Chapter Text
And I am aware now of how everything’s gonna be fine
One day, too late, I’m in Hell
I am prepared now, seems everyone’s gonna be fine
One day, too late, just as well
— “Fine Again,” Seether
--
I stood outside when the roof gave in
You crawled from the wreckage you were lying in
You were out of reach, and we’re out of time
But I took it all and toed that line
You held my hand and pulled me down with you
— “Torture,” Les Friction
-- -- --
November 2015
Rumlow loathed going to the Supr Savr by the shitty apartment he'd landed courtesy of the government’s free handouts. The A/C was always either blowing too hard or had shut off altogether, leaving the whole store stale and stagnant with sluggish heat and the sharp sour odor of sweat. The floor was sticky and half the containers had peeled-away labels or else the tops were cracked along their edges. But it was also the only store he could go to where the cashiers didn’t try to overcharge him — seriously, fifteen dollars for a dozen eggs — or other customers didn’t trip him up, or treat him like shit. He’d tried going a few times to the Circle-K adjacent to the gas station a block from his place but the cashiers there put their handguns on the fucking counter when he walked in: Can I help you, sir? The name overemphasized and dripping with sarcasm. Once he’d walked to the cash register with a fucking blue Gatorade and a bag of Funyuns and the cashier had looked him up and down, turned, unlocked the display case behind her, and said,
“You want Marlboro reds or Camels with that, sugar?”
The other stockers had laughed overloud and obnoxious. A woman in line behind Rumlow had said “you really shouldn’t be smoking in your condition, you know” and a policeman walking in — gun on display in its holster — said “honey, you know better’n to reason with Hydra Nazi scum.” By that point Rumlow had entirely lost what little appetite he’d managed to scrounge up and walked out, leaving his items on the counter, ignoring the cashier calling after him wait baby, you forgot your smokes! Since then he’d stuck with the Supr Savr no matter how shitty every single other damn thing about it was. Besides it was pretty rare he needed much of anything anymore: painkillers he got from the pharmacy, half-hoping the doctors had decided finally to lace the contents with cyanide; a case of water (he couldn’t drink sodas anymore, the carbonation irritated his throat too much); a couple packs of ramen. Most of the time he stayed in his stupid government-sanctioned house knocking back Ambien so he could stay asleep more than ten minutes. His physical therapists — the nicer ones — had told him several times he should go out, try walking, keep his muscles from stiffening up. Rumlow had tried it all of once before some little kids had started screaming at the scars on his face and hands and neck, and a woman walking her dog (a fucking Doberman that came up to Rumlow’s hip) had “accidentally” let it off leash, so that Rumlow ended up looking like a fucking idiot jumping onto a nearby bench and kicking his feet at the dog frantically:
Get the fuck away from me, mutt!
while its owner and every fucking passerby laughed at him. Rumlow saw a policeman that time, too, standing at a far corner, watching them through his sunglasses. He took an inordinate amount of time to straighten from where he was slouched against a street sign, and then to shuffle unhurriedly towards the scene. “Ma’am,” he’d drawled, laconic and uncaring, “I’m gonna have to ask you to restrain that dog.” Then he’d looked up at Rumlow who was still trembling on top of the bench, tilted his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose just slightly, and added, “Get off this fuckin’ park bench before I decide to arrest you for damaging public property.”
The woman didn’t exactly restrain her dog. As Rumlow got down it lunged at him and he tripped over the bench leg trying to get away from it again. He caught himself on the heels of his hands and a little on one knee; he could only partially feel it in his right hand, but he was still picking gravel out by the following morning, flushing the cuts again and again with warm water and isopropyl alcohol.
So yeah. He didn’t fucking leave his apartment unless he had to. But he’d run out of dishwashing soap and he was pretty low on instant coffee (for the other eighty-five percent of the time when not even Ambien would knock out the nightmares and he had to drink cup after cup to stay awake staring with strained burning eyes at the television). So he pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans and headed down the street.
It was relatively early. The few people out in the pre-dawn nascent light were either commuting to or just getting off work, and didn’t pay Rumlow much attention. By the time he got to the Supr Savr he was still drenched in sweat, heart knocking erratically against his throat, but that was usual, even for November in Manhattan. He’d left D.C. around this same time last year and had spent a while assuming he was sweating his way through forty-five degree weather because he’d been bedridden for so long. By the third dizzying encounter with yet another Concerned Citizen (“hey, aren’t you that Hydra guy…?”) he understood the truth of what was going on.
It was amusing, kind of, in a sickening dark way, to understand that even after a year and seven months, Pierce was still fucking winning.
Rumlow opened the door to the Supr Savr; the little bell overhead jingled. The sound was bright and too friendly. As he walked in one of the janitors glanced over at him and then away again, shuffling a little towards the wall.
Sometimes Rumlow thought he might have been able to get away with it, to blend in, if it wasn’t for the fucking scars. Even after all the skin grafts and filler injections he’d had done in the hospital. In another life Rumlow might have thought some of them looked badass. Right now he just wanted to rip his fucking skin off.
He grabbed one of the little hand-held shopping baskets, ignoring the look the cashier gave him. His hands shaking slightly he started down the aisles. The plastic was rough and irritating against the sensitive flesh on his fingertips.
Coffee was first, second aisle. Most of Rumlow’s sense of smell had been eradicated in the fire but coffee was so fucking strong it managed to burst through anyway. Rumlow debated for a while with himself whether to get orange juice or not, but ultimately decided against it; citrus was too acidic most of the time, and Rumlow didn’t want it just sitting in his fucking fridge while he waited for a rare good day, taunting him from the bottom shelf, reminding him how permanently he’d been fucked up.
He had to go to the back of the store for the soap. It was quiet enough in the front with just the janitor and the lone cashier, and an older woman buying birthday cards who hadn’t seemed to notice Rumlow at all. But in the back there was nothing. No sound, aside from the soft overhead buzzing of the lights. The fluorescent glare of them was too bright and seemed badly out of place with the dawn barely broken outside. It gave Rumlow the surreal lurching feeling of being in a gas station at two a.m., trying to choose between Pringles and Doritos, wedged up in the narrow aisle against toothbrushes and Junior Mints.
(Summer 1982. His second stepfather had gotten drunk, started coming after him with cigarettes to put out on his skin. Rumlow had mocked the way he walked and his stepfather had pulled a fucking gun on him in response so Rumlow got the fuck out of the house for the night while his mom did whatever unspeakable acts to calm his stepfather down.
He’d ended up at the gas station half a mile from his stepdad’s house. The little shop was open twenty-four hours and Rumlow slouched in, heart still panicking trapped in his ribs, and took his time shuffling along the aisles pretending he was there to buy something. He could see the cashier sneaking bored, half-hearted glances at him while she smoked down her cigarettes and watched late-night reruns on the mini cathode-ray set up in the wall behind the desk.
He ended up spaced out in the chip aisle for maybe ten minutes. He hadn’t realized it until he’d gotten inside the store but he was only wearing one shoe, and it was actually a slipper. His bare toes were on the smooth tile floor and the nails of them were filthy, and there was a little blood on one of them where he must have cut himself without realizing while on his trek from hell. He stood there staring intermittently between his bloodied toe and the bags of chips until at last the cashier — now snapping a piece of gum — called, “You gonna buy something or what, ‘cause there’s a ‘no loitering’ sign on the door and I’m supposed to enforce it or whatever.”
It is two in the fucking morning, sweetheart, he wanted to say, I don’t think anyone gives a shit, but he walked back up the aisle and out the door instead. It was the middle of the summer and the air was crushingly humid but his bare toes felt oddly chilled as he walked back to the house. His stepdad and his mom had disappeared and he made his quiet, unobtrusive way down the hall and into his own room. He shut the door, debated locking it, decided it wasn’t worth the inevitable fight. His mind, for whatever reason, stayed stuck in the chip aisle, circling back to it again and again over the next few hours until he was at last able to force himself to sleep — )
— and it seemed to have gotten stuck there again, at least temporarily. The slow-coming dawn was lighting up the east-facing windows and the floor, looking mutedly gray against the glare of the overhead bulbs. In the kitchen aisle Rumlow was staring at the same bottle of Dawn soap he’d been staring at five (ten? fifteen?) minutes ago. The Supr Savr store brand was right next to it and Rumlow’s mind kept ramming pointlessly against how if he bought the store brand he’d save sixty-three cents, and how just a year and a half ago he’d been in Europe spending thousands on hookers and blow and liquor and not giving a shit that none of it was what he really wanted —
His mind was floating on static, drifting absently through the years, the silence of the store, the chill of the overrun A/C on the back of his neck, the constant warped hum of the lights. His eyes felt burnt out with exhaustion and he was starting to wonder if he should lie down for a second in the aisle, use the soap dispenser as a pillow, when a footfall sounded beside him.
The fire had fucked up something in his brain. His reflexes weren’t great anymore. Technically he wasn’t even supposed to drive a car, but he was holding onto his license until they fucking took it from him, he could still control one fucking thing —
— anyway his response times were kind of shit and as such between the second he heard the footfall and the second he thought to set his own feet and center himself in preparation for a fight he’d already had his wrist grabbed and body shoved backwards against the opposite shelves. His head collided ungently with a package of one-ply toilet paper. He couldn’t feel the force of the hand bearing down on his wrist because it was right over the worst of the scarring but there was absolutely nothing stopping him from seeing that Steve fucking Rogers had somehow managed to ambush him at ass o’clock in the morning in a fucking discount store.
“Whoa, Cap,” Rumlow said. “Didn’t remember it being like that.” His eyes flicked down to Steve’s hand around his wrist, then back up to his face. He was ignoring — perhaps idiotically — the way his heartrate had tripled in speed. It had already been beating too quickly and now was making such erratic leaps and pulses he thought it might burst from his chest.
Steve’s mouth was so thin it was nearly bloodless. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled, voice so soft he was nearly whispering.
Rumlow’s eyes darted over Steve’s shoulder. He didn’t have the shield visibly on his person, but Rumlow knew that didn’t mean shit. He twisted his hand a little in Steve’s grasp but Steve didn’t let go. Rumlow was pretty sure he felt his hand tighten.
“You’re going to listen to me,” Steve said, “and we’re never going to fucking speak again after this.”
His voice was beyond fury. It was not even the flat businesslike command tone he’d adopted in the field when Rumlow had worked with him on STRIKE missions. He sounded very much like someone was sitting inside his brain pulling wires on his — whatever the section was that controlled anger, or rage, or the instinct to punch someone in the mouth. He was talking and Rumlow’s brain was zoning out again because he hadn’t spoken to Steve nor seen him in person since April of last year. The last time he’d heard anything about him outside of generic Captain America surprises pediatric cancer ward type stories had been in October of last year. IN A STUNNING MOVE FROM THE JUSTICE SYSTEM —
“ — and if you fucking set foot over either border — ”
“Hang on a sec, Cap,” Rumlow said, and this time Steve dug his nails into his wrist so hard Rumlow could actually feel it. “Sorry, my hearing’s not as good as it — ”
Steve’s nostrils flared out. Impossibly, his jaw clenched even tighter. Rumlow rolled his eyes. Against the back of his neck the A/C abruptly cut out. He could see where the sunlight was crawling steadily over the grime-coated floor. It combined with the artificial overhead lights washed out Steve’s skin and hair until it was as though he’d been smudged into the store, pale furious imitation of himself.
“You gonna make a big fuckin’ deal about disabled vets needing special accommodations now, Cap?” Rumlow asked nastily. “I thought you were supposed to be all righteous or some — ”
“You aren’t deaf,” Steve snapped, “and you’re barely a fucking vet.” He jerked on Rumlow’s wrist for no reason. Rumlow refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing him wince. He just leveled him with his best Hydra glare — shut the agents up every damn time — and said,
“Whatever the hell I am I didn’t fucking hear anything you said, so fucking say it again.”
Steve looked like he wanted to press some secret device in his ear and order his stupid friends to come crashing through the walls or the windows and open fire. He was holding tightly to an envelope in the hand not currently occupied with cutting off Rumlow’s fucking circulation and Rumlow watched him suppress several emotions before finally handing it over. Rumlow had to set down his shopping basket in order to take it because Steve still refused to let him go.
“There’s an address in there,” Steve said. “You’re gonna go to it, and you’re gonna stay there. You’re not coming back to New York. You’re not going back to D.C. If you ever cross either state border again no one is going to grant you immunity.”
Rumlow’s eyebrows furrowed. “The fuck, Rogers?” He was looking at the envelope; its exterior was blank, and Rumlow was (pretty sure) Steve wouldn’t hand him an anthrax-laced envelope in public, but still. Lately he’d been feeling a little wary about opening mail, more so when it didn’t come with a return address. At least the letters in his P.O. box last week hadn’t been covered in dried shit.
“No one wants you here,” Steve said. Rumlow remembered the way he’d smiled at him when they worked out together in the SHIELD gym. Best damn sparring partner I’ve had this century, he’d said once, and Rumlow had made some crack about how Steve didn’t have to flatter him; he knew he was a cut above whatever pickings he got in his nursing home. “SHIELD is willing to — ”
“Wait,” Rumlow said, “aren’t you supposed to pretend like SHIELD doesn’t exist or something? Doesn’t it automatically deduct you a thousand humanitarian points if you remind anyone how you and your friends got fucked over for years by Hydr— ”
“What was good in SHIELD is still out there,” Steve snapped, interrupting. “And there are still safehouses, and support systems for people who need them, and — ”
“Hell of an assumption to make about a guy you haven’t talked to in — ”
“We know about the death threats,” Steve said. His voice had changed, gone tighter, like he was forcing the words out.
Rumlow stiffened without meaning to. He looked again at the envelope. Then at Steve’s face.
“You fuckin’ with me, Rogers?”
“Why on earth would I — no. You know what?” Abruptly Steve let Rumlow’s wrist drop. Rumlow felt the blood try to rush back into it; he thought he could feel where the skin had gone clammy under Steve’s tight grasp. Steve reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know what?” he said again. “I don’t actually care. Look at the address or not. Go there or not. My job here is done. I don’t have to justify or explain anything else to you.” He turned to go back the way he’d come, then paused. His back was so tense.
“You leave Manhattan,” he said, still like he was having to pull the words up from some long-buried place inside him, “and all the shit’s gonna stop. I’m never fucking talking to you again, but that’s the one thing I can promise you.”
Over his shoulder Rumlow could hear some more customers whispering; he heard Captain America and he heard isn’t that — ? and he thought, for some reason, of how easy it would be for this conversation to end up on the national news. CAPTAIN AMERICA CAUGHT TALKING WITH EX-HYDRA TOP AGENT IN CORNER STORE AT SIX IN THE MORNING. It didn’t make sense for Steve to risk his career over a lie, although in fairness if he was sending Rumlow to his death then Steve’s name would get cleared again pretty damn quick.
He looked back, opening his mouth; he had no idea what he was going to say. But Steve had already disappeared.
--
Back at the apartment Rumlow stretched out on the filthy mattress that served as his bed when he could manage to lay flat. He’d dropped the envelope into the Supr Savr bag and now as he fished it out it felt faintly damp from the soap, and had a gritty texture to it where the coffee grounds had spilled a little. But when he opened it the type inside was still legible:
BROCK H. RUMLOW
NEW RESIDENCE: 1261 ESPLANADE AVE.
NEW ORLEANS, LA 70116
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
Then, below it, in slightly smaller type:
Mr. Rumlow:
Enclosed are two sets of keys: one for the house, one for your new P.O. box (location below). Also enclosed is a SHIELD-issued debit card, courtesy of Anthony E. Stark. Your monthly budget will be to the sum of $3000. Emergency use of funds can be requested (with no guarantee of acceptance) at the number listed below.
The debit card is encrypted. It is advised you do not inform anyone of your new location. It is also advised you leave your house as little as possible, except to get groceries. Wearing a disguise (such as sunglasses, a hat, etc.) is preferable to most, though you may also choose to have your food and other supplies delivered.
You are on record as receiving 300 mg monthly of fentanyl and 500 mg monthly of prednisone. Your primary care physician in Manhattan can continue to forward the drugs to you through a local New Orleans pharmacy, or you can arrange for a new physician once in Louisiana. If no action is taken within a month of your move-in date, we will assume you are staying with your New York-based doctor, and no further action will be required on your part.
It was stamped with the SHIELD emblem, and there were multiple printed signatures, none of which Rumlow gave enough of a shit to look at. Below all of it, including the P.O. box address and the number for emergency funds, there was a single line, handwritten, hurriedly scrawled:
You don’t fucking deserve any of this. At all.
Rumlow scoffed. He thought about crumpling it up, throwing it in the trash. Fuck Steve and his fucking humanitarian spiel of bullshit. Rumlow could fucking live through this shit; he’d been dealing with it now since last April, and the death threats had only started what, four, five months ago? He’d be fucking fine. He didn’t need SHIELD standing over his shoulder, wiping his ass, cutting up his meat and checking his temperature, making sure he was okay.
Outside his apartment door there was a loud, obnoxious laugh; someone said, “This where the fuckin’ Nazi lives?” and Rumlow heard a series of bangs, followed by something wet and solid thunking against the wood. He wasn’t in the mood, but he’d gotten shit from the landlady for not cleaning up the last five times it had happened, so he got up, waited until he heard their footsteps receding in the distance, and opened the door a crack.
A three pound bag of raw meat, still covered in blood, the plastic wrap burst open, contents spilled across the hall.
Well. Rumlow had seen worse.
He hesitated, then slammed the door shut again, twisting the lock so violently it almost snapped off in his hand. Fuck this. Fuck it. He walked back to the letter, snatched it up off his mattress. He’d never been to Louisiana; his first stepdad, the one he could barely remember, had been from there, or had been in prison there, or something.
He looked at the address. Esplanade. It sounded… well, it sounded like a name that wouldn’t fit in Rumlow’s mouth, or in his life. Too ethereal and exotic. Mysterious. It was the sort of shit that made Rumlow’s skin tighten uncomfortably.
A fuck-awful stench rose in the air. When Rumlow looked over at his door, he was (mostly) unsurprised to see some of the blood had begun seeping under the crack of it. Overhead he could hear his upstairs neighbors starting their fuckin’ loud-ass day. He was pretty sure they didn’t know who lived beneath them, but they were still absolutely fucking awful, stomping around their floor all day in what sounded like five-inch army boots, constantly rearranging furniture, yelling at each other in some foreign language.
Rumlow dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. His fingers scraped the edge of one of his scars. He thought of the months after the Triskelion fell, how even though he’d never recovered his memories of the actual day, he hadn’t quite been able to get the smells of fire and ash out of his nose, not until well after the trial. How for a long time he couldn’t even run the heater in his apartment, despite the temperature dropping steadily into the twenties, because the sound and the warmth of it triggered some ugly nauseated feeling he couldn’t chase down and couldn’t sleep off.
New Orleans.
At least it was in the south.
At least it would be on water.
--
June 2014
He learns that his failed mission is named Steve.
He learns that the new name Steve wants to call him is ‘Bucky’.
He learns that he has done many things wrong, and lots of people blame him, but other people don’t. Steve is one of the latter, and so are Steve’s other friends. Steve wants to help him, and he can’t say no, so he doesn’t.
He learns that there will be a trial. It won’t be for a while, because they have to gather evidence, but Steve and his friends say it’s okay. It means there’s more time to prepare. He isn’t entirely sure what the objective of preparing for the trial is, since he has done all the crimes he’s accused of, and there is only one form of punishment he knows. But when he mentions this punishment in front of Steve, Steve gets very quiet and frowns a lot. So he learns to keep his mouth shut about the trial, too.
He lives on a high floor of the building some people call Stark Tower and some people call Avengers Tower. He has the whole floor to himself, and he doesn’t know what to do with that much space, so he spends most of his time in the front room. Stark has a friend who lives in the walls and talks to him sometimes. His name is Jarvis. Jarvis asks very simple questions and calls him ‘Master Barnes’, because ‘Barnes’ is the other half of the new name Steve has given him.
(He doesn’t think it’s really his name. But it’s not his place to question Stark’s friend, or Steve, or Steve’s friends. So he keeps this thought to himself.)
The man who is not Bucky Barnes likes Stark’s friend. Jarvis is a robot, and therefore the most relatable being he’s met since crawling out of the Potomac.
Sometimes, late at night, he walks to the window. He feels like he’s waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what it could be. He can see down over a good bit of the city, and Jarvis can make the window zoom in on certain parts if he asks him to.
He doesn’t know what he’s looking for.
But he looks anyway.