Hello! So, for any readers of Ticker, I realize that Misty is being neglected (as I continue to fool around with other things). Misty will get some love very soon! Until then, I hope this random Brock one-shot* will hold you over. *(A strange, sudden fascination with Rumlow led to this...)
Before Brock could lay a final blow on Sam, she was through the door in a flash, body-checking Brock to the ground. Brock pulled his arms in close to his body and was able to stop any momentum he'd gained from taking the hit as he came very close to rolling right through a window. Eve stumbled from the impact and fell to her hands and knees, letting the disbelief of the moment pass before she grounded herself. Below her, Sam's eyes gleamed softly, as if in wonder and a blatant sense of relief.
"Are you okay?" Eve asked. She searched his face, finding nothing but a few grazes and a deep-set cynicism. "Say something!"
"I'm fine! Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."
"Right. Let's get you out of he—"
"Eve…" Brock called. His tone was quiet and strangely passive, especially for Brock Rumlow.
Eve looked up from Sam to see Brock standing near the window, his fists clenched and braced at his sides. The room became so quiet that Eve swore she could hear Brock's quick, albeit constant heartbeat from across the room. She watched the veins in his neck bulge to prominence and pulse—Eve could tell that he was angry and, in the same token, caught off guard by her presence.
"I know, you asshole! I know everything!" she shouted. "It was all a fucking sham."
"Not all of it."
"Oh," she said sarcastically. Her eyes started to water and, for a moment, she didn't register the moisture on her face. "Not all of it." Her tone was acidic and jeering. Eve slipped her hand behind Sam's back and gently helped him rise to a seated position on the floor. "How much of it?"
"Let's get this straight, Eve. I never had to propose to you, I never had to marry you, I never had to sleep with you, and I never had to fall in love with you," he replied sincerely.
If only eyes could roll any harder. Eve thought that too was a sham. "Says the walking, talking sack of shit. You're a liar. I trusted you! I gave you my body, Brock. My heart, my soul, everything in my head I gave you! For what? So you could use it against me? Against S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
"You're right, and I'm sorry."
"What's an apology gonna get you now?" she asked bitterly.
"Only you'll be able to tell me, Eve. You started as part of the assignment, okay? But everything changed when—"
Eve spat in his direction. Her eyes narrowed considerably. "Spare me." She pushed up through her arms and stood from her crouched position on the floor.
"You, yes." Brock pointed to Sam. "Not him."
Eve looked down at Sam—he looked frightened, like Eve would show some forgone sympathy for him and side with her husband. She didn't like the look. She was S.H.I.E.L.D. before Brock. She was S.H.I.E.L.D. now. She'd be S.H.I.E.L.D. no matter what happened today. Eve studied his bloodied, gazed face before she nodded to Sam in a seemingly wordless attempt to let him know where her loyalties lay.
"You'll go through me before you get to him," she said with finality.
"No, Eve. You're coming with me. You're coming home with me as soon as this is over."
Maria Hill's voice crackled through Eve's earpiece with good news: the controller chips were all successfully replaced, and the Helicarriers were no longer under Hydra's control. Eve's mouth broke into a slight smile, but even as hope filled her, the smile faltered. "According to Agent Hill, Brock, it's already over."
Brock's brows furrowed and his muscles seemed to tense against the black of his tee shirt. He turned around to face the window and, much to his surprise, watched the Helicarriers slowly veer into each other's path and collide in a blaze of fire and metal. Sam smiled, too. Eve was certain that she'd heard him whisper something like, "That's my boy." Brock, on the other hand, was not smiling. There was nothing that he liked about this moment. It was all wrong! With his fists balled tight at his sides, he whirled back around to face Eve, his face reddened and mouth tautened.
"It's over. All that shit you worked for. All the lies you told." Eve pointed past Brock and to the explosions in the sky. "There goes your assignment."
Brock was fuming. From where Eve stood, his flared nostrils seemed to breathe the explosion. He pointed to Sam who had just started to recover from the barrage of hits he'd bravely taken. "You," he hissed, and charged.
Before he could reach Sam, Eve delivered a swift right hook and a knee into his abdomen. She deflected the reflexive back hand and braced herself, planting her feet hard into the ground.
"I meant what I said, Brock. I'm not gonna let you touch him."
"That was sweet, honey. What you did for him, that was sweet," he said in jest, wiping a stripe of blood from his mouth. "But I don't want to hurt you. You know I can. You know I'll win."
"Well, I'll take my chances," replied Eve, raising her clenched fists just below eye level.
"You're putting your faith in a lie, Eve. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't what you think it is," he said, almost seeming to plead with her. "You may hate me now, and I may not be what's certain, but you don't have to do this."
Eve didn't reply. Her shoulders seemed to square slightly, and the hard-set grimace on her face tightened.
"Fine." The pain in Brock's voice is apparent. "Just know… that I love you. I've loved you, and I gave you a chance to back down."
Brock took a hesitant step forward before charging at Eve.
She couldn't dodge the first punch that Brock landed on her face, or the second. The third was deflected by a forearm that was subsequently gripped tight and wound behind her back. With her free hand, Eve slammed the heel of her palm into Brock's forehead, momentarily stunning him. Brock's grip on her forearm loosened just enough for Eve to slip free, hold his head in her hands, and drive her knee into his face. She pushed him away by his shoulders in order to have enough time to reground herself.
"I admire it, Evie. I really do," Brock said. He wiped away the bloody residue from his nose that rolled in streams down his face. "But I can't be nice anymore."
No sooner than the words let his mouth did Brock rush forward and knock Eve to the ground. Before she could register what had happened, Brock stomped a foot on Eve's chest, and she most certainly felt a rib break. He ground his boot heel into the center of her chest and pressed down hard thinking that, just maybe, Eve would tap out and realize where her real place was. There was a reason why people didn't spar with Brock Rumlow. Look where it'd gotten her: knocked down in a matter of seconds. But Brock knew that Eve was strong. He knew that Eve wouldn't back down without a fight no matter how tired and pained she was. But Eve also knew that Brock wouldn't relent—Hydra didn't take prisoners, and she was no different than anyone else. As much as Brock did really love Eve, Hydra came before her (just as she had openly admitted to S.H.I.E.L.D. coming before him).
Brock watched her face contort into a look of pain, but she wouldn't offer the smallest cry and let him have his moment of satisfaction. "It was supposed to be us, Eve!" he shouted. "I was gonna take you away from here. I was gonna let you live. You understand that, right?" His voice lowered to an almost pained whimper. "But you had to be a good girl for S.H.I.E.L.D., didn't you?"
"Eve!" Sam screamed.
Eve grabbed his boot with both hands and twisted hard to the right. Brock cried out in pain before quickly backtracking about three steps into an office desk. His pain, this diversion, gave Sam just a moment to approach from the side and get a single punch in before Brock knocked him back to the ground with a head-butt. Eve was able to rise quickly, albeit carefully, to her feet. She held her chest with one hand while the other hung rather limply at her side; Eve seemed to teeter slightly on her feet.
"Are we still—" Brock stopped to laugh quietly. "—gonna do this?"
Eve panted in response.
"Are we done, Eve?" he asked.
As much as it pained her to say, she whispered, "Yes," between sporadic pants.
"Are we done, Eve?"
"Yes," she whimpered. "Yes."
"Are you coming home with me, Eve!?" he shouted.
With pained finality, Eve shouted back, "Yes!"
"And we're done with him, too, Eve?" She didn't respond to that question. "Answer me!"
"Yes!"
Brock nodded. "That's my girl."
Across the floor, Sam gasped quietly in shock. He seemed to mutter a string of profanity under his breath. He couldn't believe what Eve was saying. They were done! Hydra had failed! She didn't have to go through with Brock's proposition as a last ditch effort of desperation.
"Come here," he said. "I won't hurt you. Remember what I said? I love you."
Eve took a deep breath and exhaled quietly. Her first step forward was slow and hesitant, but as she crossed the floor to Brock, her steps picked up speed and became more assured. In a moment, she found herself in Brock's embrace, carefully held up by his strong arms.
"I'm sorry," she cried, her face rooted in his shoulder.
"It's okay. It's okay," he cooed. "Oh, Angel Eyes. My precious girl."
"I'm so sorry."
Brock winced as his weight shifted onto the ankle that Eve had twisted—he could hardly bear to stand anymore. Safely in Eve's arms, Brock fell slowly to his knees, his own arms still wrapped securely around his wife. When his knees made contact with the floor, his arms were around her waist with his forehead pressed into the space between her breasts.
"I love you so much," he said quietly.
"I love you," she replied. Eve gently cradled his head in her hands. "And I'm so… sorry."
With her hands placed respectively on his head, and with a great pang of sorrow in her heart, Eve snapped his neck. Brock's body remained upright for only a moment before he fell face-first onto the ground. After the initial shock of what she had done set in, she fell to her knees beside Brock. Eve stared blankly through one of the rear windows and watched, but no longer registered the explosions coloring the sky. She felt… defeated. Either way this turned out, she was going to be… defeated.
Eve looked down at her dead husband lying prone on the bloodied carpet… and she screamed. She screamed so loud that the explosions around her seemed noiseless. She screamed so loud that, soon enough, her screams sounded like white noise. Eve fell violently forward onto Brock's body and wrapped her arms around his torso, presently unaware of the intense splitting sensation in her chest. She couldn't stop the tears or the bloody, mucous-like residue teeming steadily from her flared nostrils. While she had certainly put up the strong front for Brock during their scuffle, the strong front failed to hold up when her husband's lifeless body hit the floor with a soft thud.
"Eve!" Sam's voice couldn't even break her from the emotional fit. "Eve! We've got to go!"
She was so wound up in Brock's limp body that Sam had to pry her from him. Eve clung to his black tee shirt helplessly, and tore the collar when Sam ripped her away in frustration. Even then, Eve tried to bypass Sam to hold her husband one more time before the building surely crumbled and collapsed on them. Sam blocked her bodily, catching her own body in a large embrace before scooping her up into his arms. While she wasn't the heaviest woman he'd ever had in his arms, the extra weight significantly slowed his long strides toward the window. There was nothing else to do at that point. He didn't have time for mourning, and neither did she.
The Helicarrier entered the building through the rear windows, and suddenly this reality was very real and very bad. Sam bolted forward still juggling Eve in his arms. As bad as every inch of his body hurt, his feet continued to pound the floor and push him forward. He leapt over falling pieces of metal and dodged office desks, all the while managing to carefully sweep fallen debris from Eve's hair and eyes. Her tears wet his shirt. She seemed so helpless.
"Eve, I've gotta put you down! You hear me? You have to run, girl!"
While Eve wasn't so sure of her present capabilities, she wasn't going to let another person die that day. She dropped her feet cautiously and found her footing running alongside Sam toward the window.
"Please tell me you got that chopper in the air!" Sam paused. Eve couldn't hear Nat's reply as Brock had knocked out her earpiece in the skirmish. "Fourty-first floor! Northwest corner!" There was a pause. "Not an option!" he shouted.
A million thoughts ran through Eve's head as she approached the window. She thought of Brock. She thought of Hydra. She thought of her life with Brock and, likewise, the life ahead of her. Everything that happened, everything that was to happen, was for now on, how everything had to be. But when Eve crashed through that window with Sam, for only a moment, she forgot everything. Brock wasn't a notion. Neither was S.H.I.E.L.D. She felt as if someone had turned her loose into the sky.
Colliding with the floor of Fury's helicopter immediately brought her back down into a painful reality.
Hello, again. I realize this is not the way that Winter Soldier ends for Brock, but I envisioned this for so long, so pardon the creative input. I hope you enjoyed! I had a blast writing.