CRUEL INTENTIONS, bucky barnes

two

February 19, 2009

Training Room, HYDRA Base

Undisclosed Location

"A bedtime story, you called it." Savannah scoffed as she dodged a blow from Brock and made an attempt to sweep his legs.

He moved out of her reach. She swung at him and their arms collided before she latched onto the back of his neck and brought him down to the stiff practice mat beneath their feet.

"You were thirteen, I was trying to be relatable." He took control of her forearms and used the leverage of her body to flip Savannah over his head and onto her back. She didn't stay down long and soon had her knee digging into the middle of his chest. Brock wheezed and raised his arms to try to dismount her, but she was too fast for him and quickly had them pinned above his head. "It was new territory for me. They didn't always have me recruiting, you know."

"Mm," Savannah hummed, shifting all of her weight to her left knee. Brock sucked in a sharp breath and writhed beneath her, which only motivated her further. "It would've been much more fun if you skipped right to trying to indoctrinate me, rather than trying to repeat my whole life story back to me."

Brock coughed and struggled harder, his face starting to turn red. Savannah tilted her head and pressed down harder on his wrists. Her hair fell over one shoulder and into his eyes. It was beyond entertaining to watch him shake his head in an attempt to get a clear view of her.

"Well—" His voice was cut off by another helpless gasp for breath that didn't quite make it to his lungs. "I didn't know what I was dealing with. Figured you were another... troubled teen that would require our... more intensive methods."

"Tell me, Brock," Savannah said. She leaned closer to his face, which drove her knee even deeper into the point of his sternum. "Do I seem troubled to you? Would you say violence troubles me?"

"Enough."

She lifted her head slowly to look at the agent standing in the doorway. She reluctantly removed herself from Brock's trembling body and stood to face her superior. He was a thinner man than the one she had just taken down, and even as he spoke, his name didn't come to Savannah. 

Names were, for the most part, unimportant to her. Especially when it came to the agents that were "above" her.

"Agent Rumlow, would you like to explain to me why this keeps happening?"

Savannah rolled her eyes and turned away from both of them with a toss of her dark mass of hair. She heard Brock struggle to stand and begin to give an answer, but she cut him off.

"Because it gets him off to relive our past together, as if he put in any actual work into my initiation." She turned back to them and crossed her arms. "He has also repeatedly told me that if I can beat him in hand-to-hand combat, I can meet him."

"Sorry?"

Savannah narrowed her eyes and stepped closer.

"The Asset. I know he's here somewhere and it's not fair that I'm the only one who hasn't gotten to play with him."

She had to fight off a smile when the two men shared an anxious, knowing glance with each other.

"Agent King, The Asset is not a toy. There's good reason that access to him is limited only to essential staff and agents of the highest ranking."

"Bullshit," Savannah deadpanned. "I've heard the way Pierce talks about him. The man is a toy, a plaything—"

"An asset," Rumlow asserted. He mirrored Savannah's stance and maintained hard eye contact with her, though it was obvious he was still catching his breath. "He's a vital asset to our cause. Pierce has a whole team to handle him that has been evolving for the past seventy years. Their process is very precise, perfected to a science. We can't have... children interfering with—"

Savannah moved on Rumlow before any of them could blink or take a breath. He hit the mat with a hollow thud and Savannah felt the air leave his lungs. She didn't hold back on her laughter as she pulled her sidearm from a thigh holster and pressed the barrel to his temple.

"AGENT KING!"

She knew the man at the door hadn't moved from his place. He didn't even dare pull his own firearm on her. And yet for some reason, Brock Rumlow had the audacity to call her a child.

She narrowed her attention to the wheezing man beneath her, offering him a cold smile as her finger petted the trigger. He only stared at her with the same cold eyes, though his entire body betrayed his mask of unfazed indifference.

"I'm sorry, Brock, I don't think caught that last part." Savannah sighed heavily and scratched her own head with the barrel of her pistol. "I could have sworn you were saying something incredibly demeaning and incorrect, but please, correct me if I'm wrong."

"Next week," Brock said with a trembling breath. "Next week, we'll bring you in next week."

A sound of protest from across the room made Savannah laugh. "One second."

She turned and fired a shot into the chest of the man standing in the doorway. When his body collided with the floor and he laid still, she turned her full attention back to Brock.

"You were saying?"