Let It Go

"A kingdom of islolation…"

The former Winter Soldier first heard a child singing it. The song was probably terribly off-key, sung in that half-shouting voice used when the singer is too young to make a pleasant sound, follow a melody and spit out lyrics simultaneously. Piercing, really, but the Soldier heard it all the way down the street as he snuck out of the museum through a side door—with his bionic arm he couldn't have gotten through the metal detectors at the real doors.

Infiltration training told him he should duck his head so his ball cap hid his face and walk away. The voice was perfect cover as heads turned in that direction. The child, the Soldier thought it might be a girl, was singing so loudly her voice cut in even over that of the shouts of other children as they played in the broad courtyard just in front of the museum doors.

And yet he turned to listen. Something about the fumbled words caught him. Bits seemed to be speaking directly to him in his situation, isolated from the world and seeking only escape and freedom from his muddled past.

It even had some lines about freezing cold and winter. Odd, considering the only name that sounded familiar right now was the Winter Soldier.

The other name didn't feel like his. Hearing it again, from Captain America's voice, had triggered a vague response somewhere inside him, as if someone had shouted a familiar word down a long tunnel, but it was only vague. Seeing the name there on the wall in the museum next to his own face was mildly uncomfortable, like a mislabeled painting. It was him, there was no denying that was his face, and yet it wasn't.

Bucky Barnes had died a long time ago.

The longer he spent out of cryo-stasis, the more it was starting to trickle back. Memory came in fits and starts. He didn't remember being the person called Bucky Barnes, but he was starting to recall odd details about him, as if it were someone he'd once known well but left behind and forgotten ever existed.

Bucky had enjoyed a good beer with friends. He'd hated boiled broccoli, especially the way his mother made it. He remembered the smell of hot dogs and popcorn on Coney Island.

Bucky Barnes knew how to smile.

The Winter Soldier stood listening to the child sing a few moments more, well concealed in the shadows, before striding purposefully away.

"…the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all…"

He heard the song again a few days later. This time he happened to be walking by an older girl—perhaps in high school—with her iPod's speaker on full blast as she waited for the bus. Somehow he knew at once that this was the song the child had been trying to sing and failing.

The modern world amazed him with how far it had come even since the last time he'd been out in it. It was hard to wrap his mind around the concept of these small handheld rectangular objects that carried so much inside them. Music, color photographs startling in their clarity, mindless games, telephones, GPS locators, all sorts of things crammed into that one little breakable device that people carried everywhere with them like a talisman. His metal hand could snap one with barely a twitch, yet they held so much that was important to their owners.

The Winter Soldier paused once again, settling in as if waiting for the bus himself, careful to space himself a certain exact distance away so he wouldn't come off as a threat or particularly memorable. He listened to the entire song, struck once again by the notion that it was speaking to him even though the singer was definitely female and singing about herself. She had a pleasant enough voice backed by a piano and orchestra, though the Soldier caught himself thinking wistfully of women chirruping three-part harmony to the sound of a Big Band swing in the background. In his day, that had been—

He caught himself smiling a tiny bit and his forehead instantly creased. Another odd Bucky memory had drifted through to him again. That music was a long-dead style. Likely this girl a few feet away wouldn't be caught dead listening to what was probably her great-grandparents' music.

Yet she listened to this song, with its words about breaking free and leaving rules behind. And it sounded so joyous, experiencing that release.

Breaking free from his HYDRA enslavers hadn't felt like joy. At the time it was because he literally had nowhere else to go. And then, as he'd begun to be infested by memories that felt like they came from some other consciousness, he felt confusion and fear more than anything else.

Who was he? What had he become? And how had he become this? The past few decades were almost nothing but fog, punctuated by gunfire and explosions and the overwhelming drive to complete a mission. His years as Bucky Barnes were nearly as hazy. Captain America's face drifted throughout it, though oddly sometimes it was much thinner and sicklier. The Soldier hadn't had an explanation for that until the museum. But once he'd arrived, the voice he'd heard explaining the process that had turned Steve Rogers into Captain America had been Steve's own, not the neutral voice that accompanied the exhibit. Prompted so strongly, he'd remembered Steve explaining it as clearly as if Captain America stood beside him.

The Soldier remained lost in thought even as the bus arrived and the girl boarded. The driver paused and when the Soldier didn't move, closed the doors and chugged away.

Could there be joy to be found in the total freedom into which he'd somehow stumbled? Was such an unguarded emotion even possible for him anymore?

"…and I'll rise like the break of dawn…"

He heard it again scant weeks later. He'd snuck into the hospital where Captain America was still being monitored, just to ensure his former target was recovering. Technically he couldn't get anywhere near the secure wing without triggering an alarm, but the Soldier was used to getting into places more tightly guarded than this. He couldn't actually bring himself to go see Steve in person—it was getting easier to think of his former target as Steve, even if he couldn't muster up feelings towards the man—but he figured it couldn't be too hard to get a look at some medical charts.

In the process of hunting for unguarded records he'd ended up in a ward that housed children. They were gathered together in a darkened room around a large television with rapt attention. The Winter Soldier had been about to move past the door when the now-familiar chorus swelled. He almost stumbled to a halt, drawn like a magnet to those words that replayed in his head at odd moments. He paused at the door to watch over the eager heads.

Computers made movies these days. He knew this, but seeing it he was altogether unprepared for the experience. The picture wasn't realistic, just as a drawing wasn't realistic, and yet everything was so sharp and clear in a way that seemed too perfect to his eyes. Every detail had been carefully pored over. It was absurd, but the Soldier felt as though each snowflake had been built individually. He stood rooted to the spot, unable to move from the shadow of the doorway.

The young woman on the screen was totally alone on a mountainside and yet her every gesture said she was pleased to be there, that she reveled in the release she had found in her solitude. What he'd heard in her voice alone on the girl's iPod he could now see on the screen.

A tiny knot came undone in his chest as he pondered again those words sung with such passion. He reminded himself it was just pictures and sound, but the words seemed to speak directly to him, just as they had the other two times.

He forced himself to move away as the song ended rather than risk getting caught. But the song still played through his head until he wanted to dig it out with a metal finger and fling it away. It chipped away at him, forcing him to consider why it felt so relevant to his current state of mind when he really wanted to concentrate on finding the records he needed.

He could do anything with his newfound freedom. Except one thing: go back. He'd have to forge himself into entirely new person, free of the orders that had once confined him to complete missions, passively accept memory wipe, and go back to sleep until needed again. That static existence was done forever.

The curiosity that had driven him to the museum exhibit rose again. Suddenly he wanted to get to know this Bucky Barnes, even if he still didn't remember being him. If he could do anything, then at least he could start to unravel the glaring blank spots in his past.

Starting with checking on his old friend.

Bucky checked to make sure his metal arm was still fully covered by his sleeve, and slipped down the hospital hallway once again.

"Let it go…"

Author's Note: I wrote this very short story two years ago, after Winter Soldier came out and when literally everyone was singing 'Let It Go' from Frozen nonstop. It was inescapable. I enjoy Frozen, but to this day I do not understand the obsession with it; I don't think it's a better or worse movie than Tangled. The only thing I can think of is the earworm quality of the songs (except "Fixer-Upper," which I can't stand and I daresay is the least popular song on the track list, and "Reindeers Are Better than People," which is a forgettable ditty they just shoehorned in because I assume somebody realized they hired Jonathan Groff in part for his singing voice and they hadn't actually given him a song, while the movie's eventual villain got a lovely duet with the heroine.)

Anyway, I had to hang onto this little piece until I saw how they were going to handle Bucky's memories-whether he was going to regain any of them from his 1940s personality or if he was going to be a blank slate. Civil War finally answered the question. And I do think the song, overplayed as it is, is a good song and would speak to his mental state immediately after Winter Soldier.

SamoaPhoenix9