Chapter Text
The Soldier was alone. Haunted machinery, shambling along in a harsh wasteland. There was no love here. Every voice gave an order, demanded a report. Every hand was harsh, hitting or shoving. There was only the fight. But when he slept…
When he slept, he dreamed. There was comfort there. Someone loved him, but the face was always fuzzy. Gentle hands, gentle lips. It made the waking nearly unbearable. They burned every memory away, no matter how hard he tried to hold on. There was only the mission, then the debrief, then the freeze. Then the warmth again. Until him.
He saw the Captain first on a late night news recap in a diner at midnight. The patrons were dead around him. There was a mark here, and there couldn’t be any witnesses. The Soldier sat, drinking a coffee (small rebellions), and there he was. A stranger on the TV. But the feelings he awoke. Boiling coffee exploded onto his skin, and as he jumped back, he saw he had crushed the mug. He stood for a moment, blinking, trying to process. When he looked back up, the face was gone. He was elsewhere as he shoved open the glass door, and it shattered against the wall from the force. He barely spared it a glance before he was speeding away. It was only as he drove that he noticed his hand was bleeding.
Visions swirled before him, and he struggled to blink them away. Blonde hair, a crooked smile, blue-green eyes that twinkled like lapis lazuli. He screeched to a halt off a side road, breathing heavy. This... this was new. There weren't supposed to be distractions. He wasn't trained to deal with them. Something tugged at the corners of his mind, and it felt like his dreams. In the darkness, he could almost see a figure materialize, but then it was gone. He had to go. For once, the timetable had escaped him.
He was reprimanded for his mistake. Tortured was probably a better word. They made sure to patch him up afterward, experimental treatments keeping him at peak performance. But when he went under this time, his dream had a face.