CRUEL INTENTIONS, bucky barnes

nineteen

May 10, 2016

Munich, Germany

"We've got another hit," the agent said as he sat down across from Savannah, gripping his coffee mug tightly. "In the States. Doesn't look like Rumlow's crew."

He slid the folder across the table and glanced over his shoulder.

"Stop looking so goddamn paranoid," Savannah said as she took up the folder and slowly sipped her own drink. "You have no reason to be."

"Not to sound like a bitch—"

"Too late."

He scoffed and leaned back in his chair, clearly uneasy with the number of people milling through the open café and on the streets around them.

"Someone is systemically wiping out ex-agents. First it was Rumlow, now he's dead, who's to say he didn't have someone to pick it up when Rogers took him out?"

"Rogers did not take out Rumlow, first of all. You read the report. Come on, now." Savannah set her mug down on the marble table with a chuckle. "Second of all, you were right the first time. This isn't Rumlow, because he's dead, but it's also not his MO. At all."

"King—"

Savannah waved him off, her eyes still on the file he'd produced. "Even if he had someone picking up after him, he wouldn't have them waterboarding ex-HYDRA officers in their own homes. Guns, biological weapons, heavy machinery. The showy stuff. Sorry, did you forget we were talking about Brock Rumlow?"

"No, I just—" He shook his head and clasped his hands on the table. When he spoke next, his voice was significantly lower, as if someone might hear him over the din of brunch. "You abandoned ship. We're more displaced and scattered than ever. We're... targets. And you're ready to just... brush it off? Just because Brock's dead?"

Savannah finally looked up at him and pushed her heavy-frame sunglasses into her hair. "When did I say that?"

"I—Sorry, I—"

"It's fine, I wouldn't expect you to see the glorious gift you've just delivered to me," Savannah said. She stood from her small metal chair and smoothed down the yellow sundress she'd chosen for the day. "We're going to find this sorry son of a bitch and suck him clean of whatever HYDRA resources he thinks he's gotten his hands on."

"Do you really think—"

"Yes, I do." She pushed in her chair and stuck the file back under her arm. "I'm sick of the subtleties. Chasing leads, getting nowhere. These Accords are the perfect time to strike. We might not get a better opportunity to simultaneously tear them apart and retrieve the Asset."

She turned away from their table and shouldered her way into a cluster of strangers without looking back to see if her agent was following. It would be soon enough that she wouldn't need him anymore. She wouldn't need any of them.

Soon, all she would need was the man who seemed to be ambitious, bold, and stupid enough to hunt down HYDRA officers and murder them in their own homes. There were only a few things he could be motivated by, and it was Savannah's hope that they were after the same thing.

Though she didn't have enough information on him yet, Savannah knew he was the key to her victory.