Pre-Civil War Recruitment

[infligere]

Who: James "Bucky" Barnes & Brock Rumlow
When: Pre-Civil War
What: Rumlow has abandoned HYDRA and putting together teams for missions; he found evidence of the Winter Soldier and decides that the former HYDRA-weapon would be a great addition to the team.
Warnings: TBA


It was one of his more dangerous missions, if there was such a thing anymore. At this point, everything that he did had an element of danger to it, the potential to end this miserable existence that he had taken up. It had to be done though, not entirely because he felt a little bad for standing by but more because taking things from HYDRA had become part of the point now. His skills hadn't diminished and that made it relatively easy to do that, to sell himself to the highest bidder to complete the missions that no one else would.

There was no getting back the life that he had before the fall of the Triskelion. With its fall (literally on him), he had lost everything. Some who knew him well that weren't in prison might have even whispered that the scars were just an external show of his new madness.

That might have been why he was ascending the multiple stories of stairs to a small apartment in Bucharest, Romania. It was a good place to hide, highly populated but also so far away from the original blow up in the United States that it would be easy to disappear into. The apartment building itself was many stories high and it was on the lower-end of price range so it was another sign of someone just wanting to be left alone. It was only by chance that he had found this thread, but damn if he was going to not take the extreme risk to pull on it.

Hence why he was easing up the stairs alone with a hoodie pulled up over his head to hide his scars. He kept his gear light, aware that it would do him any good if he needed to move his ass; he also knew there was no point gearing up because the Winter Soldier could tear him apart regardless. This was about giving the perception that he came in relative peace, that he had something worthwhile to offer. That was why he only carried a single Glock 19 sidearm as his main weapon.

Pausing on the landing, he pulled out a piece of paper to check the apartment number and then approached the door, pressing lightly on it. The way that it subtly moved told him that there was no added weight, no alterations to it, so he did what any man would when searching for a ghost. He broke into the apartment quickly and effectively; this was nothing compared to the places he was used to getting into.

Easing inside, Rumlow could already tell the sad pathetic existence that the former Winter Soldier led. Papers on the windows blotted out light and the ability to see inside; there was a musty smell of a plain existence and shit, were those cinder blocks holding up a shelf? Well, he didn't expect more, but that didn't mean that the Winter Soldier was any less dangerous.

"Winter?" He might have been a handler and extremely good at his job while performing it, but even he understood the need to break certain rules. Naming the Soldier something other than a title might have been why they had worked well together. For him, a weapon was more than an object.

Comments

[rzhavyy]

Hiding was the easy part. It was building a life, trying to put the pieces of his mind back together, figure out what was real and what wasn't, how they all fit together that was difficult. Putting his little apartment together when he had trouble knowing what that was even supposed to look like was still a work in progress, but he had a place that was his. He slept in the same place, had a place to cook his food, and a bag of important things he kept stashed under a couple loose floorboards.

There's that call of Winter, and he knows who it is even before he slips into the room on silent feet, hardly even displacing the air, still every bit the ghost. He knows that Hydra is looking for him, will keep looking until every piece of them is dead, but this is far from what he expects.

Rumlow should have a team, and he should have tried to get the drop on him, and he'd expect him to at least have a Colt carbine if not something bigger; Rumlow's too smart to think he can take him like this. The fact that this isn't right makes him wary, even as he tries to figure out the angle. He knows Rumlow has been more mercenary than Hydra agent lately. Not because he was particularly keeping tabs on him, but his face had come up in the newspapers. But it doesn't mean the man wont try to bring him in.

"Leave," his voice is low and dangerous. He's watching Rumlow hawkishly with those sharp blue eyes, but he hasn't tried to shoot him. So that's something, even if Bucky's left hand flexes under the black leather gloves he wears. While he doesn't want to draw attention to himself, doesn't want to be that person again, the one they'd made him, there was a definite list of people he would kill without blinking. People where he'd sooner rebuild his fragment of a life, run all over again than allow them to keep breathing.

He'd only had one handler that had broken some of the rules, given him a name that wasn't Soldat or Asset, made any attempt at treating him as something more than just a different kind of gun. As he's slowly assembling the pieces of his memory, he's actually able to remember that, along with the horror. He doesn't trust him, his presence alone makes him tense, anger he just barely keeps down, and he doesn't trust that there's not a plan here. But it does keep Rumlow off that list, and it buys him some time.

Bucky's body language says probably not a lot of time, though.