Greatest Price

(Co-written by Thalion Estel and edited by LeDbrite )

All Captain America characters belong to Marvel Comics

I own nothing.

{Chapter 1}

He felt the midnight hour was approaching. The harvest moon was a misty shade of orange. Leaves twirled under gleams of streetlights. Darkness moved against the amber haze of the restless city. People overlooked a solitary figure as a shadow drifting throughout the hours of the night. He wasn't considered a man, but a ghost of a nameless and forgotten solider. He had lost his way home. James Buchanan Barnes. It was days, years since he suspected that that was his name. First the awareness that he felt when his eyes became transfixed on the images of Captain America, and then it followed as he stood in front of exhibit of the Howling Commandos, reading off their names to himself with memory and awareness, but between the shades of infinite gray.

Although, he felt blood pumping in his veins, he couldn't feel it. He was the Asset. Not some blonde haired soldier's friend. Inside his addled mind, there was a storm; a cyclone of memory that ravaged his disciplined thoughts was flickers of faces and reflections of a young man dressed in a uniform. He'd spent days, avoiding newspaper stands and storefront windows. He didn't want to look at the fading visage of himself. He wanted to look back into the darkness.

Shoving his gloved hands into the pockets of his tattered leather jacket; hunched his shoulders and his face under his new baseball cap. His long strands of messy brown hair loosely fell over his clenched jaw. Once his got a clear understanding of his sense of direction, he trudged cautiously through, pale blue eyes scanning methodically over the obscured alleyways and parking lots. He was searching for something. Instead of asking for directions from the occasional passing hooded figure who intruded his space, he paced back into the shadows, and watched traffic with his unmoving and hollow gaze. He could kill anyone within seconds; his combat knife was tucked in the pocket of his faded jeans. He refused to allow his savage impulses to control him; he seized enough resistance to permit his programming from engaging into a lethal assault with an unarmed bystander captured in his intense gaze.

Suddenly there was a shift of dread, he felt trapped, and a cold sweat of an arising fever seeped out of his pores. He released a deep and heavy exhale of panic. His back slammed against the wall, his lips parted as hot breath contorted in his lungs. His darkened eyes shifted in all directions, and chrome fingers curled over his knife. He turned his head and locked livid pools of blue on a group of monsters and superheroes casually walking across the street, holding pillowcases filled with candy. He crouched down low, behind a parked vehicle, his blood pumping in his ears as he waited for the right moment to assault. When he heard the childish laughter emerge from the mask, he sensed there was no danger and withdrew from his attack. It was Halloween.

"ребятишки." He murmured with a cold breath, and straightened his form. He stared at the group until they disappeared from his view. He didn't follow them. His boots crunched over specks of glass scattered across the cement and he walked to the curbs in hushed and orderly steps. He needed motivation to live once more, and not get to be struck in a void of fractured memories.

Commotions of activity jarred through his bones, and he tore his look away, and moved his body before a storefront window. Hurling out a full breath, he took a look at the visage of a young man got in reflection-clean shaven jaw and full lips; regardless he conveyed the presence of a threatening, deadly wraith.

Snarling up his throat, he faulted a step back, metal hand grasped and his eyes tore away. He shook his head, feeling a wave of uneasiness crawling over him. He continued strolling aggressively, not paying attention of his surroundings. Then, he halted in his strides, and heaving out a heavy gulp of air, he gripped his fingers over the iron bars of a rusted gate of a cemetery. He whipped his head around feeling a pair of unseen eyes watching his movements. He gazed passively at the dismal marble headstones and markers. It was an asylum for the dead.

He needed to rest.

Pushing the gate with the power of his metal hand, he pounded his boots over pieces the crumpled stone. A harrowing sense fear had found a way to slither in his veins; however, he overlooked those stirrings when he walked closer to a barren tree. His imposing form loomed before the oval and monolith gravestones of fallen soldiers who had returned home after the war had ended in 1945.

Each of the markers was split with grime and neglect. In other words: forgotten.

"Sergeant James Barnes..." An encroaching voice interrupted his thoughts. Alarmed, he shot a hooded glare on a nameless grave. His eyes drooped as he caught a glimpse of rotten flower petals scattered over the untouched earth. Blankly gazing at the spot, he mindfully approached the grave, his shadow moved over the stone marker. "It's been a long time, Winter Soldier..."

He struggled to process memory. "Who's there?"

For a moment, silence came over the area, until he heard a shattering scream in the darkness. He spun around quickly; his hat fell to the ground, and pulled out his knife. His fingers fastened over the handle as he listened with enhanced hearing. It was cry of distress that stirred between the trees. It was a cry for help. Another chuckle echoed in the dead space. Unfaltering, he did a quick perimeter check, and maintain his balance. His blue eyes glinted in the dimness of moonlight.

The Winter Soldier approached the gravesite with slow calculating movements of a stalking predator, waiting to feel the adrenaline rush of the chase. He froze and narrowed an unsettling glower at slender dark creature sprawled in front of a tombstone. It was obviously a stray cat. Lifeless and battered with her little pink tongue hanging out of her mouth. He assessed the dead feline, his fingers brushed over the drenched fur with a touch of benevolence. He felt raw emotion crawl back into him as his hand pressed gently over dislocated bones. The cat had been crushed and thrown against the stone. Her back was broken He guessed that was the cause of her death. He narrowed his eyes with a solemn gaze and he smelt blood as interpretable fog of red engulfed his mind. His stoic posture was disturbed by a stab of discomfort and unease within his abdomen.

It was strange and unnatural.

Feeling a tug on his heartstrings, the Winter Soldier felt compelled to tenderly stroke his metal fingers over the black fur. It was clear to him that someone misused the defenseless creature. Staring, his blue eyes darkened into piercing daggers of ice. He scooped up the body in the cradle of his solid arms. He didn't want to leave her for other strays to devour her body into pieces.

He crashed to his knees, laden on the ground, and pounded his metal fist into the grass, his metal fingers smeared with mud as he broke his lips open and unleashed a cry of anguish. He screamed and felt his nose crinkled at the smell of terror and death blanketing over his disheveled form. He was tired of staring at the grim shrouds of death, and the excruciating pain that scorched in his bones and made him feel like his blood melted inside his veins.

Little fragments of memory emerged out of his mind; scattered images became pieces of a stolen life-there was a condemning sense, and the Winter Soldier felt it encase over his bones. His eyes fixed on the murdered animal and hand scooped the body into the nest of his broad arms, he cradled the cat against the exposed tactical armor of his chest. Light gathered in the depth of his intense gaze of icy blue. He had no idea why he had accepted humanity back into the rifts of his tormented soul and how he responded to the stray with gentleness of a child.

A harsh cough erupted in the shadows; he whirled around and scanned for illusions of danger. Behind the clustered shapes of graves his eyes fell onto a woman standing underneath the contorted branches of the tree with a sinister look shrouding on her wrinkled face. Pressing his thumb over the handle of his weapon, his death glare leveled with her dark eyes, and he stood frozen. The cloying sense of uncertainty and the heavy smell of blood made his stomach react with sickening churns of unease. His heart thumped with concurrent thuds against his chest. His eyes glinted at the stranger, a feverish and daunting blue, as confusion settled within the ridges of his tensed form.

The woman crept forward with a shady look on her aging face. Her eyes moving up and down to scan over his tall body. His jaw fixed with anger as he stepped back, and his knife rose to her shoulder. He had to overcome her threat. She didn't move. Her gaze settled on the cat. He watched her for another moment, and then twirled his weapon between his fingers of his left hand. He growled, dangerous, albeit and gravelly, even though she revealed to hostility. "Make a move. I will slash your throat. It will be unwise if you try to attack me." Sensing no attempt of an assault he slowly crouched down and placed the cat near the grave. "This animal has been slain in a brutal way." He breathed out, settling his gaze back at the woman—he started to feel a bad sense of deception coming from her—she didn't look like an approachable person and there was a foul smell that kept him distant... "Did you kill her?"

The woman coldly glowered at his knife. She pressed her wrinkled lips into a sneer. Her body twisted with an eerie snake-like movement. "Perhaps I did drain her blood with a simple spell." She snapped her fingers and instantly the limp paw of the cat rose and sunk its claws into his right arm. Alarmed, he wrenched his arm back, and rubbed the coldness of his metal hand over the damaged skin. "Black cats made the perfect and loyal companion for many types of evil that walk in human flesh. You should know, Winter Soldier, because in the way you were HYDRA's obedient pet."

He furrowed his eyebrows into a firm crease, "How do you know me?" he asked, with sluggish ting in his baritone. Feeling a shift of discomfort his eyes narrowed at the cat and recollection suddenly dawned onto him. "Wait...Are you accusing me...?" He couldn't finish his words as the woman circled around him like a coiling serpent waiting to strike him down. She knelt in front of the cat, and pressed her hand over the stomach. "Stay away from me!" He growled fiercely.

"It's too late for that. You have to pay for your mistakes." She lashed back with a vicious timbre, and dug her fingernails into the cat's chest, breaking through fur and tissue as she advanced closer to him. The Winter Soldier lurched aback, trying to escape from her. "You can't fight for your soul because haven't got one." she coldly sneered, watching his expression turn dismal underneath the obscurity of his long brown hair and she added, "You have been immobilized for the transcendence of a new life." She lifted up the lifeless body over his head, and watched the blood leak aimlessly out from the hole she created and watched it drip over his jaw. "When I'm done you'll be nothing...Just a worthless stray without a name."

"Shut up!" He seethed out an angry breath. He pushed her knee out with direct force of his hand. A rueful grin crossed his lips as he listened to the sound of socket popping out. Then, he swiveled his knife and jabbed it deep and hard into her calf bone. "Bleed...ведьма!"

The woman fell backwards onto her back, groaning aloud and holding her aching knee. "You'll pay for that..." She muttered, despite herself. Her surprise was washed away by rage as she scrambled to her feet.

Heaving out breath, the Winter Soldier tried to resume his assault but the distance between them in his crouched position and the lumbering pain in his body slowed as he meant to swing at the witch who promptly dodged the imprecise assault. "So you want to play dirty." The woman used her own strength and punched him across the face, forcing him to his haunches. He raised his head again only to receive a vicious backhand to the face. Blood trickled in his mouth.

"WHAT NOW?!" She yelled down at him then proceeded to spit down on him. "You're done, Soldier..."

He barely registered her as his vision swam and limbs failed him. He felt something worm through his veins. It clotted his blood with heat. He recoiled in pain, tucking his metal arm over his chest, wanting to crawl away from her inhuman stare bearing down at him. Twisting in wild movements, his slender frame automatically dropped to all fours as she seized his long strands, forcing his head back up with a violent yank.

He blinked his eyes, livid and burning with intensity of metallic azure. His rounded pupils changed into diamond slits once the moonlight retracted over his irises. One hiss erupted out of his lips.

"Black cats are symbols of death and shadow. It is said from ancient times that lost souls become trapped in vessels of disheveled creatures." The woman spoke in a sadistic whisper, uncurling her fingers, unveiling a purple stone that glowed against her palm. The Winter Soldier opened his mouth to protest, however, nothing clear escaped from his grimacing lips. All that emitted was a strangled cry of a tortured beast. He choked as he realized that he sounded like a cat.

"No," he managed to with an intermixed sound of a distressed mewl. She was merciless to his agony, and coiled her bony fingers around his thick neck. He had begun to claw at her, hissing and thrashing his body, until she released the hold off his throat.

"This is what happens when you defy the orders that HYDRA has given to you." She said, smirking down at him ruthlessly, the stone glowed as he struggled to push her away from him. "When the change fully comes into effect you will feel pain. That will be only one part of your punishment. That good soldier who tried to save you from us will endure the same cold and dark future."

"That won't happen," The Winter Soldier spat, fuming. His blue eyes darkened as he focused on the stone, the rare gem pulsed with energy. He glared dangerously at her, seething a hot breath through shaving of pointed teeth. He was developing small fangs. Hatred veiled over his face. Defiance burned within the razor depth of his eyes. He became unhinged, untamed and violent. His metal fist battered into the ground as muscles jolted with restrictive pressure under his clothes. He knew that she was making him a captive of something torturous and depraved.

"You're a sick..." His thoughts jumbled. He couldn't muster up the strength finish. Still, he refused to surrender to the enchantment ensnaring over his body. He summoned enough aggressiveness to force his hand into stone as he underwent the horrific ordeal of pain. His tongue suddenly became laden against the roof of his mouth. What caught his fury were the slow and haunting waves of hand from the cruel and yet mysterious woman in front of him.

"Your future will be worse than death, solider."

"I RATHER DIE!" He roared against the thrall of the painful transfiguration jolting through his bones, his deep voice decreasing into the inhuman shrill of an animal, His bones were paralyzed in the pain of transformation as each passing moment reduced him from the man he was...All his thoughts could comprehend was panic setting in, panic that he had long ago pushed away, returning in full force like a regrouped enemy.

His gaze was hard as he staggered inches away from her shadow. "You-you." He couldn't finish as a harsh spasm forced him down to lie on his side, facing the grave. His blue eyes widened with mounting horror as he beheld the black fur covering his deformed right hand that closely resembled a paw. "No…" He managed past his thinning lips that began to contort with the bones of his jaw. Twisting and detaching as a feline muzzle began to form.

"This can't be happening to me." He felt himself thrashing violently, harsh and lament whines escaping his mouth.

He screamed out anguished cries, blood dripped out from the corners of his mouth as the crackling noises of his bones erupted under the layers of his clothes. He was suffocating and his blue irises burned with fever. He dug his gloved fingers into the earth, feeling the pull of his bones as his body mass begun to shrink from normal proportions of his deteriorating limbs. His heart increased and hammered against his chest; organs entwined and hot tears rolled heavily over his broken jaw.

The Winter Soldier knew that was happening to him. His humanity was being stripped away piece by piece from the inside out and there was nothing he could do to fight against it. The sight of his cybertronic arm reshaping into smaller limb made the experience more surreal and horrifying. He wanted to scream in both rage and distress, but his words failed him. A chilling and unnatural calamity began to overtake his body. His face became frozen in a semblance of anguish and irritable grimace. His skin and facial features had begun to stretch and decrease. His skin disappeared within fur enveloping it.

Screaming, he rolled onto his back, his hands dangling in the air as he watched in horror the tiny sliver digits tear through the leather tips of his gloves- claws. He had metal claws emerging from his bionic limb. His hands reshaped and decreased in size. Panting out labored patterns of breath, he groaned and jerked when he felt his skull shrinking, and his ears sharpened into triangle and messed his long strands as they moved to the dome of his head, but not just his ears -a painful tugging sensation over his firm backside drew his attention as he arched his back slightly off the ground, and listened with revulsion as his pants tore and a long black tail snaked out of his pants.

It was a cat's tail. He was becoming a cat. "NO!" he screeched out, his voice dying into a sound of a distressed feline. The pain wormed through his veins, clotting in his blood. He cried out in pain, sucking back a sharp intake of air as if a noose was coiled around his throat. He felt bile flow against his straining stomach and skin inched and grew hot. Despite his pain and suffering, the inkling hope remained inside of him as he focused on a memory of Captain America holding out his hand to grasp his own. It was the amount strength he needed; he had to endure instead of begging for a swift end… Gasping for breath, his blue eyes stared up at the sky as tears blurred his vision. He tasted death. He wanted to grasp that hand again. "Steve," he choked out, blood dripped over fur. He couldn't move as his transcendence of a new life continued. He kept on mumbling out broken words. "I've been such a j***..."

Clothing ripped as exposed muscle quivered against the coldness of the air. His pectoral grew thin and coated with black fur. His limbs remain laden on the ground and decreased into short frontal and hind legs. The metal plates of his arm rejoined with his new body. He hissed in pain and disgust when he chanced a glare at the witch. His voice was a captive in his feline vocals. "I -I..."

"Scream all you want, but nothing will save you," she sneered, watching in mirth as the handsome soldier bellowed out in torment as his body shrunk in horrific intertwines of muscle, bones and screams. James Barnes. The Winter Soldier. The deadliest Soviet assassin...combatant and ageless wraith was disappearing into a body of a stray cat. A small and worthless beast that prowled the streets and searched for a home.

He could see his arms and torso sinking underneath his clothing and his jaw and nose pulled out in painful unison. He closed his eyes to the gruesome sight; his bones throbbed and heart beat lessened. He could smell everything around him. The staleness in the air, the rotting stench of decomposed bodies underneath him and his own blood. His form was no longer tall and manly; instead it was now a slender form of helplessness. A feline.

"There is no escape from death. Accept your fate." She spoke, her tone cold and sordid. They were simply the hallowed words for a witch exercising her will in the form of judge, jury and executioner over her hated enemy. Her teeth gleamed in an evil smile, both smug and sadistic as she watched their transformation complete before her eyes...

At long last, the Winter Soldier felt the last vestiges of his humanity slip away from him as his long hair receded into his shoulder blades...and whiskers popped from his swollen muzzle. 'Steve...I'm sorry.' Were his thoughts as exhaustion and fatigue began to take its toll forcing him into paralysis. The world felt different. He felt different. Smaller... Furry… Weak... Irrelevant… His unchanged blue eyes swam about before taking in the sight of the witch standing over him.

"What have you done to me?" he screamed out.

"I changed you into a vulnerable creature for the dogs of HYDRA to chase." She glared down at where the once feral and intimidating Winter Soldier had been, now sat a black cat. He had three black furred legs, but his left frontal was metal with a tiny red star. The little beast was off-balanced and horrified by the aspects of his life. "I hope you don't waste your nine lives."

He stalked closer to her, and despite the feline nature controlling his actions, he managed to force his humanity up with a daunting voice, "I will find you," he hissed out the vicious warning, looking up at the witch with his blue daggers. "I will kill you," he concluded, before opening his mouth, and picking up his knife in his small jaws. He merely choked on the leather grazing over his rough tongue, but he had to become armed, and his metal claws dug into the earth, feeling the vibrations underneath him.

The witch lowered herself down, smirking darkly at the black cat, "If you can't save yourself, how will your friend, Captain Rogers survive?"

Clenching his jaw, the cat swiped his paw at her. "He will find a way." He hissed indignant, and slashed his claws at her legs, marring her wrinkled flesh as line of blood seeped out. He shifted his intent blue eyes and resumed his gaze on the dead cat. A victim. He noticed two small kittens shivering behind the tombstone. 'Where did they come from?' he thought. It was obvious they had belonged to the dead cat. He couldn't leave them. He had to protect them. "When I change back into a human...I will hunt you down and waste not even a second to put a bullet in you, witch." Then he decided his next action, he scooped the meowing babies up gently with his jaws and quickly stalked passed a headstone.

"Enjoy your nine lives, Winter Soldier," she replied, picking up his tattered pieces of his clothing. He stared intensely at her with enraged blue eyes; she knew his identity, his past and everything. Steve Rogers...The man of the bridge was her next victim. "Don't forget to beg for milk."

Keeping his little tongue pressed on the roof of his mouth, he shot her a piercing stare of extreme hatred, and prowled away from her, and searched for a safe area to keep the clinging kittens out of danger of humans and traffic. "Do what I tell you, kids," he muttered firmly, keeping the female close to his chest, as her tiny head nuzzled against his fur. The male was curled into a ball over his back, purring soundlessly. "...And we might just survive."

Feeling their hearts beat, tiny and content, vibrate through his slender form, the Winter Soldier stalked out of the graveyard, keeping himself elusive and tucked himself underneath a parked car, calculating his next tactic while a harrowing sense of dread crept over him and he realized that he was a ghost, no name, face or voice. Just his pained tears held his broken existence.

The violent gusts of wind lashed around his displaced, compromised body, he ignored it. He wanted to feel nothing.

He was trapped inside a prison of fur, only the blue shimmer of his eyes kept him from wearing the full semblance of a black cat. It was punishment he didn't deserve, HYDRA wanted to bury him in a grave, make him taste death. He aborted his mission and saved a good man that called out his name against the crimson fog of his damaged mind. He could sense that the lifeless cat, he handled was a once a human, a victim of HYDRA who became desecrated by a dark enchantment and sentenced to roam the earth as a cat. As the bitter cold weaved against him and his strength began to fade away.

The man or whoever he once was had vanished and he was barren from humanity and left to fend for not only his life, but two more lives that the soldier inside of him offered to protect.

Curling into a ball, he placed the kittens close to him, stroking their bodies with a flick of his tail. The coldness of his past seemed to have melted away. He closed his eyes to stop the flow of tears.

'Focus on the mission, soldier,' he thought, snapping his head up, and looked down with a protective stare at the shivering fur balls nudging their tiny faces into his side. Whining, the little female, called out for her mother, Bucky lowered his head and rubbed his muzzle over her body, soothing down her cries of distress as he listened for the dangers around them. "I have to find...The man with the shield."