When It Snowed

Chapter 40 - The Winter Soldier

All Finley could see was white. In her ears, the loudest hiss of wind felt like it was tearing in one ear and out the other. As she twisted violently however, the tones of the wind seemed to change as it burned against her pale skin. It didn't feel like she was falling. The white sheet surrounded her completely, cold air numbing her from head to toe and her screams had gone completely dry.

Now, over her racing heart, all Finley could do was cuss. She let out every word she had ever came across in her lifetime on the way down. She always had some way out. Always. But not this time. There was nothing she could do, Finley was going to die. Experiencing death though, it was something that she had imagined would be a lot faster. The pain she deserved throughout her lifetime would come and there was no escaping it, but the wait for the impact of her fall seemed to be what hurt her the most.

The fall down gave her time, too much time. Towards the beginning of her decent, she had watched the color fade from Bucky's face and a tear escape his soft green eyes. He screamed for her, reached as far as he could, but it wasn't enough. Nobody could save her from something like this. Not even her Super Soldiers.

So much seemed to race through her mind, everything in her life that she had been through: her parents, her brother, Henry, the streets, jack, the boys, her condition. For how young she is, the woman led a full life. The only problem was that now- Howard was going to be needing a new helpless soul for his research. She knew the guy wouldn't give up on a cure, even after she was gone. Quickly, and thankfully, thinking of him, it snapped.

Finley reached down to her waist line and hissed unlocking the device Howard had given her just before they left for this mission. "Come on." She practically cried trying to figure out the device on her hip. Hopefully this worked better than his communication unit did back when Steve and Finley had first infiltrated the HYDRA compound to save Bucky. "Come on!" She cried again while fiddling with the device.

She didn't know what it was supposed to do exactly nor how it worked. Then, suddenly, it came loose into a gun shaped hook. By now she was nearing the ground, trees, mountains, and thick bundles of snow began to surround her. So, pointing the hooks towards the nearest walls of stone, Finley pulled the trigger and closed her eyes praying for the best outcome possible.

She kept falling though, faster, harder- until eventually, it snapped. The hook caught on the cliff's edge and the line went tight. On her end, the girl had such a tight grip on Stark's invention that as the line tightened, her body snapped out of her free fall cutting the momentum completely off. A loud and powerful snap came from her left shoulder socket causing her to expel a blood curdling scream. Eventually though, gliding sideways through the air now, her body collided with the ground at a semi even level and debris flew around her. Roll after roll her body was tossed like a rag doll and somewhere in the process she had lost consciousness.

One she stopped however, that's when the damage was fully visible. The only problem was, no one else was around to see it. She was blacked out, completely unconscious, and thank god for that because if she was awake, her heart would have given way. Finley's left arm was practically hanging off of her body from the shoulder down. Every inch of her skin seemed mangled and torn from the impact, and none of her limbs moved a muscle. Some of her ribs were collapsed, her head was thrown at a weird angle, and her breathing was barely even there.

Soon enough though, there was a pull on her feet through the darkness, and beneath her, the ground began to move.

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Tony stood before the others proudly. His father was the one that saved Finley's life- so, in a way, he was the one that ended his as well. However, Howard's brilliance, timing, and creation were what kept her alive during such a fall. The screen before them was black, because that's what Finley could see at the moment. On the table, behind them, she was dead still as well as her chest. The breath barely left her body, it was like she was completely frozen.