Bring Her Home

Trying to Fight Against

Flora screamed as her memories were wiped yet again. What day was it? What month was it? What year? Where were Steve and Bucky? Who were they? Bucky. Even the mere thought of his name made her happy.

"What are you doing to me?!" she yelled. "Why are you doing this?!"

Dr. Zola met her eyes. "You are to be the new fist of HYDRA. We have told you this."

Flora glared. "No. Not like this. Not like this! Where are my friends? Where's the man I love? Where are they?!"

"No one knows."

"Then find out!" She knocked over a tray of medical instruments. "Let me go!"

"We will do no such thing, Private Stewart."

Flora's gaze darkened and she balled her right hand. "You let me go or else."

"Or else you'll fight us? You kill any one of us, cut off our heads-"

"Two more shall take its place. I've heard it before. Where. Are. My. Friends?!"

"No one knows. We have told you this."

Flora sneered and snapped her head back before saying, "They're alive. They made it home. Somehow I know that. They won the war and they're living out their days. What year is it?"

A scientist went to answer and Dr. Zola shook his head before picking up a newspaper article from the New York Times dated a week prior. "Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes went down with this plane. They're dead."

Flora scoffed. "It'll take more than a plane crash to kill Steve and Bucky."

"They are dead, Private Stewart. The world mourned them. Wipe her."

The device clamped around Flora's head and the memories seeped away, far faster than she could hold onto them.

Ten years passed and Flora's mind was wiped, yet the suppressed memories somehow kept resurfacing. She kept poking at them and the memories flooded her mind.

"The captain hated you," Dr. Zola said. "Sergeant Barnes never loved you."

Eventually, Flora began believing the lies. Though she still acted out and resisted her brainwashing torturous hell, she eventually let the lies infiltrate her mind. They featured deep and grew until they took over.

Flora learned to despise the English tongue. Whenever a word from the language escaped her mouth, she was punished for it.

She eventually quit uttering a word of English altogether. It was far easier to comply rather than take the punishment. She already endured enough when they felt the need to wipe her.

Twenty years after she was first captured, Flora took on the moniker that would haunt the world for the next five decades.

The girl who had fought in war was discovered in a white blanket of powder. A soldier found in the middle of winter. The ghost that was there and disappeared before any soul could blink twice.

The woman the world learned to fear. A soldat who brought a chilling fear as dangerous as a blizzard in the middle of winter.

Flora Anne Stewart was no longer a name. She, instead, was from then on called, and only referred to as the Winter Soldier.