Fallen Heroes | Marvel/CATWS {2}

Chapter 11: Impossible

Sometimes before it gets better, the darkness gets bigger. The person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger. –Fall Out Boy, Miss Missing You

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With five people crammed into Sam's small car, someone was obviously going to get stuck in the middle back seat. I drew the short straw. The middle seat doesn't even have a seatbelt. Now I know how Sissy felt every time we went on vacation when we were kids.

"HYDRA doesn't like leaks," Sitwell complains from the seat to my left.

"Then why don't you try sticking a cork in it?" Sam recommends from the driver's seat.

Natasha leans forward, resting her chin on the back of Steve's seat by his shoulder. "Insight's launching in sixteen hours. We're cutting it a little bit close here."

"I know," Steve agrees. "We'll use him to bypass the DNA scans and access the helicarriers directly."

"What?" Sitwell gasps. "Are you crazy? That is a terrible, terrible idea."

As he finishes speaking, there's a strange sound from the top of the vehicle. Before I can begin to guess what it is, the window beside Sitwell shatters inward; I reflexively flinch away, almost jumping into Natasha's lap. With a loud cry of fear, he's pulled through the window and into the opposite lane of traffic, right in front of a truck.

"Move!" Natasha orders, shoving me to the floor of the car. At first, I think she's just trying to get me away from her, but then she jumps over the seat, landing in Steve's lap, as a gunshot rings out. Small fibers of padding from the seat fly into the air as a small hole appears where my head had been a moment earlier. Another shot, another hole in the seat—this time, where Natasha had been seated. Natasha pulls Steve's head out of the way and pushes Sam with her foot before the third and fourth bullets can bury themselves in their foreheads.

I've just managed to pull myself halfway back into my seat when Steve grabs the gearshift and pushes it into park. The car screeches to a halt, throwing me into the back of the driver's seat. I look over Sam's shoulder and out the windshield to see our attacker being tossed through the air by the sudden stop. He lands hard, and for a second I'm naïve enough to believe the impact must have broken his back, if not worse. As soon as I see the shower of sparks that rises from the pavement when he uses his hand to slow to his momentum before coming to a stop, I realize how foolish the notion was. The Winter Soldier's caught up with us.

Cars on either side of us keep driving, swerving to avoid hitting us and speeding up when the see the Winter Soldier standing in the middle of the road—it's like they can tell that something bad is happening and that they need to get as far away as possible.

Natasha, still sprawled across Steve's lap (if the situation was less serious, I might be tempted to make a sarcastic comment about what Cecilia would think if she could see them), draws a pistol from a hidden holster and takes aim. Before she can pull the trigger, another vehicle crashes into us—for a split second, my mind flashes back to six years ago, when my parents were killed in a car accident. If I hadn't already been holding onto the seat in front of me, the impact would have sent me flying through the windshield. Natasha drops the gun as the vehicle behind us keeps moving forward, pushing us towards the Winter Soldier.

When we're only a few yards away from him, he flips and lands on top of the car again. The back window shatters, sending shards of glass raining across the back seat, thankfully not hitting me with enough force to break through my jacket. Sam slams on the breaks, but it doesn't make any difference. Natasha blindly searches for the gun, which has fallen under the seat, while my mind races to think of a spell—something that will hinder the Winter Soldier if the spell passes through the roof like I hope it will, but won't hurt us if it rebounds. Before anything comes to mind, the Winter Soldier punches through the windshield and grabs the steering wheel, literally tearing it out of Sam's hands.