Chapter Text
It could be worse.
It’s what Steve keeps reminding himself as the Russian soldiers surround the two of them. Next to him, Robin holds her hands up in a hesitant surrender, and he copies her, heart beating in his throat.
They’re not shot dead on sight. That has to count for something.
Hands grab him, hauling him up roughly from the floor. Fingers jab at his skin, digging in painfully so that he hisses in pain.
Robin doesn’t fare any better, pulled up with such force that she’s lifted clean off the ground for a few seconds. She yelps, a leg kicking out at the nearest soldier, and immediately, several guns turn to point in her direction.
His heart seizes. “We’ll cooperate!” Steve shouts, unable to disguise his panic. “We surrender, look! We’re surrendering!”
He doesn’t know if they can understand him. If they even speak English.
It could be worse.
His arms are wrenched behind him, his wrists slammed together with such force that they make a dull thwack. He can see the same happening to Robin, sees them tie her wrists together with some kind of thick rope and feels them do the same to him.
Neither of them struggles. It’s better not to, he tells himself, heart racing. Less likelihood of getting shot, anyhow.
The bindings are too tight, too much pressure. He tries to flex his wrist, freezing when a gun barrel is thrust into his face.
“Hey, we’re, we’re cool!” He hates how high-pitched his voice is starting to sound. Fear ebbs into it, humiliating. “It’s—You’re tying them too tight, that’s all!”
If they can understand him, they ignore him, continuing to tighten them until they bite into his flesh.
“Don’t touch me,” Robin suddenly snarls from the other side of the room, and Steve sees her flinch away—as much as she can, anyway—from her captors.
Steve stares, bewildered, trying to assess what exactly is happening. Two soldiers keep her upright, her hands tied behind her back, just like his.
“American women,” one of them says in a thick accent, and laughs, like it’s funny, somehow. “Feisty, like they say.”
He sees it a second before it moves away. The hand on her thigh, the fingers trailing across the dark blue fabric of her shorts.
Robin meets Steve’s gaze desperately, her eyes wild and frantic. Frightened. His terror swells into rage.
“Get off her,” he spits, trying to wrench himself free from his own captors. “Leave her alone!”
He gets a punch to the stomach for his troubles. He groans in pain, distantly hearing Robin yell furiously.
“I am sorry,” comes a new voice, not sounding very sorry at all. Another man walks up, and, with a motion of his hand, the men restraining them step back.
Not a soldier, then. The general, maybe. Definitely the one in charge, considering the way the other men tread around him.
He comes to a stop in front of Steve. “For spies, we take no risks.”
“Spies?” Steve coughs out a laugh. “We’re not spies!”
“We work at the mall!” Robin says, her voice strained. “We scoop ice cream!”
“Ah, I see.” The general nods thoughtfully. “This is all a big mistake.”
Hope ignites in Steve’s chest. “Yes! Yes, this is a misunderstanding, I swear.”
The general leans in, so close that Steve can smell the cigarette stench of his breath. It’s all he can do not to wrinkle his nose.
“You work at the mall,” the general says.
Steve nods frantically. “Yeah. Yes. At the ice cream place. Scoops Ahoy.”
“And if we let you go—You will keep quiet?”
“Yes! Yes, I promise. We promise. Right, Robin?”
“We promise,” Robin rasps, her voice thin. “We won’t say a word.”
“See? We got lost! That’s all! You can let us go!”
His voice is tinged with desperation now. He doesn’t care. He so badly wants to be away from here.
The general studies him for a long moment. Then, in a low voice, he breathes, “Liar.”
Steve’s stomach plummets again. “No! No, I’m not lying!”
The general’s already turning away. He says something in Russian to his men, and they swarm them once more.
It could be worse. But it’s hard to think how.
“I’m not lying! I’m not!” Steve yells, pleads, begs, anything to make them set them free. They ignore him.
He’s shoved roughly forward, and then he finds himself being frogmarched out of the room.
“Steve!” Robin shouts, strained, and he twists his head back to see that the other soldiers are dragging her in a different direction.
“No! No!” He struggles, then, uncaring of the guns and the soldiers, because they can’t take Robin. She’s only here because of him, because he called for her help to hold the door, because he let her crack that stupid code. They can’t take her. “Take me, take me! Let her go, she doesn’t know anything!”
They’re approaching a large door. They’re going to go through it. And if they go through it—
“Please don’t take her,” he begs, even as it falls on deaf ears. They keep walking, unrelenting.
“Steve!” Robin’s voice cracks, fear breaking through it as she scuffles with her captors. He can’t stop them. There’s nothing he can do.
“I’ll find you!” Steve yells, hoping she knows he means it. Hoping that she knows he’ll do everything he can to get her home safe. “I promise I’ll come find you!”
The door slams shut.
Robin is gone.
Steve keeps struggling, trying to wrench himself free from the two men forcing him forward, knowing it’s futile.
Something collides, hard, with his cheek, the shock of it making him gasp and stumble. He’s forced to remain upright by the grip the soldiers have on his arms, a small mercy amidst everything.
Stars pop airlessly around him as the general barks something in Russian. Pain blooms. He tries to touch it, dazed, and his arm catches, stopping him.
The bindings. Right.
They round a corner, facing down another corridor, and then another.
Steve tries to keep track of the twists and turns. Left, left, right. Another long corridor. His face stings.
“Where are we going?” he croaks, craning his neck to try and see behind him. It’s useless. The soldiers propelling him block the view.
He doesn’t get an answer. They turn another corner, start down another corridor.
Already, it’s starting to muddle together in his head. Did they come from the left or the right? Was it two turns, or one? Everything looks the same.
He needs to come up with an escape plan. Or any kind of plan. Dustin and Erica got out, so chances are they’re getting help at this very moment.
You hope they got out, his brain says nastily. Maybe they got caught, too.
He pushes the voice to the back of his mind. They got out, he tells himself firmly. They’re getting help. All he has to do is wait for an opportunity to escape, find Robin, and find somewhere to hide out until the cavalry comes.
The soldiers stop abruptly. Steve looks up to see they’ve stopped in front of a door.
The general says something, and the men salute. A second later, the door opens, and Steve finds himself thrown into a small, cramped room, groaning as his back hits the wall.
He’s given no time to recover. He’s yanked up into a sitting position, and there’s a weird clink of metal behind his back before he’s forced to rest with his arms against the wall. They’re starting to ache, his wrists rubbing uncomfortably against the material of the bindings. He tries to lean forward, finds his tied hands have been attached to the wall, holding him in place.
One by one, the soldiers disperse, until finally the door closes, leaving him alone with the general, which… probably isn’t good news.
The general clicks his tongue, not taking his eyes off him. Slowly, he approaches, and Steve forces himself not to shrink back.
He stops just short of being in front of him. “Who do you work for?”
“The… the mall,” Steve says, bewildered. They’ve told him already, he and Robin both. “I—We work at the mall, at Scoops Ahoy. The ice cream place, we scoop ice cream.”
“Hm.” The general studies him, giving a slow shake of his head. “Now the truth.”
“Wh—That is the truth!” he protests. “Look at my uniform! There’s an ice cream cone on it!”
“You expect me to believe that you stumbled in here by accident?”
“Yes! Because we did!” Steve splutters, heart hammering in his chest. Shit, shit. He can’t say they cracked their stupid secret code—that Robin cracked it, that Dustin heard it on his Cerebro. No, he has to keep him here, with him, away from their involvement. “We—we were looking for—our delivery.”
He stumbles on the words, like an amateur, cursing himself. They didn’t even come up with a possible cover story in case they got caught. Stupid, stupid.
Nancy always said the best lies are based in truth. If he’s careful, maybe he can make this work. If he takes the truth and twists it, then it’s not a complete lie, right?
“A delivery,” the general repeats. “What delivery?”
“Ice cream toppings,” he lies. The words spill out of his mouth far too quickly. He tries to smooth out his voice. “Sauce, sprinkles. The works. It didn’t show up, so—so we thought it might’ve been left at the loading dock, and—and we ended up here!”
The general clicks his tongue again.
“That’s the truth,” Steve says, swallowing hard. “I swear.”
For a long moment, the general just stares at him. Then he turns and leaves the room.
Steve sits bolt upright. He scrabbles at the bindings with his fingertips, trying to work out what they’ve tied him up with. Whatever they used, it’s holding fast, not giving so much as an inch.
Abandoning it, he turns his attention to the wall behind him instead, twisting his neck this way and that, trying to see what’s holding him in place. There’s not enough room to get a good view, and he can’t reach anything with his fingers, even when he strains until his muscles ache.
He tries to jolt forward in the hopes of pulling it from the wall, or at least loosening something. Nothing gives, and he grunts, frustrated.
He has to get out of here. He has to find Robin.
The guilt of her being here floods him once more. She should’ve left with Dustin and Erica. If he’d tried harder to hold the door alone, if he’d been stronger—if he hadn’t shouted for her—
She’d come running without hesitation, without a second thought. She’d sacrificed herself to make sure Dustin and Erica got to safety.
Why did she do that? She barely knows them, any of them. The only reason she even got involved in this mess is because she’d been bored, and he’d let her. Encouraged her, even, had secretly liked spending the extra time with her, and now—
And Erica. Erica! She’s ten years old. What the fuck was he thinking, letting a ten year old get involved? It’s bad enough that Dustin’s involved, but Dustin’s Dustin, he would’ve worked things out one way or another. Involving Erica, involving Robin—that’s on him. He’s the adult here, he’s the one who should’ve drawn a line, and he didn’t.
If anything happens to them—any of them—he’ll never forgive himself.
Maybe he can still help them. Maybe if he can keep these stupid Russians focused on him, they’ll leave Robin alone. Maybe he can buy enough time for Dustin and Erica to get out and get help.
All he has to do is keep them with him.
*
The door opens after an indeterminable age. Steve’s head whips up as the general enters, a soldier in tow.
“What’s this?” Steve asks, trying to keep his voice light. “Shift rotation?”
The general subtly tilts his head to the side. A second later, a fist slams into Steve’s ribcage.
“Who do you work for?” the general demands.
“Scoops Ahoy!” Steve gasps out, winded. “I work for Scoops Ahoy!”
Another punch, this time to the face. He feels more than hears the crunch as it connects to his nose. He can taste blood at the back of his throat.
They broke my nose, he thinks hazily.
“Who do you work for?”
“Scoops Ahoy!”
To the face, again. He cries out, spits blood.
“Who do you work for?”
“Scoops Ahoy!”
Thud.
“Scoops Ahoy!”
Crack.
“I work for Scoops Ahoy!”
As the soldier pulls his arm back, preparing for the swing, the general holds up a hand, stopping him. Steve splutters, breathing heavy, his head pounding, his nose stuffy with blood. It leaks down his face, over his lips, dripping onto his uniform.
If he gets out of here, he’s going to burn it.
“Maybe you need… incentive,” the general says. He makes another gesture, and the soldier steps back, so that it’s just the general and Steve, face to face.
“Incentive?” Steve croaks. His ears are ringing. He’s not totally sure he’s heard him right.
“Your girlfriend, she is being questioned by some of the men. Much like you are being questioned by me.”
Girlfriend? He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s been striking out for months. They can’t mean Nancy?
Then his scattered brain catches up. Robin. They mean Robin.
He’s not sure why they’re bringing her up, though. He knows they have Robin. Robin’s answers can’t be that different from his, surely? She doesn’t know about the gate. He barely knows about the gate.
“Leave her alone,” Steve tries to demand, but it comes out weak, no force behind it.
“If we cannot get answers from you, then maybe we get them from her.”
Steve furrows his brow, sensing the threat but not understanding it. They already said they’re interrogating her.
The general watches him closely and continues, “Pretty thing, isn’t she? You must think yourself very lucky.”
It clicks. A shard of fear grips him, sharp as ice. “No!”
“No?” The general’s face splits into a sick grin. “You disagree?”
“No, leave her alone! She doesn’t know anything!” Steve surges forward, lunging at him, but his hands snag on their chain, stopping him. He stumbles back, his head hitting the wall, as the general cackles.
“But you do,” the general says, and motions for the soldier. The other man steps forward, hauls him back up like it’s nothing, and Steve hates this, hates them, hates himself.
Rage wars with terror. Terror wins out.
“We don’t know anything,” he begs, losing all semblance of the humour he’d been clinging to. He thinks of the hand on Robin’s thigh and almost throws up. “Please don’t hurt her, please, hurt me, hurt me instead, please, not her!”
“Who do you work for?”
“No, please—let her go, let her go—”
The general lets out an exaggerated sigh, tutting. He tilts his head, and the soldier steps forward again, pulling back his arm in preparation.
He’s ready for the punch this time, but it does nothing to prepare him for the fresh pain. At least it’s me, he thinks through ringing ears. Blood coats his tongue. If it’s me, it’s not Robin. If it keeps her safe, it can be me.
“Leave us,” the general says, turning to the soldier. “Go pay a visit to our other guest.”
“No! No!” Steve shouts. He knows it’s spoken in English for his benefit, to get a rise out of him, but he doesn’t care; it works. “Don’t!”
His words go unheard. The soldier leaves without looking back.
*
It could be hours that pass. It could be days. There are no windows in the room, no clocks, nothing to distinguish the passage of time.
The questions keep coming, always the same, and always followed by violence when the answer does not satisfy.
Steve rambles away at his tormentors, dizzy, disoriented, the lack of sleep, food and water combining with his throbbing head. He’s not even sure what he’s saying anymore. He offers ice cream, of all things, burbles away about butterscotch, anything to prove what he’s saying is true.
The general laughs. Steve joins in, much too high-pitched to be genuine. Blood crusts above his lip.
The door opens. The general’s face contorts with something—anger, annoyance? Too hard to read—and he turns, barks something in Russian at the two soldiers who enter.
The two exchange a look. They’re young. Younger than the general, than the soldier who had been busy turning Steve’s face into a pulp.
One of them says something in Russian. The general frowns. Looks back at Steve.
He wishes he could understand what they’re saying. He strains his ears, as if that’ll help, wincing as the distant ringing gets louder.
Next thing he knows, the two men are hauling him up.
“Hey! Hey, get off—” It’s pointless to struggle, he knows, had been futile the first time and that was before he’d been beaten. He tries anyway. “Let me go—”
Hands scrabble at his. He’s freed from the wall, freed from the bindings, his arms held in a death grip. They wrench his arms in front of him, retie the bindings even tighter, if possible.
They march him out of the room. His entire body aches with the movement. His head spins under the bright lights of the corridor, so much so that he has to press his eyes closed.
Then he’s thrown into a new room, hitting hard flooring with an oof. He opens his eyes, curling into himself—and sees her.
“Robin!” She’s slumped onto her side, her back to him. Steve wrestles his way upwards, towards her, relief surging through him.
She’s here. She’s here.
Except—she doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move.
His mouth dries. He struggles forward, manages to jostle her. “Robin?”
Still nothing.
His stomach plummets.
“Robin?” Steve lays his hand on her shoulder, giving her a light shake. When he still gets no response, he awkwardly rolls her towards him, as carefully as he can manage with these stupid bindings.
Her head lolls against his knees, hair slipping out of her face, and he barely suppresses a gasp as he leans over her.
Robin’s face is bruised, one of her eyes black and puffy, and she’s pale—too pale, her freckles stark against her skin. Her lip looks busted, dried blood crusting her lips, below her nose, the corner of her mouth. Her hair is sticky with blood where it had fallen into her face.
The more he looks, the more injuries he sees. Bruises on her knees, a huge bloom of purple trailing down her neck. There’s blood on her uniform.
“Robin, please.” His voice comes out as a croak. He can’t breathe. They took him, they hurt him, Robin shouldn’t have been touched, she shouldn’t be here, she shouldn’t be—“Say something! Robin! Robin!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a door open, and the general enters the room. Immediately, Steve rears up.
“What did you do to her?” he demands, fury and fear both thrumming through his blood. Robin still hasn’t so much as twitched, which only adds to his rising panic. “What did you do?”
This time, it’s the general who backhands him, sending him back to the ground with a grunt. He says something in Russian, and more soldiers approach.
“No! Stay away!” Steve tries to shield Robin’s body with his own, to block her from their view.
It doesn’t matter. He’s pulled away from her, even as he fights back, as he kicks and claws and bites anything he can reach.
Two soldiers haul Robin up from the floor. She should be yelling, should be trying to wrench herself away from them, but they pull her up without resistance.
“Let her go,” Steve spits. His eyes dart all over, honing in on the way the men’s fingers dig into Robin’s flesh, the way it goes white around the outline of their grip, like it’s painful, and he headbutts the closest soldier, uncaring of the pain that explodes beneath him. “Get off her!”
Something strikes his face. He gasps, reeling, and they take the advantage to shove him into a chair. Hands are everywhere, on his arms, on his legs, tying him down.
He feels, more than sees, as Robin’s forced into a second chair behind him. He can feel as she’s pressed into his back, feel her hair tickle the back of his neck.
“Robin, wake up. Robin!” He keeps struggling, whipping his head around, trying to see her. There are too many men in the way. Cold metal presses into the small of his back where the chair is, but he can feel Robin’s back against his, feels the way she’s being held upright.
More bindings come around his arms, his shoulders. Not tying him to the chair, though—tying him to her, to Robin, so that they’re tied back-to-back. They step away, job done, and immediately he feels Robin sag forward, completely limp.
“What did you do?!” Steve shouts. His voice cracks at the end of it. Robin’s never quiet. Her silence is eerie, unnatural, and it terrifies him.
Then—movement, against him. For a split second, he thinks Robin’s come to, but when he twists his neck back to try and see her, he’s instead met with the sight of the general holding a fistful of Robin’s hair, yanking her head upright to rake his eyes over her.
Steve’s blood boils. “Don’t touch her,” he snarls, thrashing against his bindings.
The general tuts mockingly. He lets go, and Robin crumples like a rag doll.
“Robin.” Steve gets more desperate, turning this way and that, anything to see her. “Robin? Robin, can you hear me?”
He hears footsteps to the side of him. The general walks past, stopping just a few steps in front of him. He’s smirking. Steve wants him dead. Wants them all dead. Wants to tear the entire bunker apart.
“Your girlfriend, I think she needs a doctor.” He smiles, ugly and cold. “If only you had told the truth, yes?”
“You’re sick,” Steve spits out, putting as much venom into his words as he can muster. “You’re sick, you’re sick, bastards, bastards—”
“Not to worry,” the general says, as if he hadn’t spoken. “We have the very best doctors.”
The soldiers erupt into laughter. The general laughs, too, a joke that Steve doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to understand.
“Robin,” he tries, again, tilting his head back until it knocks into hers. “Robin—”
“We will give you some time to think,” the general interrupts. He grabs Steve’s face in his hand, turns him to look back at him. Steve stares back with blazing eyes, hating, hating. “The doctor, he is in no rush. Maybe keep that in mind, yes? The truth… for her sake.”
Then they’re gone.
The two of them are alone.
“Robin, they’re gone. Robin. Robin?” Steve tries to bump his shoulder into hers. “Robin, wake up. Wake up. Please?”
She doesn’t respond.
Steve twists around until it physically hurts, until his bindings threaten to bite through him. He’s desperate to look at her, to find some telltale sign that she’s okay, that she’s still with him.
No matter how far he contorts himself, he can’t get a clear view. Her head still lolls forward, her hair curtaining her face. She’s so, so still.
Bile rises in his throat. He didn’t check her pulse. What if—What if she’s—
“Robin, please, no, no no no…” His chest is too tight. He can’t breathe. His heart hammers in his chest, pounding like a drum, like it’s finally giving out.
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s realised that it’s beating alone in the room.
“Robin, say something!”
Silence. All he can hear is the relentless beat of blood in his eardrums.
She can’t be dead, he thinks frantically, as his brain screams she’s gone, she’s gone, you got her into this mess and now she’s gone, you killed her, you killed her, on loop. She can’t be dead. The Russians—they said she needs a doctor. Robin wouldn’t need a doctor if she were dead.
He clings to that thought. That hope. Because Robin Buckley can’t be dead, not a thousand miles under the ground in a Russian bunker, not in a Scoops Ahoy uniform and tied to his back.
She has to be alive. She has to.
Dustin and Erica must’ve gotten help by now. They must be on their way back with the cavalry, ready to burst in, guns blazing.
“HELP!” he shouts, looking around desperately for some kind of vent, or gap, or something. “Somebody help!”