What If...? Rumlow Turned Against Hydra: Book One

4

Rumlow didn't try to struggle as he was dragged out of the room by the Winter Soldier. He may as well have been a small child being held by an adult for all the good he could have done against that strength. No one followed, but the STRIKE team were all looking at him as if he'd failed them. That was funny, he decided, and he laughed again, hoping that it would rattle the Winter Soldier a little bit, but the grip on his throat remained strong. He tried to look back as the door closed on the room where Captain America would cease to exist, allowing Hydra would win in the end, but he couldn't turn enough to see it. He had no idea where he was being taken until he was in what seemed to be an adjacent room, empty except for a massive industrial sized incinerator, probably for medical waste, that dominated the room. He felt a moment's terror as he was pulled toward the incinerator that he wouldn't be killed first, he'd be thrown into it alive. The terror grew as the metal arm dropped him next to the incinerator, pushing a button to start it up.

"Shoot me first," he found himself begging. "Please. Professional courtesy."

There was no response from the Winter Soldier. After a minute or so, warily, Rumlow got to his feet, unsure what to do. The look on the face of the man once known as Bucky Barnes was preoccupied, as if he was a million miles away, but in the next instant that look was gone, replaced by the cold focus Rumlow had seen in him earlier. He pulled a gun, aiming it at Rumlow's head as the incinerator hummed behind him. Rumlow looked into the eyes of the person ordered to hill him, once again seeing a different expression, one of distant despair before the cold reasserted itself. Rumlow realized he was watching the changes from Barnes to the Winter Soldier and back again. If the changes stopped with the Winter Soldier dominant, Rumlow was a dead man. If Barnes could somehow free himself both of them could try and save Steve.

"Barnes?" Rumlow asked as calmly as he could. He reached back to the history lessons from his childhood and tried again: "Sergeant Barnes?"

"I knew him," was the reply, in a soft voice that sounded more human than it had before. The words were audible but Rumlow suspected they weren't aimed at him.

"Yes," Rumlow said encouragingly. "You knew him. Steve Rogers was your friend. And now he needs our help."

"Steve." Barnes looked back toward the door, then once again turned his attention to Rumlow. The gun had never moved; Rumlow had to force himself not to look directly at it. He didn't want to see the trigger being pulled if that was his eventual fate.

"They're going to force him to serve Hydra. We need to get him out of here."

At the mention of Hydra, Barnes reacted more strongly than before, a gleam in his eyes that held an anger that was old, cold, almost crumbling but it was there. Rumlow pushed slightly harder, hoping the presence of actual emotion meant it was Barnes who was winning the fight. "I can't do it alone. But with both of us, we can rescue him and stop Hydra."

He could see the images clearly. Steve standing over him in a darkened room where he was the one restrained on a metal table as if he was being readied for dissection. Steve hadn't looked quite like himself, but it was still Steve, his presence meant the days of terror, pain and sickness were behind him. He was rescued from the twisted, evil experiments of Arnim Zola and Hydra. The next image was different, he was holding the shield, the one Steve carried into battle and wielded as if it was somehow part of him, on a train speeding through the Austrian Alps. The weapon used by the Hydra soldier hit the shield, the force of the impact sending him through the ragged hole in the side of the train car. He'd grabbed onto part of the train car, holding on desperately as Steve tried to reach him, but the metal piece had pulled free of the side of the car. He fell. He could hear his own scream as if he hadn't been the one to have such a sound issue from his throat. The fall had been long, terrifying, ending with a flash of agony and darkness.