CRUEL INTENTIONS, bucky barnes

twenty-two

May 13, 2016

Abandoned HYDRA Facility

Siberia

Savannah had made it through the front doors with ease. Everything had already been opened or otherwise unlocked, which could mean only one thing. He was already there.

Zemo's plans to tear the Avengers apart was an admirable one, ambitious as it was. If Savannah didn't have bigger and more pressing things to concern herself with, she might have even considered speeding up the process for him. However, she did have more pressing things to attend to, and she found it only slightly unfortunate that he had to die.

She readied her weapon as she walked deeper into the cold, dark corridors. The place was truly untouched, and probably had been since the last installation of HYDRA had been set up there. By the sound of the Asset's story, that could have been as recent as the 90's. 

Savannah's stomach twisted at the thought of Rogers and Barnes. 

She had gone into that warehouse with the intention to shoot anyone standing between her and retrieval of the Asset, even if that meant bringing him back to HYDRA in pieces. She'd been lucky to catch him in the middle of disclosing all the information he had on the other Soldiers and it had thrown her off. 

Everything that she believed that Rumlow had tried to downplay had been true. Everything Zemo had to say about the Soldiers and Siberia had been true. That was enough for her to leave behind the Asset and get to Siberia before Rogers and his team could do anything to stop either of them.

Savannah stepped off the rickety elevator and into a wide open room. It felt quieter than the rest of the spaces she'd passed through. She was in the right place. Her chest filled up with a warmth that she wasn't sure she'd felt since first laying eyes on the Asset as she stepped into the middle of the room. An entire collection of Winter Soldiers. Six of them. The key to unlocking her victory.

"Agent King." Zemo's voice crackled from behind her, and Savannah turned quickly on her heel, eyes wide and heart racing. There was a small, grimy window near the entrance to the room. His face was framed there, smiling. "Good to you see you've made it here to watch the finale."

Savannah tilted her head, tightened her hand around her pistol. Something wasn't right. The silence in the room, the look on Zemo's face. There was a ringing in her ears, a pit in her stomach that she couldn't shake. 

Something was wrong. Completely, horribly, fundamentally wrong with this situation. She was in an open space, alone, while he was behind a wall, behind glass.

Had she fallen for a trap? Made a fatal miscalculation? Now? After everything?

She turned slowly, back towards the cryogenic containment tanks that stood washed in a dirty, yellow light. Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes burned and she could do nothing but continue to turn slowly and stare in horror at the one detail she had failed to notice before.

Every single tank, every single Soldier, had at least one minuscule hole in them. Bullet holes.

"You..." Savannah's voice shook, her vision began to blur, the ringing in her ears became deafening. "What did you do?"

"The right thing," Zemo said flatly. "The only thing."

As if it were a reflex, Savannah raised her gun and fired several shots at the dirtied image of Zemo's face. Each of the bullets bounced off the glass skittered back toward her feet. She marched across the room and smacked the glass with the butt of her pistol until the vibrations made her hand numb.

"You know as well as I do that this chamber was built to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets, Agent King," Zemo said with a tight smile.

Savannah's teeth were grinding together, her eyes unable to stop flicking around the room, looking out for another miscalculation, another surprise. There were none, as far as she could tell. Her breath came in quick, painful puffs. For the first time in her entire search for the Asset, Savannah King felt exhausted.

"That... can be arranged," she managed to say, tears of rage welling up in her eyes.

"I doubt even your power to arrange something like that."

"Why?" Savannah shouted. "Why would you do this?"

"Did you really think I wanted more of him? More of you? More of HYDRA?" He scoffed and ran a hand through his hair. "Agent King, don't be naive."

"Yes! You..." She paused to take several deep breaths, but she couldn't slow them down. Her chest was still rising and falling far too quickly.

Get it together.

"There was a plan. We had an arrangement. This all would've worked! We could've both had what we wanted and now—"

"And now you can see that you allowed yourself to be blinded by one singular goal. Too blind to even consider betrayal from someone who tells you they have a common goal. Too blind to double check." Zemo smirked and pressed his pointer finger to the glass. "This is on you, Agent. I will get what I want. I will take them down. What will you do?"

"Kill you," she said without hesitation. Her eyes burned into his. Her body vibrated with an unbridled rage that she hadn't felt in years. Usually, she could channel it into violence or some other productive outlet. But she'd be caught off guard. Betrayed. "As soon as you get out of that secret little room of yours, you're mine. I will kill you and anyone you care about. I'll kill Stark and Rogers and Barnes before you even get the chance to try. I won't stop until the entire world is ripped out from under you and then some."

"There's that naivety again. There is nothing left to take away from me. Only this." Zemo chuckled and took a step closer to his side of the glass, motioning vaguely to the room behind Savannah. "And you're already too late for that."

"It's never too late to destroy something," Savannah said. "You've demonstrated that flawlessly."

"Don't you watch the news? Haven't you seen that terrible incident at Leipzig with the Avengers?"

Savannah had seen it, heard people talking about it all the way to Siberia. Her face must have said as much.

"What do you think they were fighting about? Where Captain Rogers and his fugitive friends are trying to go?" Zemo's face broke out into a sinister grin. "Sure, there's nothing stopping you from killing me the moment I'm unprotected. We are both aware that you could tear them apart yourself, I'm sure. I've gotten the both of us this far. Allow me to finish this. Consider it back up."

"I don't need backup," Savannah snarled. "I needed the Soldiers!"

"There are things bigger than HYDRA to worry about now," Zemo said. "Perhaps things like, what you'll do when your Asset and his guard dog arrive."

Savannah's breath hitched in her throat for a moment, as if she was finally hearing Zemo's words for the first time. 

Rogers was coming, which inevitably meant Barnes was, as well. Although Savannah didn't have the rest of the Soldiers, she could still get the Asset. She could still kill HYDRA's largest threat of being reestablished.

It wasn't ideal, and she'd certainly still torture and murder Zemo like he'd done to so many of their agents. It was better than nothing.

"That's more like it," Zemo said quietly, his back already turned. "I'll leave you to it, then?"

"Yes," Savannah murmured, her eyes wide and glassy, the gears in her mind already turning over all the different ways she could go about the things that were about to happen. "Yes, please do."