tell me i'm evil [open]

[comesfrompain]

Who: Brock Rumlow & you!
Where: Around town, Crossbones Boxing
When: 05.15-05.31
What: Just hanging out with this cool old dude. Or whatever!
Warnings: Language. More will be added as needed.


gym.

With doors wide open in invitation, a handful of people can be seen inside the gym. Some getting their own workout in, lifting weights, hitting bags, one seated and wrapping their hands. Near the back stands Rumlow, watching someone hitting one of the heavy bags. His expression serious, calculating, observing as each hit lands. Every so often, he'll give praise, or a correction to his student. A few minutes later, he glances up at the clock on the wall, claps his student on the back and tells them to cool off.

He meanders after, looking between the other patrons and giving them a few choice tips here and there before he heads into his office. The door remains open, and he seems to be going over some paperwork. His expression is disengaged, preoccupied with other thoughts. Either that or reading on paper is incredibly tedious, being used to the glare of a backlit computer. He'll shift between one paper and the next after a while. It doesn't seem like he would mind a visitor.

Probably because he's bored and checking over the contracts and making sure everyone is up to date on their bills is supremely dull. He is really considering hiring someone to do this for him, because while it's within his means, it's shit he really would rather pay someone else to do. Especially so he can focus on coaching. Or spending inordinate amounts of time working out to prevent his mind from wandering to the multitude of thoughts that plague him.

Coaching steals his focus better. It's impersonal and physical enough to keep his troubling memories at bay.

edge of town.

Some days of the week, Rumlow can be found running along the edge of the woods and through the less trafficked roads in town. Jogging along, he'll keep to himself, going around or cutting away from any others that might be in his path. Primarily he keeps to the outskirts, pace slow and built more for endurance than speed. Every so often, he'll slow his pace and do a little shadow boxing, as if to shove away the mundanity of cardio.

Rumlow wishes he had music to listen to, but jogging plus CD players equals skipping and that shit is even more annoying than silence. Plus, apparently earbuds haven't been invented yet here or whatever, and like Hell he's gonna wear over-ear headphones when he's running. Fashion fucking disaster. If you're quick enough or manage to get his attention, he's like to stop.

wildcard.

[ooc: your choice! feel free to plurk me if you have ideas!]

Comments

[comesfrompain]

"Yet, you still could have come to me. Or asked me to talk to Rogers, instead of just going behind my back. I trusted you with information that I didn't even know if I had they clearance to tell you. You couldn't even trust me to ask what had happened with my old team."

Not that he'd known, at the time, but he could have at least expressed that. Maybe gotten her to start a dialogue. It would have been better if Rogers hadn't just been a stubborn ass and actually questioned something instead of falling for his idiotic moral bias.

Kenzi earns herself a shrug at the next question. "Working for HYDRA or for SHIELD? 'Cause Rogers sure as Hell killed plenty enough himself. I killed who I was ordered to kill. That's how it works. You don't question. You do -- unless you wanna end up on that target list next."

He isn't defending it. Not really. There probably were innocents that faced down the barrel of his gun. Their guilt was probably only in being in HYDRA's way. A matter of perspective that Rumlow understands is for the greater good. The old adage of making omelettes requiring a few cracked eggs. Without HYDRA, those eggs would get cracked by all sorts of people for selfish reasons. All that chaos was poisoning the world.

Rumlow snorts, shaking his head. He stares at Kenzi. "What mission. I wouldn't be here if I had a choice. There's no mission. Only survival and protecting the people that mattered."

[onteamdyson]

"But I didn't. And here we are." He didn't trust her with everything, and vice versa. She was infatuated but she didn't give him everything. Now there's a rift forming from that distance.

Kenzi pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around her legs and shrinks down. She rests her chin on her knees and just... closes her eyes. Her breathing is still shallow, but she's working on keeping herself in check.

"You never bothered to question it? Go against those orders? You never even tried to do what was right? I don't know everything, I don't know the whole story because I wasn't there. Honestly anything either of you tell me could be a lie and I don't have any way to know. No proof." They're all stuck here. They're all prisoners, but it comes down to trust. That trust is broken between them. On both sides, apparently.

"Past tense? Mattered?" She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. Her expression is more dull and lifeless than it was when the anger was coming through. She's not as angry anymore. Just resigned.

[comesfrompain]

"And here we are," Rumlow repeats. It's their bed. They've gotta lay in it. He's decidedly more calm than she is about it, but he chalks that up to being used to dissembling. As much as he feels at this very moment, showing that anger isn't going to help either of them.

"Of course I questioned it. And got my ass beat for doing it. Over and over again. Until I complied. That's how it works." If you don't buy the Kool-Aid right off the bat, at least. Rumlow hadn't. But damn it's been years since he last questioned an order outright. Inwardly, sure. But never to their faces. It's one thing to question strategy, another to question motive.

"But I ain't lyin' to you." Rumlow draws a slow breath, glancing away from her as he considers whether past tense still holds. Part of it was an unconscious manipulation. It just comes naturally to him, after all these years. Part of it, maybe is just him feeling hurt at being discredited without being talked to. Believing Rogers over him. Maybe it's pride talking. Rumlow's not sure. It's a lot of feelings to process at once and he's never been very good at that.

"Matters. You still do. Just... not real sure where we stand, considering what's been levied against me."

[onteamdyson]

If this is their bed, she'd rather take the couch.

She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut and taking a second to breathe deeply. "But you still joined. You chose that side. You didn't get forced into it, you picked them over SHIELD." The peace keeping organization he'd said he was part of. What's the opposite of peace, Rumlow?

"They fucked with Bucky. They took his life away and kept him in a fucking freezer. I can't--" When she lifts her head to look at him, her eyes are red. Puffy. The tears finally broke free to stream down her cheeks. "I can't stand by that. I can't forgive that. I need..."

She almost chokes on the words, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, "I need to be sure. But I can't be. Not right now. I can't be sure that you won't turn on me, too. Brock-- ... I can't keep pretending that we're okay."

[comesfrompain]

"I didn't get forced into it?" Rumlow says with a scoff. "You mean, after I escaped my parents who treated me like garbage and went into the streets, trying to live my life the only way I knew how -- when I got told by a man in a nice suit that I could be something, I wasn't forced? Yeah, I guess I could've stayed there. Kept running drugs and doing whatever I could to survive. Or I could've been taken in by someone who I thought was offering me an opportunity. And once I agreed? It was too fucking late."

That certainly was a torrent. More than Rumlow expected to say, but it's out and it's said. Can't take it back now. He stares at the floor, glaring daggers at the hardwood. If she expects him to give one shit about Barnes, she's wrong. He didn't do it to him. He wasn't even alive when HYDRA took him in. Wasn't even a concept. His eyes flick back up to Kenzi's. His jaw tightens.

"I don't know Barnes' backstory beyond HYDRA taking him in after he supposedly died. All I know is he is what they made him. Hell, I didn't even know he was still alive until this year."

He's not responsible for Barnes.

"Look. I know I've kept shit from you, and for that, I'm sorry. It's been a fucking lot for me to process. I literally went from thinking I was a good guy, working for SHIELD, working with Captain fucking America to this. But it ain't fair to pin this all on me. You haven't said shit to me either, and I know you're hiding more from me. Except I ain't expecting you to spill. 'Cause I'm giving you the time you need, hoping you'll be able to open up and tell me."

[onteamdyson]

Are you fucking kidding me? Kenzi actually laughs, bitterly, and gets to her feet. She looks at Rumlow darkly, searching his eyes for ... something. She's not sure what. "My stepfather used to lock me in the closet. My own mother would hit me for breaking his rules. I escaped, too. I ran away. I lived in the streets and learned to pick pockets to survive, but I didn't become a secret, modern Nazi! I never killed anyone!"

Except a dullahan, but that didn't count. Aaaaand she shoved an old, Russian folklore figure into an oven, but that's only because she cooked a girl alive and ate her. Kenzi never took orders. She never compromised who she was. She never gave up her integrity, even when she got caught up in fae bullshit. She always tried to do the right thing.

"Not knowing about him doesn't make it okay. It doesn't ... absolve anything! Passing the blame is bullshit, Brock. You stood for what they stood for. You did those things!" She takes a step back, literally shaking with how furious she is.

"This isn't about me pinning shit on you or keeping someone else's secrets. These are YOUR secrets. And..." She reaches for her left hand, twisting the ring around her finger and pulling it off. She's still crying. It takes all she's got to keep her voice steady and controlled. "Until you make up for that-- ... Until you prove you really do want a second chance, really want to change, I can't be with you. I'm sorry."

[comesfrompain]

It's a pretty shit life, and Rumlow, for once in his life actually fucking empathizes. No wonder they'd ended up together. If only they'd been able to talk about this before Rogers had ruined it. All the more reason to get even. Still, he bristles at the term.

"I'm not a fucking Nazi," he says. He could explain how there's no nationalism, which defeats half the point of it, but he figures it's a moot point. Well beyond anything Kenzi wants to hear. "And I'm not passing the blame. I didn't even know they did that shit. The training they did gave a choice, granted a piss poor one. Unless you consider death a fun alternative. Anyway, way I hear it, Barnes never had that. 'S pretty far from what I'd been told. They compartmentalize in intelligence. Don't tell everyone all the secrets so if anyone gets caught, no one compromises the entire organization. I wasn't exactly ecstatic, the first time I saw him."

He stares at her in her fury. Rumlow gets it. Wouldn't be the first time he's been faced with someone who's pointed fingers at him, breaking him down from an individual person to a concept responsible for everything related to him. Usually he ends up putting a bullet in their brain to stop them from whining, but he's got no gun, no need and more importantly, no desire to kill Kenzi. All his anger is focused elsewhere. In her, he's just disappointed.

"Not real sure what else I gotta do, sweetheart. Been doing the best I can, the best I know how. I got things I could tell you, information I've learned. But how can I trust you when I know you're gonna go to the very people that threw me under the bus? Why should I trust them when they're ready to discard me without even a second thought? I ain't gonna save them if they ain't gonna save me."

Rumlow stares at the ring. He's not sentimental, but he can feel the ache in the pit of his stomach to see her pull it off. It feels like hope being ripped away. The chance at having something nice, something good, abandoned. As if he hasn't felt enough of that in his life.

[onteamdyson]

"Then I guess that's it, then." He's not even willing to try. Not even willing to give it time or actually try to get her back. She can't just forgive the things he's done in the past because they're in the past, organization or not. He doesn't even want to try to be the hero.

He can't trust her, she can't trust him. They're at an impasse. He's trying to sway her with information and she just... doesn't care. There's no getting through to him.

"I'm gonna go. You can keep the house. You can keep this." Her voice does break that time, as she sets the ring on the bedspread. Their bed. His... bed. She can barely see through her tears and the running mascara welling up in her eyes as she turns to go.

She stops at the doorway, not quite looking back but speaking over her shoulder, "Sometimes it's not about what other people can do for you. People shouldn't only matter to you if they're useful. Maybe sometime you could ask yourself what you could do for them without thinking about what you'll get out of it. If you ever give that a shot, call me."

[comesfrompain]

"Funny. Ask Rogers and his buddies to try the same, and see how they offer me an olive branch."

Rumlow doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to. He seethes instead, his jaw tight while his fists close tighter. His mind is made. Why be good when all anyone sees you as is bad? Call someone a villain enough and they become one.

The loss is a blow. One Rumlow has no interest in forgiving or forgetting. Kenzi can make her choices, but her allies will bear the brunt of their mistakes. He knows what he's going to do. Now, it's just a matter of when.