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Hydra had always been known for its tight-assed approach to just about everything. It was the reason the institution was able to take down entire governments. There was nothing about Hydra that ever spoke of carelessness. Except for maybe this plan.
“You want me to what?” Rumlow asked, shifting a little from his position standing in front of Pierce’s desk.
Pierce didn’t immediately repeat himself, and he looked at Rumlow over the top of his glasses, like a parent would look at a child who was talking back. He pushed a stack of folders across his desk toward Rumlow.
“Tomorrow morning you’re to let the Asset be captured by these men,” Pierce repeated, tapping the top folder with his forefinger. “And then, your team will extract him exactly one hour later.”
Pierce said all this as if he was telling Rumlow what to order him for lunch. He didn’t seem upset, or even worried about what he was asking him to do.
“Do I get to know why?”
“No,” Pierce replied simply, leaning back in his oversized office chair.
“Does he?”
“No,” Pierce snapped, more forcefully this time. “I’ve provided these people with the tech they’ll need to overtake the Asset. It’s very important he doesn’t know this is planned. Do you think you can do that or should I talk to Murphy?”
“No, sir,” Rumlow said, quickly, shaking his head. “I got it.”
“Excellent,” Pierce said with a smile. “Let me know when it’s done.”
Rumlow nodded and left the office, more confused now than he had been when he came in. He was used to being on missions where he wasn’t privy to certain pieces of information, but he’d never been completely in the dark before.
That night, he had spent a good deal of time pouring over the mission briefs—flipping through the folders Pierce had provided him. But, they held nothing more than personal information on the men Rumlow was supposed to, essentially, hand the Asset over to.
No amount of digging brought up a valid reason why Pierce would want someone to capture the soldier. Granted, he wasn’t hired for his brains, but he still was smart enough to know this was in direct violation of his job description. His entire job was to make sure they all remained ghosts; that no one even knew they existed. But now, he was just supposed to let the soldier get, what? Abducted?
_____
The STRIKE team was currently working out of a small warehouse near the heart of D.C. and had been for the last seven missions. The aim was to ride under SHIELD’s radar as much as possible while they rolled through a very boring hit list Pierce had received through Hydra channels. The Asset ended up being a relatively new addition this time around, since thawing him out presented its own risks and timeline. It was standard practice for the soldier to only be out of cryo-sleep for 48 hours. Anything after that got a little tricky, apparently. Rumlow didn’t know or care about the details, he just knew that whenever the Asset was engaged, so was he.
He also knew that those days where his favorite days. He couldn’t quite explain why, but he always looked forward to working with the Asset.
“No weapons,” Rumlow said as he walked in on the soldier readying his usual arsenal. The soldier stopped what he was doing and glared at Rumlow silently. He put several of the handguns he’d holster on himself back onto the gun rack with a little more force than strictly necessary.
“Don’t worry, you won’t need ‘em.” Rumlow said, seeing the soldier’s piercing look as he watched Rumlow pull his own gun off the rack. He was clearly a little annoyed. Rumlow laughed and loaded in a clip.
“Easy day today, Big Guy,” Rumlow said conversationally. The soldier didn’t reply, but the look on his face changed from annoyed to uncertain. Rumlow felt his stomach tighten and he offered the soldier a sheepish smile.
“Be over before you know it,” he soothed, reaching out and putting a hand on the Asset's shoulder. The soldier looked down at it and then back up at Rumlow, the concern smoothing out on his face. Rumlow smiled one more time and then headed for the warehouse loading dock. The soldier fell into quiet step behind him. He couldn't help feeling guilty for lying to the soldier, but what choice did he have? All he could do was hope that whatever weapons Pierce had given these guys wouldn’t damage the Asset too much before they got him out. An hour could be a very long time.
The soldier continued to follow him out onto the warehouse dock and toward the back of a nondescript black van. Rumlow stopped walking and turned around, the Asset so close he almost ran into him.
The soldier was now wearing his usual blank glare as he waited for Rumlow to tell him what to do. For a moment, Rumlow considered calling the whole thing off. If he thought really hard, he might be able to come up with a pretty good reason for Pierce. Maybe it would give him enough time to—
“You two lovebirds coming?” A voice called from the driver side of the van. Rumlow sighed and closed his eyes. Rollins.
“Just get in the van,” Rumlow grumbled to the soldier, opening the back door and motioning with his hand. The soldier complied.
______
“Extraction at 0900,” Rollins said, putting the van in park and turning to face Rumlow in the passenger seat. “We got an hour before the security feeds are back on.” Rumlow nodded, looking back at the soldier. He was sitting quietly, facing forward and staring off into space.
“Ready?” Rumlow asked. The Asset glanced up, meeting his eyes, but said nothing.
Of course he wasn’t ready—he had no idea what was going on. If Rumlow had been in his position he’d be yelling and demanding to know what the hell was happening. He found himself getting a little annoyed that the soldier hadn’t done any of that. Somewhere, deep down where his conscience lived, Rumlow knew that Hydra had probably all but beat that out of the guy.
Rumlow narrowed his eyes and the soldier’s expression turned vaguely sullen. It was the closest he’d ever seen the man get to having an opinion.
Rumlow wasn’t sure what was about to happen next, but he followed Rollins’ lead and got out of the van. He heard the soldier exit through the back doors, but the man never appeared. Instead, there was a loud bang and a grunt. No turning back now.
It happened quickly. The van was overtaken by a group of six men, all of them Rumlow recognized from the files Pierce had given him the day before. Two of the men grabbed the Asset from behind, one gathering him in a sleeper hold while the other jammed a stun baton into his ribcage. To his credit, the soldier was putting up a good fight. He was skilled at hand-to-hand combat, but things got a little muddy when the odds weren’t in his favor. Or when no one was coming to help him.
Rumlow shifted on his feet as he watched, his stomach flipping over. He winced when one of the attackers clocked the soldier in the head, sending his face into the side of the van. The soldier went down, hard onto the pavement and a boot heel met his head. Still, he recovered quickly and brought the titanium hand up to grab one of his assailants by the calf, yanking hard until the man was on the ground beside him. Then, using the man as leverage, the soldier hoisted himself back up, titanium arm flying out to grab another attacker by the throat. But his advantage didn’t last long. The man he was holding by the neck reached out and, fumbling only a little, attached something to the soldier’s arm. Suddenly, it sent out sparks and the soldier yelped in surprise, his arm dropping to his side, uselessly. There was more shouting and then the Asset was on the ground again, boots flying at his face. There was blood all over the ground, like someone had opened a paint can and was shaking it.
Rumlow glanced at Rollins, who was watching the action with an amused look on his face, like he was enjoying a really good football game or something. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded with a little smirk when he heard the soldier shout.
Rumlow turned back to the scene and, without meaning to, locked eyes with the Asset. He expected to see rage or anger, or, at the very least, a little annoyance. But, what he saw in the soldier’s face, instead, made his stomach drop.
Through a mask of blood, he could see that the guy looked absolutely betrayed. His face was so open and exposed; filled with hurt and misery, like he knew he didn’t deserve what he was getting or that he didn't understand why Rumlow wasn’t coming to help him. He’d never seen that emotion on the Asset’s face before. It was jarring. It made Rumlow’s mouth taste sour.
He turned away again, this time walking back around to the front of the van and away from whatever the hell this was. He heard the soldier shout again, then a white van rolled up beside Rumlow and the unconscious, bloody soldier was dragged in through the open door on the side. The soldier’s attackers all piled in after him, like some macabre version of a clown car, shouting things in a language Rumlow couldn’t understand. The door slammed with a bang and the van sped off down the street.
“One hour,” Rollins said, walking past him, humming a tune, and yanking open the driver’s door.
Rumlow walked back to his side of the van, stopping only to throw up on the curb.
______
“I’m glad to hear that you lasted the whole hour, Commander,” Pierce said with a smile, rounding his desk and dropping down into his chair.
Rumlow looked down at Pierce, confused. “What?”
“To be honest, I thought you might not actually allow the whole thing to play out,” Pierce continued, shuffling a few papers on his desk. “But you did extremely well.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand,” Rumlow admitted, shifting uncomfortably.
“You let six complete strangers abduct and torture the Asset because I told you to let it happen,” Pierce said, matter-of-factly. Rumlow looked down at his hands and cleared his throat, unsure how to answer.
“Yes, sir.” he said, finally, still looking down.
Pierce chuckled and shook his head, “Wonderful,” he replied, leaning forward on his elbows. “I just had to be sure you’d do what was necessary, even if necessity went against your own personal feelings.”
Rumlow’s head shot up, “My own…what?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at him,” Pierce continued, cocking his head and rolling his tongue out onto his bottom lip. “You think I don’t have eyes everywhere?”
Rumlow didn’t respond, but he felt his face flush slightly.
“Human emotions are sloppy,” Pierce explained. “Be careful. Feelings are a dangerous thing for the soldier. He doesn’t feel them the way that we do.”
Rumlow wanted, so badly, to tell Pierce what a load of shit that actually was. He’d seen the soldier experience a wide range of emotions, just in the last two hours alone. The guy had looked like he was going to cry, earlier. In fact, Rumlow had never seen the Asset look so—
Oh.
Rumlow finally understood. This wasn’t just about him.
“I will always do what Hydra asks of me,” Rumlow said, as if reciting a promise.
“I know, Commander, I just had to be sure you’d do what is asked when it came to him.”
“Whatever Hydra requires,” Rumlow replied, cooly.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Pierce responded with a wide smile, like an endearing grandfather would give his grandson for winning a Little League game. It made Rumlow sick to his stomach.
______
The soldier wasn’t quite asleep, but it was close enough. The IV attached to his hand was flooding his system with copious amounts of sedatives and he could see the soldier drifting in and out. The soldier would only be out of cryo for another few hours; long enough for most of his wounds to heal. The rest would happen while he slept.
He looked, almost peaceful, laying back in the chair and breathing deeply. His head was tilted to the side slightly, mouth slack and open. The black bruises that had covered the left side of his face had faded to a pale green. He imagined that the broken ribs would probably be healing just as quickly. By tomorrow, it would all be gone; like it had never happened.
Rumlow hadn’t witnessed what else had been done to the soldier in the hour that he was held captive, but the list of broken bones and lacerations wasn’t short. Whatever they had done, though, it was obviously as much for Rumlow as it was for the soldier, even if Pierce hadn’t said as much.
It was clear that the test was not just a test, but also a warning. Rumlow was getting too close and the soldier was getting too soft. And, in true Hydra fashion, the message had been delivered in equal amounts of pain to both parties.
Rumlow got the message loud and clear. And, judging by the amount of drugs being pumped into the soldier, he could safely say that the soldier had gotten it as well.
He stood there for another moment, just watching, before he realized the soldier was looking back at him. His eyelids had peeled open, just barely, and a sliver of iris showed through. Rumlow’s stomach tightened. The soldier blinked at him a few times before his eyes closed and he was dragged back under by the drugs.
“Hail Hydra,” Rumlow muttered to himself with a sigh.