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

8

He left the meeting in a hurry while trying not to look as if he was in a hurry. The heavy spring rain felt good, cool, cleansing. He left his umbrella folded and the hood of his jacket down just to feel the rain on his face. After what he'd heard in the meeting, he needed to feel clean again. The meeting had taken place in a standard conference room in a standard office building that had no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever. The building was one of many in that general area of the city, drawing no attention from the public who couldn't care less about what went on there. He knew they should care; he knew they needed to know about it, but he couldn't tell anyone. The office location was a small staging area for Hydra, a place where paperwork and logistics were worked out for the transfer of weapons, components for construction projects as well as the occasional the movement of people in special operations. Much of what went on in the office could be handled within SHIELD, the unofficial headquarters of Hydra, though the small office had been kept as a deep cover site specifically because it wasn't in the Triskelion, or anywhere close to Washington D.C. and the supposed places of power. There was often more power in the hidden places, the ones no one would look twice at.

He'd been a member of Hydra since college, recruited when he'd had some ideals that he thought aligned with Hydra. He'd been loyal, working feverishly for their rise to world domination, fully believing they would somehow make the world better. The loyalty had remained for a year or two before he'd sobered up, matured and really thought about what Hydra actually meant by making the world better. They would eliminate anyone who couldn't be loyal, no matter who it was. Many of those people were friends of his, family. The more he thought about it the more he couldn't go along with any of it.

Those thoughts had continued to grow, almost out of control, dangerously so. He had been well on his way to doing something stupid in his desperation to get out of Hydra even as he knew there was no way out. No one simply walked away from Hydra, especially not when their loyalties would be in question. He knew he would be killed, but as his disillusionment grew, he began to think that was the only way out: death. Such self-destructive impulses were only reigned in when he was contacted suddenly by someone who had found out about him, not simply that he was in Hydra, but that he wanted to be against them.

He'd been alone at the time; in the corporate job he'd had for several years at that point. The job itself wasn't connected to Hydra, it paid the bills, allowing him a greater standard of living, though it was boring, predictable and generally uninteresting. The fact that it was boring was perfect for him; being a member of Hydra while simultaneously wanting out from under that obligation was more than enough excitement. His boring, predictable job was solace where for others it would have been seen as a dead end. He preferred to get to work early and leave late since focusing on the job was the only way he could ignore Hydra. Going home alone would only lead to him thinking about his predicament, which in turn always ended with thoughts of suicide. The only thing that stopped him from actually going through with killing himself was the idea that he'd prefer to hurt or stop Hydra in the process. He had no idea how to actually set such a thing in motion, so he'd done nothing at all. The very inertia of his cowardice and stupidity was almost more depressing than anything else.

On that evening, well after dark, with the office empty except for him, he'd been approached. It had taken him completely by surprise; the office was empty mostly because of the looming Christmas holidays, otherwise there would have been one or two also working late in the hopes of proving themselves worthy of raises and promotion. He was content, busy, basically ignoring the world around him. The bright holiday decorations were irritating because of how left out he felt, as someone who lived alone, having systematically cut off any family or friends that he may have to watch die in Hydra's rise to world domination. He deliberately ignored any such reminders of his useless isolation. So wrapped up was he in his work that he didn't see the person until they were standing behind him in his cubicle, though he would have had a view of the only way in or out of the vast room if he'd bothered to look up.