanisms of his bionic arm. Fine tuning the circuits, blue tinged sparks spitting from the metal. The technicians utensils at work, melding the new pieces into place. 

The soldier was quiet, his eyes bore into the wall, the heavily armed guards around him a mere backdrop. His pale blue gaze deeper underneath the bright florescent lights, his bare chest glossed over with perspiration, exposing the raw scar where his flesh met the metal prosthetic. 

He carried a frown, his mind straying away from everything around him. The dank, mold ridden chamber, the HYDRA Doctors, the swat uniform wearing men, all dim surroundings to him.

Obscure voices echoed in his head. He heard "I'm with you til the end of the line", something he remembered saying to Steve when his mother died, and he heard you say "I do" on their wedding day. He heard Arnim Zola say "Sergeant Barnes... The procedure has already started. You are to be the new fist of HYDRA." each voice overlapping the other. 

The words nonstop in his head, the flashes of memories ceaseless, but never complete. He heard you say "Hello, handsome" when he came home in his Military uniform, and he heard himself say to you "As your husband it is my main priority to ensure that you're safe, always". 

The memories were all hazy like a fogged up mirror. He could see their blurry reflections, but not weave them together. The puzzle pieces scrambled up, yet still visible, and alive. The memories continued to play out like film strips, fragments of himself, of who he used to be. 

He saw himself fighting alongside his friend Steve, being with his comrades, and he saw glints of you. Smiling beautifully at him, loving him, being there for him. Through thick and thin, sickness and health, richer or poorer. 

Shards of his life with you resounded the most, and he saw fractions of his marriage. He remembered sliding the golden band onto your finger, being happy, and then he saw himself lying in the snow, hearing you call desperately for him, but being unable to call back. 

If only you would of gotten to him first before they did. 

His anger rose the more, and more he thought, and eventually he snapped his metal arms elbow into the technicians chest, causing the HYDRA worker to hurdle to the greenish tinted cement floor a few feet away. 

Dozens of rifles were then aimed at him by the guards like he was a misbehaving animal, a thing he then realized, that they created. 

He couldn't fathom it, that he was once apart of something happy. He wasn't just a machine, an assassin, the Winter Soldier. He was loved... That thought in, and of itself making his mouth quiver, his eyes consumed, penetrated by remorse. 

And, he... Almost killed you. With his own hands he hurt the one who still wanted to fight the demons within him even now. The one who still saw Bucky... As he once was. 

"Sir, he's unstable. Erratic." He heard one of the Doctors warn before Alexander Pierce stepped into the room, past the rod iron gates. 

The two-faced S.H.I.E.L.D. member, and HYDRA affiliate unbuttoned his suit jacket, and slipped his glasses into the breast pocket. 

The older dishonest gentleman pulled up a seat beside him, the chairs wheels joggling across the floor. 

"Mission report." He ordered, and the soldier didn't answer, his mind buried in the past, in what had came into fruition within his head. 

"Mission report, now." Pierce said again, this time with a menacing tone, his tolerance for misbehaving pawns as thin as a strand of hair. 

More silence. 

Alexander exhaled before slapping the soldier straight across his face, the smacking sound reverberating off the walls. The soldiers head sloshed to the side abruptly, his brunette strands falling onto his face, yet he seemed almost immune to the hit. 

"I knew them..." The soldier uttered, still in a daze of the past, no longer acting like the cold-blooded murderer that he had been forced to be for so many years, angering Pierce that much more. 

"That's why you couldn't kill him? Because you knew Mr. Rogers? And, who's them? I only gave you one target." 

"Rebecca..." The soldier let slip from his lips, that name like a life preserver to him. 

Alexander's gaze dimmed at that name. 

"Your work has been a gift to mankind, and I still need you." Pierce emulated, patting the soldiers bare shoulder before standing back up. 

"Set up the Memory Suppressing Machine. He's going soft. Prep him, wipe him, and start over." 

The soldier was restrained in the examination chair, cuffs fencing around his wrists. The coruscating energized electrical paddles clasping tightly around his head, and one of the Doctors made him grip his teeth down onto a mouth guard. 

Alexander left without turning back, the soldiers agonized screams echoing throughout the abandoned bank. His mind getting scrambled up, and brainwashed yet again, a smirk evident in Pierce's expression. 

"Rebecca is?" 

"His wife." One of the guards informed, and Alexander couldn't help the deep rumbling chuckle that escaped from the back of his throat. 

"I met a Rebecca not too long ago. What a nice coincidence, isn't it? Our Winter Soldier in there, if he were to say, kill his own wife then even if we are no longer able to erase all of his memories... I doubt he'd be able to turn against us even if he remembers everything out of pure, unadulterated guilt, correct?"