December // A Winter Soldier Story

5

Dｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ １９ｔｈ， ２０１３

２１°

𝓉𝒽ℯ 𝓈ℴ𝓁𝒹𝒾ℯ𝓇

How many times now has he stained the perfect white snow in these woods with his own blood? He cannot say. He's lost count. Too many times -- that's the only answer he can give.

He is limping through the darkness, clutching his teeth so hard they may break. He must avoid making noise. He did not kill all of the guards from the facility, and there's a chance the survivors may be following him now. He has to keep moving.

He can't think straight. Something unknown is trying to push through the walls he has up in his mind, and it is painful. Something is tugging at him, trying to tell him to go somewhere, do something, but he doesn't know where, or what.

He just wants to get back to his base and get wiped again. At least it'd quiet his mind and get rid of the pain.

His right hand reaches down and feels the warm, sticky blood that is running down his leg. The soldier was shot in nearly the same place he shot the woman earlier, and the irony of this is not lost on him. He is bleeding severely. He can't help but feel that he kind of...deserves this. He brought this pain on someone else earlier, it's only fair that he himself now feel the same pain.

His breathing is becoming more and more labored. His steps are hardly steps anymore as he is basically dragging one leg behind him. He has never before been this close to death, at least not that he remembers, and he is less afraid of it than he thought he'd be. Perhaps death will finally give him some peace.

Before he can completely succumb to the sweet release of death, however, he is distracted by the lights of the houses nearby. Again, he has wandered too close, and he cannot help but wonder if there is something in his subconscious that keeps guiding him here. But it does not bother him, because he recognizes the house on the end, and is flooded with warmth as the faint picture of the girl's face fills his mind. He can't remember much of anything anymore, but he remembers small details from earlier in the evening. He remembers the color of her eyes, an icy blue; the color of her hair, a bright blonde; he remembers her fluid movements, her timelessness.

Like the desperate, dying man he is, he stumbles blindly towards her home, guided by some inner voice that tells him this may be the last chance he has to see anything beautiful in this life. He decides to use his final moments of vitality to carry himself to her back door and get inside, just so he can see her again.

Once he finally makes it to her back porch, his leg is black with thick, hot blood. He gives himself one more push to open the door.

But at the last second, on the last step, he falls. His real arm hits the door on the way down, the glass shaking and ringing with the impact. A gasp of agony escapes his lips. He tries to get up and reach for the handle again, but he is weak, and has already lost an enormous amount of blood.

He now can no longer find the same will to move that he had earlier. His breaths are too short and too shallow for him to conjure any type of energy. He wishes he could have seen her one more time, but he probably just would have terrified her in his current condition, anyway.

Luckily, the stars above him now are beautiful -- not as beautiful as her, but they will have to do. He watches them through the tree branches, not remembering their significance or why they exist or really even what they are, but loving them all the same.

The night is dark and silent, and he can see his breath in the air before him thanks to a light besides the glass door. He feels at peace. If this is what death is like, he thinks, then he will welcome it with open arms. It has been too long since he last rested. He is content with entering an endless sleep, where he doesn't have to feel pain or try to remember anything or question everything around him.

Time stretches on. Minutes feel like hours. Maybe this is what that girl feels, every day -- endless peace, endless time.

He is ready for his time in this world to be over, and decides to stop fighting. To just let death take him into its arms, finally. To sink into the dark unknown. Like falling asleep.

However, the world is not quite done with him yet.

He just barely hears the door behind him slide open in a rush, hearing a faint oh my god a second later. With his dying sight, everything is hazy. Yet for a brief second, a beautiful face comes into the center of his vision, blocking out only some of the light by the back door so that the rest creates a halo around her blonde hair.

Her eyes are filled with concern. He thinks about how lucky he is to see her again, and he feels a strange sensation on his cheek a moment later. Her hand is on his skin, setting it ablaze. A brief spark of life flutters in his chest and he almost feels capable of rising.

But this all only registers for a few seconds before his heart slows, his vision goes black, and his sense of touch dissipates.

The last to go is his hearing. He just barely makes out one word before everything disappears.

"Wait."