Chapter Text
Steve was sitting on a bundle of recycling round the back of the liquor store. The bundle was cardboard boxes compacted into a bale and it was hard under his ass. He shifted his position. He looked over at Natasha standing by the exit to the empty parking lot totally engrossed in something on her phone.
“So is she still in there?” Steve looked down at his bruised hands for a moment.
She looked up, “She’s in there. She’s looking at the sherry, Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Who even drinks that anymore?”
“What’s Nhung doing?”
Natasha bared her teeth and turned her phone screen towards him. “He’s doing what he’s supposed to. You want to take this monitoring over? Relax already.” Her phone showed the interior of the liquor store. A murky black and white security cam showed a customer in an aisle and the cashier at the counter. "The video quality is never as clear as it is on TV. A bit hard to see the details."
Steve picked at the cardboard he was sitting on. “Hey Natasha, you know that Nhung is a girls’ name in Vietnamese? I think he’s jerking our chains.”
Natasha looked over at him again. She arched an eyebrow. “So? Who hasn't already double crossed you?”
Steve answered, “Do you know what his name means? It means velvet.”
“You don’t say.” Natasha looked at him steadily. “And why would that be important?”
“Control word.” Steve’s teeth were clenched and his eyes were narrowed. Natasha wasn’t really fond of the uptight Steve that she was getting a lot these days.
She didn’t ask him where he could have possibly learned about the Winter Soldier’s handling codes. He’d just say the internet. Recently Steve had been claiming everything he knew now was from the internet.
She answered the implied question instead, “Are you saying that this is a problem? If so it’s really bad timing. She’s in there. He’s in there. We are out here. So what do you want to do?” She lowered her phone and put her gloved hand on her hip.
“I want to go in. He’s screwing with us. She’s got to be waiting for us to jump her. No-one goes out to buy booze if they know there is a price on their head.” Steve flicked a small piece of cardboard from the bale out the door with his left hand.
“Doesn’t he have first dibs on her anyway? I though that was the deal for the little bounty problem you have yourself.” She didn’t really want to go in until Nhung or whatever his name really was had done his thing. Rahc was a serious handful to deal with.
“We could just set the store on fire and block the doors from the outside. There are only two, front and back.” Steve nodded at the jugs of cleaning solvent stored against the far wall with some mops. He brought his crippled hand out of his pocket holding his lighter.
“Steve! God you are getting mean in your old age.”
“Hey, I don’t need her alive anymore. Buck’s still on the lam. And I hate it when people lie to me.” He looked at her meaningfully. “Mr. Velvet deserves it.” He snapped the lighter open and closed.
She flicked her eyes back to the phone. Onscreen the customer was now at the counter with a bottle, the clerk turned towards the cash register. The customer leaned forward and brought her bag up to the counter, her hand in the bag. Looking for wallet? Weapon? Nhung had his hand under the counter.
“Steve, where is the car she came in?”
Steve craned his neck towards the back parking lot looking for the blue car, “Still there. She drove herself it looks like. No driver waiting in the car.”
“She never drives. We must have missed the driver. Where are they?” Natasha’s voice was rising. She hated dropping the plan but it looked like they’d have to sooner rather than later.
“Steve, find her driver and get rid of them. Check closer to the front door, I think someone is waiting for her there.” She waved her hand at him and started to walk towards the door to the store backroom behind the counter.
Steve got up and strolled out the door. Fists up and ready to roll, angry look on his face. He had some issues that one.
She glanced back at her phone. Natasha stopped moving. The black and white figures on her phone screen paused and then Nhung came up from behind the counter with something in both hands, at the same time Rahc pulled a dark weapon from her bag and touched Nhung with it, barely flat on his chest.
What was that a stun baton? A shotgun? She couldn’t see it clearly enough. She’d have to go in. She didn’t really care about Nhung at this point but unfortunately she still needed Rahc for a little longer.
+++++
Steve paused and leaned his hand against the wall of the store, panting. That was sure harder than it should have been. The driver lay on the ground where Steve had dragged him, around the corner from the front door. Steve checked his leg where it stung, the slash mark went in as a deep stab towards the back but then got more shallow across his thigh. Shit, another pair of pants wrecked.
He straightened up. Where was everyone? This mall parking lot was empty. The stores empty. Why hadn't anyone called the cops on him yet? Two guys going at it in the parking lot in plain view should have triggered some response by now. He kicked the body once more with a satisfying thud.
He checked the liquor store window although he couldn't really see in past the reflections in the glass. He thought he should probably get in there to assist.
He shrugged his shoulders back. With his jacket sleeve, he wiped the blood under his nose from an earlier lucky head butt as he walked over to the sliding glass doors.
The automatic door slid open as he limped into the store, hands out of his pockets in loose fists. Into the bright glare of the store lighting. The aisles of shining booze bottles empty of anyone. No store staff, no customers.
The fighting figures at the counter stopped moving when he walked in and interrupted them. There was a person on top, pounding the person on the bottom using a pipe or something hard and straight with the occasional spark arcing off the end on contact with the person on the bottom.
The figure on top stopped with the weapon hand up in the air as both heads turned slowly towards him.
Steve caught sight of a third body as he moved towards the counter. He couldn't see it clearly but he really doubted that was the Widow on the floor.
He came in closer to the body. Nhung was lying there, not moving. His shirt was burned off at the shoulder, with a strange wound on his torso. Didn’t look like he would be able to still be breathing. And would you look at that. He should have seen that coming. Nhung had an ugly Hydra tattoo.
He heard a harsh zap of electricity and smelled burnt flesh. His attention was pulled back to the fight on at the cash. Natasha surprisingly wasn’t doing that well. With Natasha bent over the counter backwards, hands trapped beneath her, Rahc was smiling as she pressed the stun baton down flat on Natasha’s throat.
+++++
“Steven, you know it was the least you could do to drive me home. Seeing as you and that witch killed my driver.” Rahc pointed at Natasha on the floor. "Have a seat. I need to tidy up a few items and then we will talk."
He turned around incredulously, eyes sweeping the inside of the room. He didn’t really believe it. Every surface was completely filled with deer antlers. Stacked up, tied together, hanging from the ceiling and along edge of the floor. He left his hands in his pockets, unwilling to touch anything in the sea of horns.
He also tried to keep Rahc in sight in front of him. She was standing in the only real lighted part of the room. He was still slightly rattled from having to bring her here, having her lean in so close to give him directions to the cabin. Steve had to put Natasha in the trunk before Rahc would let him drive.
Rahc set the liquor store bag down on a side table sitting half in shadow. She took out a tall bottle, Steve couldn’t see what she had bought. Maybe she bought that sherry after all. Pale light streamed in through holes in the roofline and through some cracks in the walls. There were no windows that he could see. A single hanging light fixture hung in the centre of the room.
Natasha was slumped at his feet where he had dropped her when they first got here. He had tried to slide her into an open on the floor, her feet and legs brushing up against the antlers heaped up around them. The purple bruise on her temple was dark against her pale face but she was breathing. The singed part of her shirt showed the slight rise and fall of her chest.
Steve hadn’t decided what he was gonna do yet. He figured he could go either way with the Widow but that he’d just look like he was giving her to Rahc. He didn’t really want to leave her in the liquor store to die or get picked up by the cops.
Steve looked around a bit frustrated by all the drama. He didn't actually see a chair in the room. He had sidled up to a rusted metal chest of drawers, thin drawers like a map cabinet, so he sat on the edge of that, trying not to lean back against the antler points behind him on the top.
“We don’t have all that much to talk about Rahc. Where’s Barnes now exactly?”
"I love nature.” She smiled and ignored his question entirely. “I find this little hideaway of my colleague to be so very Canadian. Most of these antlers are sheds by the way. I don’t think he killed all of them, many of them he picked up in the bush." She said the last bit in a very singsong way stressing the ‘all’, the 'kill' and the 'bush'.
Steve just sat wondering where this conversation was going and who the hell was Rahc’s colleague.
“Your problem Steven is that you just are not organized." She looked at him with her sharp eyes below a straight cut fringe. “You are so American, so impetuous, to always go with the ‘gut’ when a situation becomes uncomfortable.” She stopped and patted her stomach, “You move away from the plan but that so rarely works out for you.”
She was moving around the garage like outbuilding. She pulled out a locked box from somewhere and dragged it on floor to a small clear spot in front of her in the light.
She kept on talking, "Have you found your ‘Bucky’ yet? Did you think I let him go or that he escaped? I wanted you to think that Steve. M'sieur Winter is safe and with me still." She spun the lock dial on the box and flipped the lid open. She took out what looked to him like a phone. She removed one glove, swiped, entered a password and then held the phone up to her eye. It made a little electronic noise and she lowered the phone again.
“If you had just come to me in the first place. I was saving him for you. Protecting him from the others. I would have given him back to you Steve. That was the agreement we had, no?”
He cleared his throat, "Uh. Sure Rahc. That was the agreement but then you wouldn't give him back." He tried not to whine like a guilty school child caught by the teacher.
She looked at him sharply. "You didn't kill her." She nudged Natasha on the floor with her foot. "That was your task. And you so obviously failed in your task as we find that she is still here." Rahc pressed something on the phone screen and then tossed it back in the box.
"Now we will wait. You know that I have something worth waiting for still to come.” She smoothed her bangs over to the side and slid her gloved hands down the sides of her uniform skirt.
“In the meantime, you will tell me about your plans and I will think about what to do and who will pay the most for her.” Rahc kicked out at Natasha again.
“I may let you go if the money is high enough. Otherwise." She trailed off making a slight high pitched tut tut sound under her breath. She turned her back on him briefly, dragging an upholstered cushioned chair made of antlers out from the shadows.
“Let us await our visitor.” She sat herself comfortably on the chair, reaching over to uncork the bottle from the liquor store, a small glass appearing in her other hand.
The odd shadows in the antler room fell across her face, making her look to him like an evil queen upon her throne from a very nasty fairy tale.