Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Sixty: The Winter Soldier - The Mother Of The World

The Winter Soldier - The Mother Of The World

They are calling her The Mother of the World.

She is a wave sweeping the planet: a lone woman, fighting for peace. But she has been set up by the news agencies and their governments. Poor woman. She does not know what has hit her. She was a lone voice who started to talk to the world, to ask why there should be so much killing, so much unhappiness. The world needed good news and when the right TV crew interviewed her, it went global.

Neena herself was amazed – startled, even. She had started her life in a humble village in India, and moved to the city when she was lucky enough to be allowed to marry for love. Her parents were progressive; encouraged their two children to have a good education. "Our children are the future of the world," her mother often told her.

Neena had been happy to be a mother to her three children before the terrible bombings had started. She saw mothers like herself mourning their dead husbands, their dead children, and she asked the simple question: why is there so much hatred in the world? Her brother had become a doctor, and what he saw in everyday life saddened him. They would talk for hours. Try to make sense of everything. One evening they had been talking quietly at the hospital where he worked; he had been up for hours trying to save the lives of people who had been caught up in the recent bombings. Neena had brought him food to eat. A TV broadcaster had heard what they were saying, and had interviewed them.

Suddenly Neena found herself propelled into an unknown world. People high up in the government courted her, and wanted her to speak out for them. The United Nations offered her protection so that she could travel and spread the question and so now she finds herself in a strange country, sat in a car with men she hardly knows, looking out at a city so different to hers.

London.

They are travelling to a venue in the country, Chequers, a mansion house in an area called Buckinghamshire where she will meet with all sorts of politicians and she asks herself for the umpteenth time: why me?

Why are they listening to me?

She had asked the same question of a reporter, a charming lady who now travels everywhere she does. The woman smiled, teetering on the edge of fame herself.

"Because," she had said, " the world has adopted you. You have become the mother of nations. No - the mother of the world." The news reporter was pleased with the soundbite, and even more pleased when newspapers and news crews across the planet had picked up on the name. And now it is what Neena had become.

The day is overcast, grey. They were supposed to travel by helicopter but the British weather has put paid to that and so instead they are travelling incognito through the city of London. It is late in the day, 8pm, and Neena is tired. Her head is buzzing and all she wants to do is talk to her children, to her husband and then go to sleep. They have promised her once she is there she can do just that, the telephone would already be set up for her to talk to her loved ones a continent away.

The car she is travelling in is armour-plated, although you would never know to look at the sleek lines of it. Shadowed glass allows the passengers to look out, but no one to look in. At the moment, this is all the protection she requires, but once she has made her speech, once it has gone global, then security will be stepped up. She will be worth protecting. In the car with her are two men, acting as bodyguards. She has not got to know them yet although the one to the left of her is friendly and she felt herself trust him the moment they met.

"Call me Sam," he had said and smiled, and she had smiled back:

"I'm Neena."

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