Wanda/Brock Rumlow 2

*** I own nothing. I'm just having fun. ***

He hated Sokovia. Nothing good ever came out of it. He supposed he could understand the appeal to a man like Strucker, though. With the political unrest and how absolutely ignored the country was by most of the world, it was a perfect place to find a seemingly limitless supply of volunteers for his experiments.

He was looking at a fresh new batch of suckers right now, about a dozen of them, as they milled about in the room beyond the two-way glass. Dead men walking, the bunch of em. Not one person had survived Strucker's experiments yet. His gaze swept over them, noting how undernourished and dirty they were. Street kids. Strucker's really scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

His eyes drifted over the group until they settled on one of the only two women in the room. She was young and pretty, even as ragged as she was, and he scratched at his shoulder absently as he watched her interact with the young man next to her. Closer than friends, he thought as he watched them speak, heads bent together. Lovers? The thought sent a hot flash of anger through him. The itching in his arm intensified to an insane degree, and he pulled his sleeve up to look at the area. Nothing seemed wrong. The tattoo he'd gotten years ago to cover his soul mark still looked fine. No rash, no bites. Weird.

"And have you brought me my scepter?" Strucker said loudly from behind him, jolting him from his thoughts. He pulled his attention away from his shoulder and turned to Strucker.

"Yeah, I got it right here," he said, lifting the case Pierce had entrusted to him and handing it over. "Delivered as ordered."

Strucker wasted no time in opening the case, running eager fingers over the gleaming metal but not quite daring to touch the stone set into it. "It is perfect," he said. "This will increase our chances of success exponentially. You are looking at the future, Mr. Rumlow, and what a grand future it will be."

"Yeah, sure." God, the man was creepy. "I gotta get back. I've gotta babysit Captain America," he said, but Strucker was barely listening. With one last look at the girl who'd caught his eye, he shook his head and walked away.

It was too bad she'd be dead soon.

Strucker and Dr. List greeted Alexander Pierce to their base with smiles and open arms. Brock didn't trust it for a minute, and kept a wary eye on their surroundings as they were led deeper into the fortress.

"So you've finally made some progress," Pierce said.

"As I told you, the scepter is the key to our success. It facilitates and controls the change, unlocks greater potential more easily than any serum or process we've tried before," Strucker said.

"We have a handful of subjects left who will be moving into the final phase. Of course, the process is still traumatic to their entire systems and they aren't as strong as they were when we began the procedure, but we have high hopes."

"Hopes don't mean a thing. We need results," Pierce said firmly as they reached their destination, a wall of windows into a medical laboratory. Brock recognized some of the people strapped to the tables, though they looked nearly dead in some cases. A couple of them were writhing, struggling against the straps that bound them.

"I've arranged for an up-close look for you." Strucker's smile made Brock want to punch him in the teeth.

They moved into the lab and Brock tuned out Strucker and List's ramblings to get a better look at the poor fucks on the tables. He wondered how Strucker could seem so confident when some of them looked half-dead already. He noted that the man the pretty girl had seemed so close to was one of the survivors, though his hair had turned this weird combination of dark and light that looked like a bad dye job. He was unconscious but his eyes were moving rapidly behind his eyelids, unnervingly so. He shivered.

Realizing he'd fallen too far behind, he sped up to where Pierce and the others were gathered at the side of one of the tables. He could hear a woman's voice, shaky and pleading in Sokovian before switching to English.

"Please. Please. Not again," she begged, voice choked with tears. As Brock got closer he could see it was the girl he'd been watching the last time he'd been here. She was covered in sweat and tears, her entire body shaking uncontrollably as she begged them for mercy. Pierce was completely unmoved, watching dispassionately, but Strucker was worse. He smiled at her and brushed her tangled and ratty hair away from her face.

"Ah, Wanda. This is what you wanted. We are making you stronger. We can't turn back now," he said fondly. Sobs rocked her body as she continued to plead for mercy. Her gaze landed on him and he felt his soul mark Flare when she spoke.

"Please. Stop. Please," she choked out.

The breath caught in his chest. His lungs wouldn't work, couldn't function. His soulmate lay on a table in front of him, about to face a painful procedure that could kill her, and there was nothing he could do about it right now that wouldn't end in both their deaths.

"Fuck," he whispered.

"What was that?" Pierce asked. Ever alert.

"Can we get this over with?" he asked. "The crying is getting to me." It wasn't even a lie. Pierce would've sensed a lie. As it was, the man turned to Strucker and gestured for him to begin. They all stepped back while the scepter was brought in.

And all he could do was grit his teeth and listen to his soulmate's screams.

It took him far too long to get back to Strucker's base. Each day was an eternity, wondering what was happening to her. He'd managed to find out she'd lived. Pierce had been very pleased with Strucker's results. "The twins" they called them, the only two survivors. They'd been gifted with extraordinary powers, apparently, though they were only beginning to train and test their limits. He needed to get her out while he still could, before anyone got a look at his soul mark, which was no longer covered up by his tattoo. Nope. The damn thing had turned red and shone right through the ink. Some cover up.

Luckily for him, though, he'd gotten himself assigned to go back and check up on Strucker. Pierce didn't trust the man, and Brock couldn't say he blamed him. Strucker was a snake through and through.

He made sure he was well-armed when he arrived. Security seemed a little lacking, which pleased him, and Strucker was too self-satisfied to notice if he acted strangely.

"Pierce needs to understand these things take time," Strucker said as he lead Brock to the area the survivors were being kept in. "We've only just begun to explore their capabilities. The girl is extremely promising and will be a great asset. We've made a miracle happen here, just as I said we would." They stopped before the glass cells holding the twins, and Strucker gestured grandly. "Aren't they magnificent?" he asked.

"Yeah. They're great," Brock said, his eyes fixated on his soul mate. She looked up and met his gaze, and Brock had to take a moment before he could look away to smoothly draw his handgun and shoot the two guards in the room. He aimed at Strucker next, hands steady though he knew they now had a limited time to get out of there.

"Open the cells," he growled. Strucker laughed.

"I can't. I don't have the keys," he said smugly. "Guards will be here in a minute. Surrender your gun and I might be merciful."

"Yeah, okay," Brock said before shooting Strucker in the head. "Move back!" he yelled at the twins, who were watching with wide, scared eyes. They scrambled to the backs of their cells as he shattered the glass with a few well-placed shots. He rushed forward to sweep his soulmate off her bare feet and carry her over the glass before assisting the man.

"Who the hell are you?" the man asked, but it was the girl who answered.

"My soulmate, Pietro."

"Brock," he said a little uncomfortably.

"Wanda," she replied, giving him a sweet smile.

"Not wanting to get shot," Pietro said. They could all hear the sounds of guards approaching quickly. Brock readied himself for a fight, but Pietro blurred forward and knocked over the first wave of men that came through the door, though he ended up slamming into the wall, unable to stop. Wanda sent short blasts of red energy at the others, sending them flying backwards.

"Nice," Brock huffed.

"Thank you," Wanda said, grinning up at him adoringly, if a little shyly. God, he could get used to that real quick. "You came for us." The awe and gratitude in her voice made him feel like shit for leaving them there for so long to be tortured and experimented on, but he shoved it aside to focus on more pressing matters, like getting them out. He cleared his suddenly tight throat.

"We gotta fight our way out. You two ready for that?" Honestly, they both looked like a stiff breeze could blow them over, but there was a fire in the boy's eyes and his soulmate - Wanda - squared her shoulders.

"We are ready," she told him. He had to grin, and he pulled her in for a hard, quick kiss that left her a bit breathless.

"Later," he promised, ignoring Pietro's curses. He turned and fired as more soldiers swarmed into the room, and the battle was on. As he fought side by side with his soulmate, he had to admit. Maybe Sokovia wasn't so bad after all.