Army of One ★ Steve Rogers

25

"Who do you work for?" Natasha's husky voice rasped through the silence.

In front of her, chained to the floor and the chair he was sitting on, was Jideo, all but oozing malice.

He remained silent with a defiant look on his face.

"You can play the loyal servant, I'm sure someone wants to tell me the truth. I have thirty of you to play with." Natasha was unphased by his silence after three days of interrogation. She knew the pattern with guys like this. You had to take them through the motions, almost like a dance, the hunger, the thirst, the sleep deprivation, the claustrophobia and sometimes the pain. Sprinkle with manipulation and repeat where necessary.

Steve was in and out while she worked, he found it particularly hard to contain himself around Jideo after they'd found out from one of the other prisoners that he had been Jane's interrogator.

"What did you want with her?" asked Steve from a shadowy corner of the room.

Jideo grinned darkly. "All these questions, Captain." His voice like velvet. "I can tell you that nothing would give me more pleasure than to choke the life out of you. To turn you into a thing."

"I bet you would." Answered Steve.

"Tell us something we don't know," said Natasha, ambling around the man in the chair in the centre of the room.

Jideo breathed a chuckle but remained silent.

Steve worked the prisoners during the day with Nat, Sam, T'Challa and Okoye, trying to find out as much as they could about the apparent splinter cell, and in the evenings, he went to the hospital to see Jane.

The prisoners were not particularly pliable. They hadn't been able to find out who the mastermind of the operation was or what group they were an offshoot of, nobody had claimed responsibility either, even after T'Challa had been forced to hold a press conference to put Wakanda's collective mind at ease about what was now called the Battle of Serpent Valley.

It was the afternoon of the fourth day after said Battle when Steve was on his way out to go and see Jane and bumped into T'Challa and Okoye.

They exchanged a nodded greeting.

"Anything new?" asked Steve.

Okoye sighed, looking at T'Challa who was struggling with rage.

"It would seem that one of our own has betrayed us," he breathed, looking off to the side.

Steve's eyebrows shot up. "Any idea who?"

"No," answered T'Challa, "but when I find out who it was, there will be hell to pay."

This was nothing that Steve hadn't suspected from the night Jane was kidnapped, but he was relieved that T'Challa finally saw it. He had denied the involvement of any Wakandans until now.

Natasha appeared at Steve's side, her face looking like she was ready to smile.

"I got something." She said, the corner of her mouth twitching.

Steve turned, "from Jideo?" he wondered what she must have done to get that man to spill anything.

She nodded 'yes'.

"It seems that they wanted to see if she could be weaponised, like Bucky," said Nat, "they wanted you too, but she refused to cooperate. That's why you took the brunt of their firepower that night."

Anger flared in Steve's gut as he put two and two together.

"Here?" he asked, his voice tainted with disbelief.