When It Snowed

Chapter 24 - Pity

Sitting with her metal arm propped up, Finley stared into the ground painfully. "Bucky." She whispered his name every other minute to keep her mind at a steady pace. Her goal was to remain constant in the moment that she was in now. Not the flashes that swarmed her head, not the voices that tried telling her what to do and who to kill.

On the other side of the room watching her, Bucky leaned against the wall with his arms cross. He gave off an irritated tone, the constant chasing game he had to play with her over and over again. He would do it every second of every day if that's what it took to get her back. At this point though, it was getting old with how much HYDRA was toying with her. She needed to be alone. "Which Finley am I talking to?" He finally growled out listening to his name.

Blinking away a tear, her soft blue eyes worked their from her hands and to the ground. Then, inch by inch, they crawled across the white tile all the way to the soft emerald green that possessed his own. He didn't believe it was actually her talking, and the guy had every right to after the events earlier today. Hell, she didn't even believe it was really her. "You can't cook worth a damn." She sighed looking to his chest for comfort. "Steve did it. He made me soup when I was sick." Sadly, her eyes then looked over to Steve. "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes." He was in the corner of the room, arms crossed just like Bucky's except at his side- Sam was sitting in the chair watching her to. In response, Steve smiled and nodded to her showing that he understood her reference.

"You can't read that in a museum." Steve answered back.

Sam didn't like where the conversation was going. "Just like that, we're supposed to be cool?"

Looking between all three of them, Finley wanted answers as well. "What did I do?"

Bucky kept it short. "Enough."

With her stare now at her hands once again, Finley ran a hand through her hair in an irritated manner. "God dammit." She hissed. "I knew this would happen."

Taking a few steps towards her, Bucky sat his chair in front of her to make her look at him. "What do you mean?"

Shaking her head, her dry voice continued. "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say those fucking words." The angry tone of her voice was clear for everyone to hear. She was being real about these issues, she spoke the truth about how bad it hurt her to do these things. Most of the time, people just didn't believe her.

With a soft smile, Steve closed his eyes and dropped his head. "Language."

Inside, Finley could feel her chest grow warm. It made Bucky smile too.

Sam was the one to keep the conversation going. "Who was he?" He referred back to the doctor.

"I don't know." She answered shaking her head.

Bucky grew a little impatient though, he knew Finley could do better. "People are dead. The bombing, the setup. The doctor did all of that just to get ten minutes with you Finn. I need you to do better than ' I don't know'."

Running her real fingers over the base of her hand, she lost herself in thought. "He wanted to know about Siberia. Where I was kept, he wanted to know exactly where."

"Why would he need to know that?" Steve asked.

She was just as confused as he was. The, suddenly, it hit her. Her fave contorted in realization and her breathing stopped. "Because I'm not the only Winter soldier."

For a short while, Bucky watched her drift off to some distant world behind her eyes. She was remembering something. "Who were they?" He whispered.

Monotone, she answered. "Their most elite death squad. More kills than anyone in HYDRA history, even before the serum.." Finley trailed off for a second. "Other than me." She finished.

"They all turn out like you?" Sam asked.

"Worse. I was their only functioning unit, they put the most time into me, I obeyed the most orders. The others had their own agenda, they killed anything in front of them."

Steve stepped towards her as well. "The doctor, could he control them?"

"Enough..." she shrugged.

Bucky remembered something. "He said he wanted to see an empire fall."

Nodding, Finley sat backwards. "With these guys, he could. They trained us to speak 30 languages, hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize. they can take a whole country down in one night. You'd never see them coming."

In the background Steve and Sam started a conversation of their own. "This would have been a lot easier a week ago..." Sam sighed.

"If we call Tony." Steve suggested but Sam turned him down.

"No, he won't believe us."

"Even if he did..."

Continuing to talk about their next move, Bucky instead watched Finley trying to comfort herself. It was similar to what he had done for himself, only for her- she rubbed the palm of her real hand over an over again.

Without asking permission, Bucky reached forward knowing that there was something there he needed to look at. He moved her sleeve up and away from her covered wrist, and looking at it, his eyes were locked on the word for a good thirty seconds before he could ask. "...why?" He croaked our in a dry tone trying to pull her to look at him.

She wouldn't return it though, not until he reached up and made her look. Bucky thought she was going to pull away, away him off, something. He was expecting it. But instead, all she could do was stare at him- almost as if she was memorizing the details of his face with the most painful expression she had ever worn.

"I forgot who you were... but I never let myself forget what you meant to me." Finley whispered as the tear fell to the ground below her. "I wasn't given a choice."

On the palm of her right hand she had carved into her skin. It was five letters, jagged but dry. It looked as though they had been there for a while. She must have done it after her first washing session.

B-U-C-K-Y was what it read.

Lacing his hand over his own name, Bucky felt his eyes water and throat tighten before looking up at her. "Not anymore." He whispered. "I promise."

With as genuine of a smile as she could, Finley shook her head and pulled her hand away from his knowing the truth behind his words. "Don't make promises you can't keep." Her eyes were pleading for him to help her, but she was a realist and knew that he couldn't. HYDRA had tampered with her head, took out what she had and replaced it with what they wanted her to think was real. There was always something that would trigger her back into the Winter Soldier- she couldn't get away from it no matter how hard she tried.

Life wasn't what it used to be.

It was more than a bar, it was more than a stack of pancakes, It was more than a god dammed Stark convention. The world was out to get her now, she wasn't even safe in her own mind anymore.

There was no one left for her to trust.

Nobody.

Not even herself.

And that's what killed her the most. That, and the heart breaking stare that the man before her wore every time he looked at her.

She hated pity, but that seemed to be all she had left now.