He wished he could sleep.
He hadn’t slept in a while, a growing vernacular of reasons piling up as to why he couldn’t. Chiefest amongst them, nightmares. Faint flickering slide shows of horrors committed, murders that weren’t his own, but scarred just as deeply. He hadn’t been strong enough to tell them, to tell himself, no. To wrest control of himself before so many had paid the price.
It wasn’t like him to be selfish, to think of just himself. Maybe that’s why the dreams bothered him so, because it was easy to say it wasn’t his fault. To say that every atrocity he committed, or aided in, was not his doing. That someone had taken choice away, made him nothing but a machine, an empty carcass of murder and vengeance.
He could’ve fought harder. He could’ve refused to give Hydra an inch, tried to deny them. Let himself die. That was an option, it had always been. To give up living and just die, and how often had he hung on that precipice to just back away. To cower and choose life, no matter what life meant. What it would cost him.
He hadn’t a moment to regret the action again, no, as someone was knocking at the door. Soldier was silent, turning slightly as he had sat on his bed, back to the entrance. His mind was still a mess, muddied water of truths and lies. Memories and falsehoods that were intertwining and spinning the most devilish of tales.
He wouldn’t dare think of himself as James Barnes or Bucky, he didn’t deserve the name. Not after what he had done. He was simply that cowardly machine, free from a master but still very much a killer.
Soldier neared the door slowly, carefully. He clung to the 1911 colt like a lifeline, flicking the safety off. Tired enough to consider just shooting through the door, ending whatever threat was on the other side.
Thunder roared, and opened the door a fleeting inch. The dark of the room shrouding him, keeping him hidden. The man outside was drenched, water pouring off of him. How odd this must’ve looked to any onlookers, some stranger standing on the second floor of some cheap-housing unit, cold and wet and wholly unwelcomed.
