"There are no prisoners with HYDRA. Just order. And order only comes with pain."
There had been pain. There had been a lot of pain. Not a be-put-in-a-machine-and-have-your-brain scrambled pain, and there had been choices made, but there had still been pain.
It had been his first week in the black ops unit. His first bloody week. Rumlow had a picture somewhere from that week. He'd just been a kid. Barely out of the army. His strike force had been assigned a mission. He had been so excited.
Well. Showed what he knew.
They'd been sent in to what was supposedly a terrorist base with the mission of rescuing a prisoner and bringing back whatever intel they could recover. But they'd been betrayed. Somehow the enemy knew they were coming. Of course, once he learned how deep into everything HYRDA was, it wasn't such a surprise that the enemy had known exactly where they would be, since it turned out that it wasn't a terrorist base. It was a HYDRA base.
Every one of his team members died that night. Every last one of them. But not him. He'd fought. He'd fought harder and fiercer than he ever knew he could. He'd felt rage, and anger, and terror, and desperation. He killed scores of them. It was that fight instinct that earned HYDRA's respect. When they finally took him down they'd decided to keep him alive.
HYDRA didn't take prisoners. Only recruits. They turned you or they killed you.
He hadn't wanted to die. He'd been weak. But what really did it, what really broke him, was when Pierce walked in and started calmly and coolly describing to him exactly how far HYDRA reached. And that's when he realized, there wasn't any point in fighting. There was only HYDRA.
Maybe a part of him still thought he could fool them. Win their trust and then betray them once he was well and truly free. But by the time he'd earned their trust, he had lost any part of himself that wasn't HYDRA. And that realization was a different kind of pain.
It became his life. It was his life. He didn't have friends. He didn't have relationships. There was HYDRA and that was it. He supposed with that kind of isolation it was natural that eventually he would go a little mad. Which was probably why he started to delude himself and call him his friend. The Winter Soldier. How could you be friends with someone who was dead inside? Though when he put it that way, he wasn't sure if he was taking about himself or the Soldier.
It began after the first mission he was assigned to with the Soldier. He'd heard stories about the man of course. In HYDRA, stories about the Soldier were popular. He was built up to be an unstoppable killing machine. He was a legend. And what better way to make yourself feel like a big man than to inflict a little pain on someone who was supposed to be so 'tough'. At least that's what some of the newer recruits thought.
Rumlow had walked in to find the Soldier restrained, as three recruits took turns using him as a punching bag. The recruits were laughing between swings and drinking. A shattered beer bottle was on the floor, and blood was dripping from one of the larger shards. Had they been cutting the Soldier?
The Soldier didn't fight, didn't resist. But the immense pain was evident on his face.
By that point, Brock had been around HYDRA long enough to have earned some authority and he soon had stopped the recruits' little 'party' and sent them off.
As he undid the Soldier's restraints he couldn't resist a certain jolt of fear. Would the Soldier lash out at him? There were stories…
But he didn't. The Soldier just slumped forward, breathing heavily, clutching his side.
"Here," said Brock. "Let me help you."
The Soldier looked up at him with the closest thing to an expression most people ever saw on his face. It looked almost like confusion. Probably no one ever offered to help him with anything. No matter how much pain he was in. Even when a doctor patched him after a mission it was cold, methodical, and sometimes cruel. The doctor didn't care about minimizing pain. Only making him heal.
Brock took the Soldier, and dressed the wounds as best he could. The recruits had really done a number. But at least the Soldier's healing factor would soon fix that.
Next time Brock and the Soldier were assigned to the same mission, Brock kept an eye out. It felt absurd to be trying to protect the deadliest assassin in the world, but there was something about him being abused and tortured that didn't sit right with Brock. Not while the man couldn't even fight back.
During their third mission together, a snow storm stranded them in a small town. Most of the team got put up in a rundown motel, but as the most senior person on the task force, Brock got better accommodations and he insisted that the Soldier stay with him. He said it was to keep an eye on the asset, but he didn't say it was to make sure no bored recruits decided to start torturing him again. Since that first time, Brock had heard more stories, worse stories, not least among them was that the Soldier was sometimes used as a 'test dummy' to teach new interrogators how to…'question people'.
It was a long cold night and Brock wasn't tired and it didn't seem like the Soldier ever slept. Who could blame him, given how long he spent frozen?
Sometime after midnight, Brock started talking. He wasn't sure exactly how it happened. He was pretty sure he started by grousing about the weather and how dismal it looked outside. But somewhere around four in the morning he was telling the Soldier about Amy…the girl he'd been engaged to, before he left after joining HYDRA. He couldn't bear to be with her then. It would be a lie. And if she ever knew the truth about him, it would kill her.
The Soldier never really responded much. He said a few things. Maybe asked one or two questions. But nothing much. It was all in the same tone he used when being debrief. Yet somehow, it felt like he was listening. And it was good to have someone listening after no one listening for so long.
After that he talked to the Soldier a lot. Brock even found himself calling him his 'friend' in his head. He knew it wasn't healthy. He knew that if the Soldier was actually in control he'd probably kill Brock for working with the people who'd turned him into a puppet. But it was better than nothing, right? Well, maybe.
Since he couldn't pay the Soldier back any other way, instead he paid him back by being kind whenever he was in charge of him and protecting him. When he was in charge of the mission, he tried to give the Soldier the less dirty jobs if he could. It was the best he could do. Not much. But the best.
Sometimes he wondered if the Soldier even recognized him. But he told himself it didn't matter. Deep down he knew he was only deluding himself in thinking he had a friend anyways. The Soldier was a mindless machine. Friendship didn't enter into anything. But Brock still found himself looking forward to the next mission with him. He always preferred it when the Soldier hadn't been recently wiped. He always seemed more natural then. It was easier to pretend.
When Rumlow met Steve Rogers it was a shock. When he was sent to take Rogers down, it hurt. It hurt more than any order had in a long time. And it hurt because he knew in a past life, Rogers had truly been a friend to the Solider. For one fleeting second, he imagined taking a different road. Helping Steve rather than fighting him. He could tell him about the Soldier. They could stop HYDRA. It was the first thought of rebellion he had had in a very, very long time. But he knew it was useless. There was no stopping HYDRA. And then he remembered the pain.
And HYDRA didn't take prisoners. He betrayed them now…there would only be pain and then there would be the end.
"I just want you to know, Cap, this isn't personal," he had said.
And he had meant it.
But he didn't have a choice.
Later, he watched Pierce debriefing the Soldier after the fight on the bridge. He saw the expression in the Soldier's eyes as he insisted "I knew him." It was a broken look. It looked like how Brock felt.
Maybe that's why he said it. He and the Soldier were alone, preparing before setting out. The platforms would be launched today. HYDRA would well and truly win the whole world. This was it. Brock privately considered the fact that he would probably blow his brains out tonight. He couldn't endure the world order that was about to come.
He glanced towards the Soldier. The man was stiff and silent. He always was after being under the machine recently.
This man had given him sanity. And what had Brock ever really given him in return?
"Bucky."
Brock hadn't ever said the name out loud before. He wasn't sure he had ever even thought it.
The Soldier looked up, frowning.
Brock glanced around. The rest of the team would be there soon and he didn't have much time. This was a pointless risk which he was sure would accomplish nothing. But what did it matter? This was his last day.
"Try and remember Steve. If you see him today…remember him. Steve. You know him."
"What are you talking about?" the Soldier asked.
But then someone entered the room, and it was as if the Soldier knew Brock was saying things he wasn't supposed to be saying, because he instantly turned away from him.
Brock sighed. There hadn't been any recognition in those eyes. Pierce had seen to that. Oh well. A wasted effort. It was all the fight he, Brock, had had in him. And it had been for nothing. And pathetic. Just like the rest of his life.
Hail HYDRA. For there was nothing else left.
Only that wasn't quite true. The day surprised him. In more ways than one.
The fight had been more difficult than he had expected. He had been surprised when so many SHIELD agents stood up and fought. He wondered briefly if, all things being different, there was a version of the world in which he might have been one of them. If he'd never gone on that mission all those years ago. If he'd never fallen into HYDRA's hands.
He had faced off against that man…Sam Wilson was his name right? And he had told Wilson what to expect:
"This is going to hurt. There are no prisoners with HYDRA. Just order. And order only comes with pain. You ready for yours?" Because I wasn't ready for mine, he had thought.
And then there'd been running, and pain, and fire, and he had wondered briefly, what's become of my friend. Because he was sure he was dying. And he might as well lie to himself if he was dying. And then there had been blackness.
Only that wasn't the end. It should have been. But someone pulled him out of the rubble. Someone took him to a private, secret hospital where no questions would be asked, by anyone. No one would find him here. Not what was left of SHIELD and not what was left of HYDRA.
As doctors put him on a stretcher and wheeled him away, he was just conscious enough to turn his head and watch a dark, solid figure, walk away out of sight. It was a figure he knew. A walk he knew.
The Soldier had come back for him.