' ' Perfect Enough To Break ' '

The Moment Where Everything Changed

Sova

Flashback chapter

I still remember the missions.
Even when I had nothing left—no name, no past, no freedom—I had him.
The Winter Soldier. The only constant in a world designed to break you.

That night plays in my mind like a tape I can't stop rewinding.

We were on the rooftops. Another mission. Another name on a list.
My L96 was cold in my hands, precision crafted for the kind of kills that don't make noise but leave echoes. Bucky stood a level below, walkie in hand, hair brushing his jawline in the wind, metal arm catching the moonlight. The red star gleamed like blood. They called him the Fist of HYDRA.

I spotted the woman. Target in range. I opened the scope and pulled the trigger.
One shot. Clean. She fell like a puppet with its strings cut.
Mission complete.

What I didn't know was how everything was about to change.
I didn't know there was a child waiting for her in a nearby alley.
And I didn't know Bucky saw the whole thing.

Maybe that's when something in him cracked.

Later that evening, we were in the HYDRA common room. Metal walls. Cold light. That same damn buzzing in the walls like a hive. I sat in a chair, flipping a knife in my hand for distraction.

"Finally done with our missions for the day, huh, Winter?" I said, tilting my head toward him, catching his face in the edge of my vision.

His voice was distant. "We killed that lady."

I blinked, thrown off by how shaken he sounded. "Yeah. That's what we do. We do this every day."

He didn't look at me. Didn't blink. "What if she had a kid?"

I paused, the knife stilled in my hand. "What's this about?"

"I can't do this," he said, quietly. "God, I can't even sleep anymore. All I see is red."

There was a long silence before he added, "I have to leave. I don't know how. I don't know where. But I have to. I'm going to escape tonight, Sova."

My chest tightened. I didn't show it. I buried it, like everything else. But I nodded.
Because part of me knew he was already gone.

That night, under a moon as white and bitter as bone, I followed him through the snow. Helped him bypass security, walked beside him through the dark. We made it all the way past the perimeter—cold air burning in our lungs, alarms quiet still.

Freedom was there. Right there. Just a few steps away.

He turned to me with a half-smile, half-relief. "What are you waiting for? Let's go."

But I stopped. My boots didn't move.
I couldn't meet his eyes. But I knew his expression already. He knew what I was about to say even though he tried to hide it.

"I'm not coming."

He froze. His expression changed in an instant—confusion, then frustration, then something worse: hurt.

"C'mon..." he said, like he could laugh it off. Like he didn't already know the answer. "Tell me I'm more important."

I turned my face to him, wiped the emotion off like it was dirt on my cheek. I made my voice the weapon they trained it to be.

"You know I can't."

That's when I pulled the alarm. the sirens started—low, wailing, hungry.

He looked back toward the base. Someone would be on us any second. But he hesitated, eyes flickering with everything he couldn't say. Disbelief. Disappointment. Grief.

And then he ran.

I didn't follow. I stayed in the dark, in the snow, in the machine. The agents found me there, standing in his footsteps.

They shouted orders like crazy but that was the least important part of the moment where I lost it all.