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The worst thing, the absolute worst thing is that it only hurts for a minute.
They wheel him in on a gurney, held together by nothing more than stiffened sinew. Everything is real hazy. It’s like he’s hurling down a long tunnel and towards a light at the end. A paramedic pumps his chest, her face tiny and frightened.
It doesn’t hurt. He should be screaming right now but it doesn’t hurt. What he feels is a little more than an impression left inside his bones. He sticks his tongue out, gagging at the taste of grease on his upper lip.
The doctors tell him he’ll make it.
They say it like it’s a fucking miracle.
Nobody sits with a dead man. People don’t know who he is but he’s seen suits skulk about, looking for strips of strips of delicious, carrion-flavored intel.
Hell, if they want to put his burnt carcass on trial, they’re welcome to it. Romanoff’s on TV. God he hates her. He hates the way she talks, the way she walks and how nonchalant she is after dumping everything on the net because hours from now, days, weeks, months, years, they’ll find bodies all over the world and her hands are soaked in them.
The nurses stare at him with pity when he tells them to shut it off. They give him extra doses of morphine to tide him over in hopes that his heart will stop all on its own. Most days, he agrees. He wills for their fingers to slip, for them to be his angel of mercy. It wouldn’t take much. Just one more push of a button.
He feels a hot flush of gratitude when the asset sits beside him. The attending nurse does not even bat an eye. She moves around him like water down a stream, parting in eddies around a rock. She probably thinks—oh, John Doe has a visitor. John Doe has a friend. He opens his mouth trying to find something, anything to eulogize his last moments. But the asset disarms himself and places his gun at his fingertips, no more a killer at his side than a retriever is a wolf.
“Control is dead.” The asset reports bluntly. “What are my new orders?”
He gapes. This is not the way it’s supposed to happen. The asset is supposed to kill him. He grabs for the gun but his arm holds suspended, fingers swollen like burnt sausages on end. The gun falls to the floor with a clatter out of reach. The asset places it back exactly the same, down to the millimeter, as he repeats, “My orders?”
“Fuck your orders!” He whisper-shouts in hysteria. Some of the words catch in his blistered throat, tumbling past the boiled teeth. “You have your old ones.”
The asset peers at him with startlingly clear eyes. He has no idea why that is. It’s not as though discount lobotomy struck the asset blind but they are remarkably blue.
He suddenly feels the need to see the sky. He does not wants to die in a hospital, in a bed surrounded by the sick and the dying. His end should have been when the fucking building came down on him. Not like this. His death is his own now.
“What is my next mission?” The asset insists like a fucking two-year-old.
He curls his lips back.
“You want a mission?”
The asset nods.
“Get me out of here.”
Despair gnaws at his stomach. The asset returns after appropriating a wheelchair and lifts him off the bed, folding his arms in his lap.
It doesn’t hurt. He barely feels the pressure when they touch like a bruise in the shape of a thumbprint or a sore muscle from running too hard. There’s not an ounce of feeling left in his arms even though he sees that they’re there. They smell like Sunday barbecue and he is fucking terrified.
A blanket is spread over his knees—one knee. The doctors took the left away while he wasn’t looking. The saline wraps around a pole. The crisp morning air makes his lungs ache. People stare from all directions and the asset cups his chin when he breathes too fast, tilting his head so he can see the sky.
It’s beautiful.
The asset secures a vehicle and places him in the back. He hisses as he is strapped in. The belt pulls too taut around his chest and it feels a little like he’s suffocating. The asset loosens the straps, fingers brushing against the pulse point in his neck, wrist and temple. He doesn’t know what the asset finds but it seems to satisfy him because the door closes and the engine starts, the windows peeling back just a crack.
He tries to stay awake but drifts off, glaring holes into the back of the asset’s head. He dreams of things—things that happened a long time ago. When he wakes, he doesn’t nearly feel the urgency to sock the asset in the face.
The building the asset acquires is smack in the middle of the evac zone, cushions still warm from when its inhabitants fled. There’s a steel beam stuck in the rooftop that teeters towards the neighbor’s yard. The asset assures him that his concern is unnecessary. The beam does not penetrate beyond the bedroom.
“Stop.” He snaps. “No one cares alright?”
The asset falls silent and carries him inside. It’s cozy. He feels his face pull when he’s laid in the dining room, the table and the chairs all crowded against the wall. The asset gets him a glass of water, helps him drink it when he can’t, and sets up an IV and the morphine drip, examining his burns.
Despite his nap, he feels drowsy. The asset tucks clean blankets to his chest and pillows towels under his head.
“Rest.” The asset says without inflection as he would order men to kill or to die.
Brock closes his eyes.
It’s morning the next time he wakes. The birds are singing and the newscaster’s voice is tinny on TV as rosy sunlight steals over the artificial blue. The dog-and-pony show is still on in the Supreme Court. Maria Hill takes a stand and he sees that she has yet to get out of the habit of lying. The suckers on Capitol Hill believe it when she announces herself as a paper pusher, a glorified secretary rather than the one in real power. He decides that he hates her too and rasps, “turn that shit off.”
The asset obeys without a second thought and he might have felt a little sorry for the bastard if he hadn’t been busy feeling sorrier for himself. He grunts when the asset tiptoes near like a fox checking out a snared bear.
“The fuck are you looking at?” He spits and it’s at this moment he realizes that he hates the asset of every fiber of being. He hates that the asset looks at him like this, like he holds answers to every fucked up question he conceived in his sieve-like brain. The asset moves, a lag to his steps when he takes the initiative to bring him water. Even then, there is a kind of grace in the way he minimizes sound, stirring in the powdered pills without the spoon ever touching the sides.
He doesn’t want it; he strikes the glass out from the asset’s hand and sees the flesh-and-blood fingers flex defensively. For a minute, he even thinks that the asset might hit him.
Brock loosens a maddened grin as the glass hits the carpet and rolls to his foot. It’s cool against his toes. Sensation cuts off at the meat of the big toe but he can still feel. He grinds the whorls against the smooth surface, the muscles in his cheek twitching like a guitar chord. The asset takes the glass away and backs away. He grits out, “Give it back.”
The asset shakes his head.
“Give it back damn you!”
The asset denies him and shuffles off to refill the cup. Water is a cool glaze over the open sores in his mouth. It splashes down his neck, wets his collar until he can see every twist and bend branded on his skin. He jerks backward when the asset wipes his chin.
“Don’t touch me!” He snarls, toppling to his side. His shoulder bounces off the mattress and the asset reaches out before thinking better of it, hand curling inward, tucked protectively against his metal arm.
Sunlight pours in slanted like amber liquor, warming the stump of his leg. The asset is watching when he screams.
The next time he wakes, he needs to piss. Badly.
The catheter is out which is good because catheters are not sexy. But it also means that he can’t just piss lying down and expect the nurses to clean up. He has to get to his feet—foot—and walk, hop, skip, bounce, or swallow his pride and call for help.
Over his dead body.
He can’t feel much. His entire body is a spot of numbness like a leg gone to sleep. There is no pain. A slight ache at his back and an itch between his ass-crack, a mere suggestion of it like there’s a greater force prompting him to curl up on the floor and weep.
Growling, he tugs his arm free of the sheets and sees his fingers wiggle on end. He grabs the edge of the mattress—missing because there must have been more damage than he thought—and rolls onto the floor. The wall is no use. It’s too slippery and smooth.
His knuckles catch against the cream patterns and he slaps the wall, bloated palms bouncing off. The asset finds him glaring at the speckled wallpaper and crouches down to turn him over.
“I need to piss.” He grits out in humiliation.
The asset nods.
The asset leads him to the bathroom, propelling him forward with a steadying hand. Warning the asset to keep his eyes forward, Brock fumbles with the zipper, face burning—or would have been if there was any healthy skin left—when he sees his dick, soft and flaccid. Thank god for small mercies it’s intact but he can’t stand to look at his blackened fingers grope himself. He shivers when he feels the bump and the ridges of ingrown nails and dead skin before realizing that his math is off. His left hand has too few fingers.
With a hoarse shout, he lets go of his dick and ends up pissing all over himself, scalding the soft inside of his thighs. Some of it dots the toe of the asset’s boot and the asset squints at him through a mess of brown hair like he’s malfunctioning.
He swears loudly, shaking out his hand as though that would make his missing fingers sprout back but it doesn’t. It just makes him dizzy. He bumps against the sink and that’s when he sees his reflection.
It takes him a while for him to recognize that it’s him, not anyone else. The asset strips him and mops his legs. He turns to push him away and the thing in the mirror turns to mimic his movement. When he raises his hand, it raises his hand. He opens his mouth.
“Jesus.”
Fingers crawl into his mouth, blocking his airway so he can’t shout. It looks like he’s got on a Halloween mask, the face of the Red Skull in the eighties remake of the Captain America movies. He had one somewhere. Used to scare little kids with it until they got wise to his ways.
“Agent Rumlow.” The asset barks, so human he could almost convince himself that it was a man.
He punches the mirror again and again and again, splintering its silver surface into a thousand pieces before hitting that too. An arm wraps around his chest and he screams, bucking against the grip, trying to sink his teeth into the asset’s stubbled lips. The asset mutters nonsense in Chinese. He assumes it’s Chinese. Junior spoke Chinese. He hadn’t known any of it stuck.
The mirror scatters from his hands like granulated sugar. He smears blood on the couch, on the cushions and the afghan draped across its arm. His heart squeezes and this is more familiar. He focuses on the pain when his leg gives out, his vision narrowing to a single eye. There’s too much oxygen in him and his lungs spasm, trying to cough it all out.
The asset palms a pill against his mouth, rubbing the chalky bitterness against his tongue.
“What is it?” He rasps and the asset responds honestly, “sedatives”.
He takes it, licks every last bit of it from the tip of the asset’s fingers before leaning back, head lolling as his shoulders slump in exhaustion.
It hits him for the first time that his life is over. Hydra is gone. He won’t walk away from this—he can’t. This isn’t something Cooper can stick a band aid over and expect to be better for the next mission. There is no next mission, not for him. Last he checked he wasn’t a fucking lizard, the Hulk or even a mutant spider-man. His leg won’t grow back and neither will his fingers. He can handle his lost fingers but he can no longer disappear into the crowd. He can’t climb mountains or sleep in the dirt under a blanket of stars. He’s seen guys that were burned. They don’t ever recover. He swallows. The life as he knew it is gone.
The asset is gentle with him as though he’s ever known tenderness in life. He sinks heavy into the cushions, closing his eyes and opening them when he sees the impression of a red skull burnt black beneath his eyelids.
The irony does not escape him.
“Did you know him?” He says out loud when the asset tilts his head to show that he is listening. “Never mind—you know what, git. Get the fuck away from me.”
The asset denies him, unsurprised at his less-than-appreciative response.
“I don’t fucking need charity—just leave me alone!”
“No.” The asset repeats, throwing the afghan over his legs. “You are my mission.”
“Steve Rogers was your mission.” He hisses. “You let him live.”
“Yes.”
He feels so tired.
“Go away. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”
The asset doesn’t go away.
He doesn’t ask again.
He needs to strategize.
The asset cleans up the bathroom but he can still see his face when he tries. The reminders are everywhere, in the glass, against marble, jeering at him from polished wood. He recognizes, once the shock wears off, it’s not too bad. He’s not about to win beauty contests anytime soon but he’s got some flesh left to his cheeks. Some muscle in his jaw.
Who the hell is he kidding? He’s fucked up.
His arms are weak. His legs are weak. He can sit up for maybe two seconds before the asset has to catch him. Brock stares down at himself in disgust. He’s looking at years of recovery at the very least.
New skin rises under the sores and scabs but they can’t feel. They’re shiny and pink like the doctors stuffed the holes with putty and expected them to mend. It doesn’t change the fact that he is weak and vulnerable in a world which has no place for either and placing himself at the asset’s mercy is about as safe as letting his ex near his cock.
The asset, oblivious to his quandary, feeds him by the hour. He doesn’t know what the asset gets out of their arrangement. The asset only ever answers to one person. Past tense. Answered. He seemed to remember that just fine even when he forgot everything else.
The asset sets his IV, flushing his arm with alcohol. It tingles and he flexes his finger, curling one out of three in his left hand. Relief tugs at his mouth despite himself. He’s tired. He wants to sleep. He wants to laugh, have a beer but this is all he’s got. Spare parts and a broken machine.
The needle slips past the bone in his wrist. He’s no doctor but even he can tell that his arm looks bad. When the bandages come off, it smells like someone took a blowtorch to a live hog. His skin even peels back in bacon-colored strips.
He looks away.
He never knew how hard it would be waiting for his body to fail and for his flesh to rot from inside out. The asset presents him with a protein shake and he turns away ungratefully, lips pinching into a frown.
“You have to eat.” The asset orders in a graveled voice. The words come out a dulled rumble until he barely understands it. He clicks his teeth. What can the asset do to him? What can the asset possibly do to make this worse?
“How do I know it’s not poisoned?”
“It’s not.”
“Prove it.”
The asset takes an experimental mouthful and his eyes bulge. Brock thinks—well shit. Maybe the bastard did poison it. There goes his retirement.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” He demands when the asset doesn’t say anything for the longest time. Simply swirls the cinnamon in his mouth before letting it dribble down his chin. Noticing the scrutiny, the asset wipes his mouth with a sleeve.
“It does not taste right.”
“It’s cinnamon.” He says disparagingly. “You’re figuring that out now.”
He actually likes cinnamon but it’s pretty fucked up as far as flavors go. The asset sticks a finger in his mouth like a three-year-old and rubs his gums, unsure if he even likes it. It occurs to him that the asset doesn’t know what a flavor is. This is an entirely new experience for him.
“Cinnamon is food?”
“Cinnamon is flavor.” He answers flatly.
“Do you like cinnamon?”
A grimace pulls a muscle from his cheeks.
“Just give me the fucking thing.”
He wonders what the asset’s been eating.
They used to keep the asset on a steady diet of protein bars and liquid supplements—no additives because that shit didn’t keep. It isn’t like the asset had a comparable shelf-life to manufacture the fucking things either. He drinks water—at least he’s not completely retarded—but he’s not sure how much of that extends to consumption of things that doesn’t look like glue.
Most of DC is still in turmoil. Cap and his super friends kept the damage to minimum but there was some serious hardware falling from the skies and the headline news includes a dumb kid who blew himself up over a fancy grenade.
On top of that, the oversight committee hearing is ongoing. Romanoff is on the cover page of the Times. Fury is dead. Everyone with level-seven clearance and up have been nabbed. Below are recruited by agencies who want shit Shield had on other agencies. Rogers doesn’t appreciate people putting words in his mouth and when he’s done chewing out a general, he thinks that he almost likes the guy a little.
“I knew him.” The asset bleats at the freeze frame of Steve Rogers being sworn in.
The asset looks to him for confirmation and he kicks him. This isn’t something he wants to talk about.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before coming to me.” He says cruelly and changes the channel. Someone’s trying to sell him a plaque of a plastic fish. He watches until his eyes start to hurt.
He sleeps. All he does is sleep. But he finds himself awake longer and longer as mobility returns. He looks up when the asset when the asset returns from a supply run, shaking all over like a frightened pup. It looks like his left arm is completely trashed; it’s sticking out at an angle. Can’t be terribly fun to sleep with. The asset takes a knife from his ankle and lays it next to the gun between them.
“Medical supplies.” The asset reports, dumping the goods on the floor. “For your burns.”
The asset brings him breakfast, protein powder and something pureed.
“You couldn’t grab pizza while you’re at it?” He snaps crankily. He tells the asset to taste his food because who the fuck knows what’s going on in that broken brain of his and it’s become a habit. The asset called him a mission and his mission is to make the asset’s life hell. He’s honestly sick of cinnamon at this point.
“Do you prefer other food?”
“Why the hell does that matter?”
“You matter.”
He ignores the asset.
He examines the array of burn medication. “Just so you know, I won’t bail you out if you get caught.”
"I won't." The asset assures him, presenting him with a fat roll of bills.
His eyes narrow.
“Where did you get this?”
The asset rattles off a string of numbers. Coordinates. He doesn’t recognize it.
Slowly, he asks, “safe house?”
The asset shakes his head.
A cache of some sort. Safe box maybe, a bank account. Not all of them would have been listed in the Shield database.
He tries again.
“Do you know where the safe houses are?”
“Yes.”
His jaws ache with anger.
“Then what the hell are we still doing in this dump?!”
“You are injured.” The asset replies frankly. “You are a liability.”
He holds his breath and counts to ten. The asset isn’t wrong but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to knock his teeth out.
“Take me there.”
The asset looks disgruntled at the command.
Tough titties.
“What foods do you like?” The asset counters and he barks out a laughter.
“Are you shitting me?”
“I don’t know what you like.”
He sneers. Tries. He isn’t sure if he’s got enough face left for it to work.
“And you thought what, that we’d braid each other’s hair and sing kumbaya?”
The asset’s gaze skims over his balding scalp in confusion.
“Never mind.” He says irritably and drains his cup. “Let’s get going.”
The asset bundles him up despite his protests.
It’s fucking June, the nip of morning air giving way to summer heat. But the asset makes sure to pad his foot and stump with cotton socks. They’re just delaying the inevitable. Once they’re at the safe house, the asset can disappoint someone else.
The safe house is located in a permanently closed hardware store sprayed liberally with neon graffiti. The asset helps him around back in his wheelchair where there is a door with a five-digit passcode. He rolls his eyes when he sees the asset hit zero five times. No wonder a nonagerian in patriotic tights found Hydra out.
The door clicks open and they go in. It’s lit inside with footprints trailing down the ramp, disturbing dust. Someone’s been in here recently or is still here. He lets out a violent sneeze that rattles his entire body.
The asset jumps in front of him with his gun trained on target.
“Who are you?”
It’s Allen. Of course that rat-faced white-trash SOB was alive. While everyone died aboard the helicarriers or taken into custody, Allen survived.
“Put your gun down.” He barks but he suspects Allen only does so because of the asset. The asset glares Allen down and Allen swallows nervously. Allen is a relatively new recruit. He wasn’t there in the nineties when Pierce gave the okay to operate the asset on US soil. All he knows is hearsay and the blank template who gives—gave—Kirkland nightmares.
It looks like he’s stuck with the asset for a while yet.
“Agent Rumlow.” Allen sputters in awe. “You’re alive.”
“Yeah,” He says sarcastically. “Thanks for the visit by the way. The flowers were a real nice touch.”
Allen flushes crimson.
“I didn’t...” Allen licks his lips and falls quiet, eyeing the asset. “You found the asset?”
“The asset found me.” He corrects coolly. “Which is a hell lot more than I can say for you.”
The asset seems pleased at the backhanded praise. “Report.” He continues, cutting off whatever bullshit excuse Allen’s made up. “Have you made contact with any of the others?”
“No.” The man whines. “Jesus, it was a mess. They rounded us all up. Everyone not-Hydra pretty much handed us over to the feds on a silver plate.”
“How’d you get out?”
“I was in the garage.”
Which meant that Allen planned on running even before Cap came and fucked shit up.
“...just ducked my head until it was all over.” Allen shrugs. “I heard about this place from Agent Russo. She uh... she didn’t make it.”
The asset cocks his head back.
“You’re lying.”
He looks up sharply to see Allen tremble.
“No, no! I swear... I didn’t... oh fuck—Romulus-Egaria-Decima!”
Kill codes in case the asset ever got loose. It’s one thing to lose him in Europe, it’s quite another to lose him in a country where people have been fed a steady diet of Captain America and his Howling Commandos.
He dives to the floor. The landing jars him. His wrist might even be broken. But the asset moves. Bullets punch the air in staccato bursts. Either Allen had been lying about the survivors or he’d picked up a new crew along the way.
“No Jesus, stop! Don’t shoot him!”
He grits his teeth when Allen gets gutted along with the two men he had looting the place. Brock obligingly covers his head and waits. It’s not long before the asset comes back for him, torn up with blood smearing his teeth. The arm makes a loud clanging noise when it hits the floor. The asset doesn’t even bother to tuck it back at its side, it’s completely loosed from its socket. They’ll have to cut it off if they don’t get it fixed soon and Brock shakes in spite of himself, slapping the asset’s hand away.
“Some weapon you are.” He gripes as the asset re-rights his wheelchair and sits him down. Blood stains his bandages and he hates its bright color. “Why the fuck didn’t you duck? Thought Rollins got you out of this habit.”
“Rollins?” The asset repeats.
“Figures you wouldn’t remember. ‘bout as reliable as the cable company. Took them eight fucking months to fix my subscription because Elbasan and why the hell am I telling you this? It’s not like you’ll fucking remember—“
“It does not matter.”
“It matters to me you son of a—“
He jams a hand in the asset’s armpit to fix his arm and freezes when he feels a jumble of bones.
“Your ribs are broken.” He says flatly. “Take care of that first.”
The asset admits.
“I don’t know how.”
“Then learn!” He shouts. “For once in your life, remember something!”
The asset promises to try and he turns away in disgust.
They find the usual array of things to have on the run—ID, passport, guns, cash, bottles of water, burner phones, table wine and peanut butter. There’s also a laptop connected to the Shield database except that’s down. In the past weeks, most of the sensitive information has been deleted in the interests of national security but the identification of Hydra agents, they’re still up. He’s supposed to be dead. Rollins is dead. Kirkland is missing. Cooper is dead and his family is in witness protection. He thinks about the other names he doesn’t dare read. Instead, he asks the asset—“Where is the next safe house?”
The next house is empty.
Shield or whatever diminutive it answers to—he knows about Phil Coulson and his ragtag band of misfits—have cleared this place out. But he can see the frame of a lab in one room, defunct storage units, glass monitors, grates and chains.
“It’s empty.” The asset says unnecessarily, wheeling him in, and waits for further orders.
He sighs. At least no one’s firing at them this time.
“There’s got to be something around here we can use.”
The asset frowns, scratching at the spot of blood on his chin.
“This mission is pointless.”
He punches him. The asset looks surprised.
“Only I get to decide that.” He snarls. “This is my mission, do you understand that? My mission, my team, my friends. If this is too pointless for you, too fucking bad.”
The asset responds, “I am your team.”
He leans back in disbelief.
“You’re shitting me right? You? You’re barely human. You’re three millimeters away from becoming the human terminator. We are not a team.” He emphasizes. “We were never a team.”
The asset mulls this fact over. He moves away spitefully.
“Go.”
Thirty, forty minutes of a nap and silence later, he finds the asset sitting in a dusty chair, staring up at the ceiling with blurry eyes.
“What are you doing?” He demands, arms sore from the wheelchair. “I didn’t tell you to sit around and do nothing.”
“I thought...”
“I don’t pay you to think!”
“You don’t pay me at all.” The asset says darkly and he blinks because this is new. But the asset has diverted to his catatonic state, eyes ringed pale white.
If Hydra had succeeded, the asset would be in an identical room, lights turned up high around his face. They’d tinker with his arm first. Ask him its function and response. He would know there was something wrong. The asset always became violent in the chair. He screamed too if he cared to hear. Only Pierce had ever been certain of his invincibility. Sure that the asset would never turn against him, trusted his machines and men to keep him the perfect soldier.
The asset had left his gun on the floor and his knives and the grenade. His mouth is parted and Brock realizes that he’s waiting for the bit. It disturbs him on so many levels he nearly turns away like he always does. Fifteen years in service to Hydra and he is afraid. His burns never hurt. The bruises have faded into a dull ache. Pain can’t distract him anymore.
“Get up.” He says.
The asset doesn’t respond.
“I said get up soldier.”
The asset gets up swaying like a drunken man.
This is what it’s come to. Fifteen years of service and nothing to show for it except cheated deaths. His skin prickles but it’s not quite pain.
“Let’s get going.”
It’s late.
At any rate, it’s not a good idea to go back to a house where a steam beam can crash through the ceiling at any moment. They get a room at a one-star motel. The proprietor doesn’t bat an eye when they pay with cash and ask not to be disturbed until noon. He croaks in response and waves them off, slurping his cream of mushroom.
A trick he learned from their old medic is, don’t panic. Don’t let your patients panic and for god’s sake man, don’t let them know you’re panicking too. Fear is infectious. Pain is not.
“What do you get out of this?” He asks, helping the asset tape his ribs.
“You are my mission.” The asset repeats and he rolls his eyes.
“Whatever. You hurt anywhere else?”
The asset shakes his head.
“Good night then.” And he closes his eyes.
Not two second later, the asset is shaking him as though he’s afraid that he’s actually gone to sleep.
“What?” Brock demands and the asset pushes a glass of water in his hands and several pills.
“You need to take these.” The asset tells him and rummages around the bag to pull out an IV and a bag of saline.
For once, he does as he is told. No lip service and it just winds up the asset further because the poor bastard thinks that he’s broken somehow. He just stops every couple of steps like a toy soldier who needs winding, wondering why he isn’t yelling at him or kicking him or something. Not the brightest moments in their relationship.
“Steak.” He says gruffly because he is a moron. “But it better be mooing when it’s served on a plate.”
The asset seems puzzled at the information.
He kicks, just for propriety’s sake.
“You asked.”
The asset cleans his burns, checks that he wasn’t too damaged during the day’s activity and pats him awkwardly on the shoulder.
“The man on the bridge.”
If he rolls his eyes any further, they’ll get stuck that way like his mother told him.
“The man on the bridge. You knew him. Steve Rogers, Captain America, the two of you can’t quit each other. Rollins owes me a fifty and I can’t collect.” He informs the asset, feeling cheated.
“I knew him.” The asset says gravely. “I don’t know him.”
“Did that make sense in your head?”
The asset glares.
“Sorry.” He bites out. “It’s... it’s not your fault.”
The asset stares at him as though hearing those words for the first time. He is struck with an uncomfortable realization that maybe it is.
He clears his throat.
“Go to sleep. We’ll hit the other places in the morning.”
He has the bed, the asset takes the floor.
The asset tells him. “Good night.”
He’s being punished for something. Probably.
In the morning, he can’t get up. His body is a giant bruise. He mouths around a mug to get his daily dose of nutrients and vitamins, barely protesting when the asset wheels him out the door into the crisp sunshine which has him cringing like a kid on Sunday morning.
The asset checks him over, radiating disapproval like he did this to himself.
He cuffs the asset on the ears when he tries to strip search him in the middle of the parking lot.
“Stop that, right now.”
The asset is worse than the mutt Cooper picked up in Bagdad. Burning with humiliation, he struggles to cover himself and doesn’t talk to the asset for the rest of the car ride. It’s not much of a deterrent since the asset checks his temperature six separate times and forces hot soup on him he bought from a food truck.
“I hate you.” Brock slurs when the drugs kick in. Drugs are awesome. “Such a pain in the ass, why’d you come back?”
The asset tugs his ski cap down to his ears.
“Should have gone with Rogers.”
There is momentary weightlessness when they turn a corner.
“...asshole.”
“We’re here.”
And it’s got cops, front and center. Investigation in progress. Officers in hazmat suits jump in and out of the slurpee shop and bring out boxes and boxes of paperwork and weapons. Damn—he thinks, eyeing the eskrima sticks in the evidence bag. He could have used that.
The entire building’s been roped off. Anxious storeowners wring their hands as the police parry their questions and redirects the traffic the other way. He might see a familiar face or two among the crowd. If they are, they are gone within seconds like a mirage. He’s not even sure he saw them.
He’s having a hard time keeping his eyes open and he yawns, tears wetting his eyelashes. As he continues to watch, he finds himself drifting. Disturbed only when the asset shakes him to pour water down his throat. At one point, there was a hotdog with too much relish. He needs his team.
“Rest.”
The asset puts him in the back, pads him with enough blankets and towels to direct Bubble Boy II: Bubble Boy takes DC. Fuck. He’s exhausted.
His fingers snag the asset’s shirt.
“You need to...”
“...acknowledged.”
What the fuck did he say?
He wakes up and there’s a stranger leaning over him. He yells because that’s what normal people do when they find complete strangers leaning over them but the asset is not a normal person, he’s forgotten in the brief seconds between sleep and wakefulness, and the asset pins the stranger to the floor with a knife poised over his pulse. Brock stops screaming because honestly, he’s seen weirder shit.
It turns out that the stranger—now blubbering, the seat of his pants dark—is a doctor or knows enough about medicine that he can fake it. The doctor keeps giving the asset these panicked looks which in turn gets the asset’s hackles up and now he has a headache. He listen to the man stammer that he needs to go to the hospital. Third-degree burns need specialist care. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before and the man gives up, meekly jotting down a prescription for broad-spectrum antibiotics and pain killers. The doctor tells him to drink lots of water, avoid getting hot or cold, and please keep the homicidal man from killing him.
He snorts.
The asset tells him that he’s been sleeping for two days. That’s a lot longer than usual while he’s been under the asset’s care but he’s not surprised. Even now, he feels sleep tug at his eyes. He tells the asset he’s starting to smell and groans when he has to eat double for skipping meals.
“What are you, my mother?”
“Drink.” The asset says sternly.
He’s nude under the layer of blankets and for the first time, he can see his entire body, his shiny chest and his broiled arms, the gouges in his stomach and his streaked legs.
“Jesus fucking—“ Some of the skin’s coming off yellow-white. Scabs border his ribs. Swaths of dark red where he cooked alive. He loses appetite when he sees the hairless patches on his calves and the missing foot. His elbow pockmarked, he’s only got three fingers on one hand. He doesn’t want to see his face. Slowly, he lays back down.
“Agent Rumlow?”
The asset has a singular talent for inspiring anger and irritation at the smallest things.
“For fuck’s sake—it’s Rumlow. Nobody’s going to make me an agent anytime soon.”
The asset nods.
“I did not locate any of your team within the perimeters of our last coordinates. The safe house has been compromised. I advise against further contact.”
Brock grinds a palm in his eye.
“That’s not your call.”
“Your health is important.” The asset reminds. “You are my mission.”
“But why?!” He demands, baffled at the obvious concern. “Why does it matter? I’m not Steve Rogers.”
The asset shoots him a look which suggests he’s too stupid to live.
He growls.
“I know this.”
“Then why? Why do you care if I’m healthy or not?”
“You are my mission.”
He throws a fist in the asset’s general direction. Of course, he misses.
“That’s not an answer!”
When it looks like the asset’s about to spout that mission-crap again, he interrupts, “Explain. Use a fucking dictionary if you have to. Why’s it important I don’t die?”
“You’re not gonna die!” The asset says fiercely and there is something there, something he hasn’t heard before. It twangs uncomfortably close, clenching his gut and making him look away first. The thing is, he’s not sure it’s meant for him.
The asset composes himself.
“You are important.”
The asset is the greatest weapon ever made. He speaks in at least six languages on top of his head, a few more with a couple of jolts in his brain. He can calculate wind speed, distance and angle of approach. He blends in seamlessly with a crowd with a couple of adjustments, even functions like a normal human being if he’s out long enough.
And yet.
Brock turns his gaze back.
“Tell me what happened at the safe house.”
The asset relaxes.
“The police and federal agents have confiscated the contents of the safe house. Agent Hill was sighted as was Agent Carter and Agent Wei.”
He nods. “Go on.”
“They have discovered the identities of sleeper cells and the location of safe boxes within the immediate area. Unknown if they have further data.”
Fuck—he sighs. He didn’t think he can go back to Hydra but it’s sad knowing the fifteen years he’s invested have gone to waste.
“Did you find anything?”
The asset places a bag on his lap. He raises an eyebrow when the plastic crinkles and he sees the eskrima sticks still in the evidence bag.
“What the—“
The asset says immediately.
“You preferred to use the eskrima sticks hand-to-hand. You said it helped you subdue your opponents faster.”
He did, didn’t he? He looks at the asset in wonder. The asset meets his gaze.
“I remembered.”
“So you did.”
He feels awful. It takes him a while to place the feeling as guilt. He feels guilty. Wonderful. His throat bobs when he asks, “you got ‘em for me?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t ask why. He won’t insult the asset. It’s—it’s just terrifying is what it is, the potential sitting on his lap. The wipes are brutal. They’re done so the asset doesn’t remember, so he doesn’t have any holdovers from missing time or differed tastes. He rips the bag and weighs the eskrima sticks in his hand.
“Anything else?”
“Just this.”
“Stupid of you.” He grumbles, no heat left in his voice. “What if you were caught?”
The asset stares as though he’d never conceived a thing.
He needs to think and for that, the asset needs to go away.
“You forgot.”
The asset sits up, alert.
“I want my steak.”
Their eyes meet. The asset’s eyes are painfully blue.
“Rare.” He mutters. “Remember.”
The asset nods.
Hydra is gone.
That’s his first thought.
The connecting one is—the asset doesn’t need the wipe.
These are dangerous thoughts, bordering on treason except he can’t exactly betray an organization that no longer exists. Captain America’s campaign to kill the Nazis isn’t so lonely anymore. He’s got the Avengers. Tony Stark alone would decimate the ranks and that’s just what gets printed.
He has to decide because the asset won’t and the asset can’t and they can’t carry each other forever. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be selfish.
Brock sips his bottle of water. Makes it last until the asset brings back steak warm and bloody enough to paint the room red. He gives the asset a sizeable chunk and bites into it. It’s good. It drips down his chin and he doesn’t even mind when the asset tries to wipe his face in between his bites. If this is his last supper, he’s going to enjoy it. He’s still Hydra, he can’t see people treating him any different. But if he plays this right, maybe he can ask for a better life.
“I’m turning myself in.”
The asset stares at the plastic container as though it’s been poisoned.
He throws a wad of napkins at him. “You can come if you want to.”
“Your clearance level will put you on trial.” The asset says. “The committee may pursue aggressive method to gain information.”
He’s amazed the asset can say all that with a straight face.
“First of all, stop talking like that. Call it torture. It’s what it is. And second of all.” He pats his legs. “Can’t feel a damned thing. Tell them to do their worst.”
The asset processes all this. In the end, the asset has one question. He pours him water, crushes pills in the swirling bubbles and hands it to him, watching him down every last drop.
“Why?”
“You asked me if we were a team. You know the answer to that.”
The asset’s expression doesn’t change. He’s going to have to work on that.
Brock’s got to get in the habit of calling the asset by his name.
He holds out a hand.
“So what do you say?”
Three months after Shield shuts down, two men turn themselves in. Despite the public scrutiny on the developing case, their identities are never revealed in exchange for information on the terrorist organization known as Hydra.
Reality isn’t that clear cut.
He goes through interrogation, he gets immunity. But he also receives a metric fuckton of therapy and skin grafts. They save his face somewhat and tactile sensation is still hard for him, boiling is warm, freezing is pleasant and he once ends up with a heat stroke because he doesn’t sweat enough.
Steve Rogers is grateful for his cooperation but makes it crystal clear that Brock only exists on the asset’s say-so and any sign of distress or disagreement will put him somewhere so deep that not even God and the Holy Ghost can find him.
These days, he gets around pretty well on crutches. Stark is working on a prosthetic leg to match Jim’s new arm. They can be recovering Hydra minions together and maybe that will assuage the guilt a bit. He’s getting old. Not as spry as he used to be. It’s like he has a heart or something.
He kicks the asset because habit. Hard to break and all.
“Quit it.” Jim warns and moves his leg out of the way.
Jim or Bucky or whoever’s calling him what is better now. It’s certainly hard to be worse than how he was after DC. Rogers worries that Jim’s too quiet. Brock opines that he’s talking more than he has in the past seventy years.
“What’s so important it couldn’t wait until tonight?” He asks lazily, watching the sun scatter across the ripples in his arm.
Jim shows him a tablet. One of Stark’s he presumes. There is a picture. In that picture is a man.
His breath quickens.
“Is that?”
“Jarvis found this picture from a clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
“I’m going to kill him.” He says. He catches the tail end of Jim’s expression. “What, you have a better idea?”
“Seems like a waste.” Jim shrugs, wrenching the tablet from his grip.
“He let me think he was dead!”
“So we’ll go find him.” After a moment of introspection, he adds, "hear they've got great steak."
“We?” Brock asks warily.
Jim gets to his feet. “We’re a team.” He says, daring him to contradict him.
“You realize what a hissy fit Rogers will throw when he finds you missing right?” He points out.
“Serves him right.” The other man grunts.
Brock grins.
“Still pissed your sweetheart left without saying goodbye?”
“Shut your trap before I shut it for you." Jim says crankily. "You coming or not?”
"Might as well." Brock sighs like he's doing Jim a great, big favor. "Someone's got to keep you from the peanut butter."
Jim squawks in alarm.
"That was that one time—no you can't keep bringing that up—dammit Brock!"
He laughs until he cries.
A year ago, his life ended. He's never felt more alive.