There's that twitch in his fingers, that wants to go for his knife, slam him into the wall, violence isn't something he can completely scrub from his psyche, even if he's trying. He'd been good with a gun even before Hydra got their hooks into him.
But he listens as Rumlow talks, about having a building fall on him and his realization that HYDRA weren't going to come for him. He doesn't understand it on a personal level; he never really sacrificed for them. Everything he'd given had been taken, he'd fought against everything they'd stood for at one part of his life that even now feels more like shadows and someone else's words than his own memories. But it at least gives him a lense on Rumlow, which is something. It's an idea of what had pushed him away from them. And it does seem genuine, even if he knows better than to take that entirely at face value. It's enough for the moment, enough for him to entertain that he really had gone mercenary.
It's the attempt at drawing a line between them, the comment about having been through Hell that makes him tense, sharpens his blue eyes. "And you were part of that," he points out, his voice a low rumble. It's more fact and less accusation, but there's clear, sharp anger to it. The other man had been the chain they kept around his throat, and even if he was the best of his handlers, that was still a venomous torment.
HYDRA wasn't so gentle that saying no was an option for anyone, but that didn't make it easier.
"I don't hurt people anymore," he says. But the twitch of his fingers and the heat of his eyes says that it's not so far from the surface as he might like it to be. "You need to leave." Even just having Rumlow here, it gets under his skin, and he doesn't really believe this can end without a fight, but he's trying.
no subject
But he listens as Rumlow talks, about having a building fall on him and his realization that HYDRA weren't going to come for him. He doesn't understand it on a personal level; he never really sacrificed for them. Everything he'd given had been taken, he'd fought against everything they'd stood for at one part of his life that even now feels more like shadows and someone else's words than his own memories. But it at least gives him a lense on Rumlow, which is something. It's an idea of what had pushed him away from them. And it does seem genuine, even if he knows better than to take that entirely at face value. It's enough for the moment, enough for him to entertain that he really had gone mercenary.
It's the attempt at drawing a line between them, the comment about having been through Hell that makes him tense, sharpens his blue eyes. "And you were part of that," he points out, his voice a low rumble. It's more fact and less accusation, but there's clear, sharp anger to it. The other man had been the chain they kept around his throat, and even if he was the best of his handlers, that was still a venomous torment.
HYDRA wasn't so gentle that saying no was an option for anyone, but that didn't make it easier.
"I don't hurt people anymore," he says. But the twitch of his fingers and the heat of his eyes says that it's not so far from the surface as he might like it to be. "You need to leave." Even just having Rumlow here, it gets under his skin, and he doesn't really believe this can end without a fight, but he's trying.