Chapter Text
After he drags the Captain’s broken, bleeding body from the wreckage in the Potomac, the Winter Soldier walks.
He does not know where he is going, or what he intends to do. Speculation and free will fall outside the parameters of his intended function, and though parts of his brain roil and seethe like the river-water around the burning carcasses of Project Insight, he finds neither the surge of initiative nor the desire to make those decisions. He steals the jacket off a dead man - SHIELD or HYDRA, enemy or ally, he no longer knows - and walks until he feels secure.
It is easy enough, at first, to disappear into the sparse woodland across the river from the Triskelion, but the forest - if it can even be called that - is finite, and the Winter Soldier is not equipped to operate in complete isolation for prolonged periods of time. The battle with the Captain has damaged his arm, and without a mechanic, there is no telling how long he can operate independently. He will need to be repaired, and for that, he will need HYDRA. Yet when he thinks about return, he is overwhelmed by vague dread that he pushes down, replacing an emotional desire to stay away with a practical reason: it is not safe. The turmoil that the Captain and his squad have caused means it is unsafe to return to his den. With the Black Widow’s information dump, no doubt the base has been compromised. It is too close to the heart of current activity, too dangerous to warrant a visit, and the Winter Soldier is no fool. Pierce is dead, and his other superiors are compromised. Returning might kill him - or worse, kill them. He will not return.
And so when he leaves the woodland, he heads back in the direction of the city. This one, at least, is not unfamiliar to the Winter Soldier; he has prowled it before. District of Columbia, Washington. Capital city of the United States of America. Headquarters: United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, President of United States, CIA, NSA, FBI, SHIELD (formerly), countless other, less relevant agencies. With the jacket pulled tight around him, hands shoved into pockets, head bowed, he walks. The streets crawl with police and military, but they run in a direction opposite him, toward the sites of the wreckage. The Winter Soldier is not inclined to give chase for now, and so they ignore him. He walks on, aimless, uncertain where to go.
The first night, he slumps in the doorway of a building, unsure of how to proceed. The Winter Soldier is not used to drifting. He is not used to working without a mission - though he realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that should he want one, there is one task he left unfinished. For the first time since the Helicarrier dropped from the sky, he thinks about the Captain. He doesn’t know why, but something in his body seizes up when he thinks about him. The Captain was his mission. He had him in his grasp, and even when he fell away, the Winter Soldier could have let him die. But in that moment, when it was the Captain’s life on the line...he did nothing. He is not sure what compelled him to drag the unconscious body out of the water, and when he thinks about it, pain twists in his chest and leaves him breathless and disoriented.
He does not sleep, because whenever he closes his eyes, he sees the face, feels the body under him. I’m not going to fight you. I’m with you to the end of the line. Do it, then. The words mean almost nothing, but they still make the Winter Soldier shudder and tug his jacket tighter. He is grateful for the sunrise.
When he walks again, it is not quite as aimless. Whatever the night’s discomfort brought, it awakened some spark of self-preservation in the Winter Soldier, giving his feet a direction as he paces the twists and alleys of the city. If he cannot return to his den, cannot meet with his handlers, then he will need to vanish. It is as much a mission as any, and one that gives him some modicum of satisfaction: he is good at vanishing. He stops once at a library, a few cursory Internet searches turning up places to get new clothes, to hunker down - places that will give him the chance to fade into anonymity. An hour later, he is at a shelter.
He accepts an offer of fresh clothes - jeans, an old jacket, and a hat he can pull down over his eyes - but refuses the meal offered him. Food is something of a mystery; the Winter Soldier rarely eats during a mission, and what he does has always been specifically provided to him by his handlers. Without those handlers, he cannot be certain food is safe. It is better that he not eat. The man who gave him clothes offers him a place to sleep, but his eyes linger suspiciously on the Winter Soldier, and panic rises in his throat again. He has been careful, but perhaps not careful enough. He cannot risk detection. He leaves immediately.
Without the shelter, though, he is lost again. He walks for the sake of walking, letting the motion of his body consume his being. When he begins to fatigue, the sun has begun to tip to the west, and he sinks into a crouch against a wall, tipping his head back and taking a look at the place he has landed for the first time. Downtown. Too clean to be a place where people live. A tourist thoroughfare. Less dangerous than residential areas; no one is likely to recognize he’s out-of-place if they don’t know the area.
A banner with a picture of a man’s face and Smithsonian emblazoned across it catches his eye. The face is familiar. He has seen it recently, staring up at him, calling him names that mean nothing to him. His mission.
Captain America.
It’s worth a little more walking to find the museum. Admission is free.
He pulls the hat lower and slouches inside.