Buzzkill [Winter Soldier]

Chapter 21

Through the night, Ruth's nightmares were terrible. Every moment throughout the different terrors, she seemed to be back at the facility in Sweden. The Woman would be lurking in every corner, watching Ruth as if she were plotting revenge for killing her. Over and over again Ruth could hear the screams of every person she had killed ringing in her ears; especially the screams of the children whose parents she murdered. With every sound and every tortured look the child made, Ruth's body wretched and her brain ached. Even the screams from Ryker tortured her thoughts. She could see him in agony, backed up into a dark corner going through too horrible of a pain for her to even imagine. In the dream, Ruth walked over to him, slowly, wanting to hold him and take the pain away. As soon as she laid her hand on him, he abruptly grabbed a hold of both of her arms and screamed at her,

    "You killed me! You killed me! I was trying to save you, and you killed me!"

    Then she woke up.

    It still must have been in the middle of the night because all around her was dark and everything was silent. Still getting out of being in a dissociative dreaming state, Ruth was covered in sweat. Now backed up into the corner of her bed, she searched for the comfort of the wall behind her. She looked at every shadow around the room as if it were someone there to kill her. Ruth wanted to cry hysterically, but someone would be watching through the camera in the corner. She wanted to grieve, but Hydra took that ability away.

    "I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry..." Ruth whispered over and over again as if Ryker could hear her.

    She stayed up the rest of the night. After waking up out of her dream completely, she still darted her eyes around the room and out in the hall repeatedly until morning came. The silence rung in her ears, every little noise startling her awake out of her exhaustion.

Being pushed into the injection room, Ruth could physically feel the pain of the serum again before she even sat down in the chair. From the nightmare, to this, Ruth wanted to breakdown and get away, but she couldn't. The mask put over Ruth's mouth felt tighter than before, the needle in her arm stung worse than before, and the electricity coming from the panel burned as if her arm were on fire and her body were paralyzed.

    Ruth didn't expect to have to do any training today, but two hours after her injection, she was led to the gym. Usually, after an injection, Ruth would be completely exhausted and unable to move for hours. She didn't know if she was somehow adjusting, because now just two hours after she could walk on her own. The only thing Ruth didn't know if she could do was actually swing a punch...and she was right. Two times during training Ruth collapsed to the floor. She struggled to get back up again, even with James' help. Physically, Ruth was fatigued. Mentally, she was exhausted. The serum seemed to wrap around her brain and play with it relentlessly. She didn't even feel the physical pain anymore when her mind was screaming.

    The next morning, physically, Ruth felt fine. But her mind felt a darkness looming over and taking control of her thoughts. She didn't know what was the serum or just her mind anymore.

For training that day, Hydra told Ruth that she was going to be able to go outside and see how she would do with the "simple" task of retrieving information from a "SHIELD" agent at a park close by. Ruth was a new face to a lot of people, it was a good experiment.

James would go with her and stake out a nearby building, armed with a sniper rifle in case anything got out of hand. He would be the only one allowed to have weapons on him. Ruth knew that Hydra thought of her as expendable, and this only proved it. If she said anything wrong to the agent, James would kill her. If she tried to make a run for it, James would kill her. Even if James didn't want to kill her, it wasn't up to him. She knew how these things worked. They both did.

    Both Ruth and James sat in a confined, secured room just off the door leading out of the building all geared up and ready to head out in the van. For Ruth's gear, she looked like a normal citizen who would be walking the park on a normal day. But underneath the coat, she wore several microphones, electric devices to be used against her, and a couple of comm systems. James, along with his sniper rifle hidden in a briefcase, had a 9mm pistol locked and loaded.
In the room, it was just the two of them. Guards waited outside while all precautions were made. Ruth sat across the supply-closet-sized room from James on the adjacent metal bench that was attached to the wall, her hands sweating with anticipation. She looked over at James who had the same anticipation, but hid it well. He held the 9mm pistol comfortably in his right hand, looking at it as if he were examining it for something.

    Then Ruth noticed James got still, frighteningly still.

    The stillness came from James' mind being too loud. The voices in his head were screaming at him as if there were other people inside, telling him who he was and how they were trapped and needed to get out, how they were desperate to get out. They kept telling him to remember, remember something. What did he need to remember? There were little dreams that he had, small ones, moments flashing by of a life that he had never lived. Or had he? Was it a past life? He sees flashes of war, the hell of the gunfire and flashes of lightning that painted the sky. The memories of all the people he has killed for missions in the past few decades then swept over his mind and dismissed the war. He remembers someone. A brother? A friend? He can't see what the person looks like, but he hears him. James feels the comfort coming from the memory of that person, but there was no memory. He recalls that he has never known someone like that. For as long as he could remember he has never had someone that cared for him any more than a shiny weapon used for someone's own personal battles.

The screaming didn't cease. The screams of the people he killed were ringing in his ears. The people who have seen death were screaming, the people who were telling him to remember...the people who were telling him to forget...the people who brought comfort...the people who brought pain... The raging and unending war seemed to be in his head now. How does he stop it?

James looked down at the gun in his hand.