Remnants of Time

Chapter 4

Song Choice: Fade Away - Zack Hemsey

The car ride after Nat's arrival was a chaos. Steve drove, but couldn't concentrate because he was asking way too many questions at once. Natasha was hurt but didn't respond to anything. A lonely tear ran down her cheek and while Sam tried to calm Steve down, she just looked out of the window with an expression they couldn't read.

"Drive to Brussels", she whispered.
"Are you sure?", Steve fumbled around with the navigation system until Sam swatted the blond's hands away.
"You keep your eyes on the street", he growled, "I still remember last time we were doing this. Don't wanna end up in a hospital again."
"Brussels is like, 320km away. What are we doing in Belgium? We should be flying back to Wakanda."
"Finding answers."
With that said, they drove another twenty minutes in silence, in an aggressive silence, because Steve looked like he was fuming. Sam was just a little pissed off, while Nat and him patched up her arm.
"Make a stop at the next highway station. We need to switch cars. We can't trust any camera. Also, get some sleep. We're not gonna stop at a motel or anything."

Steve stopped and made sure Sam would take over so he could take a nap later. He also went to the bathroom. It was dark by now.
When he came back, Natasha waited for him, holding out her phone to him. Sam slid into the driver's seat, starting the new car they had chosen. It had a German number plate and looked nice.
Steve and Nat shared the back row, her looking straight into his blue eyes, explaining her own devastation with just one look. He felt sorry for bombarding her with questions earlier and put an arm around her. We're gonna get through it together. She still needed to tell him why they couldn't go back to Wakanda yet.
She pulled up a file out of her bag, but for a split second, Steve thought he'd seen a brown piece of paper in there. When she coughed, all his attention was on her. Natasha lay the brown file on her lap, it clearly saying Bucky's name. There was a little smile the two shared, but she quickly looked down again.
"You don't want to see this, but you should."
Her petite finger pressed the play button on her phone. Was this a video?
"I didn't have enough time to decrypt and transfer the files from their database, so I just recorded it."

The screen was dark and nothing happened, no sounds or anything appeared. On the bottom, numbers marked the recording date. It had been yesterday, in the evening. Sam eyed the two through the back mirror. He hoped Steve would be fine.
Suddenly, something seemed to move, although barely anything was visible on the screen. Glass shattered, steam seemed to leave some container.
"Nat, what is this?"
Lights turned on, lights Steve had seen before. A dark silhouette stood before a tube. The cryofreeze tube containing Bucky. Steve couldn't make out who the silhouette was.
Natasha's fingers appeared on the screen, she knew what was gonna happen. The recorded version of her forwarded the next half an hour since the few things that happened took time. The stranger took the unconscious man out of his restraints. Barnes only had one arm, he was helpless. In his frozen state, he would also be no harm to anyone.
Steve couldn't watch or listen to the ten words spelled out in clean Russian. He couldn't stand the angry grunts from his friend or the panting of the Winter Soldier. The brunet couldn't fight. This was a hopeless situation. They could hear Natasha repeating words in Russian while shakily recording.
His eyes brimmed with tears. Not again. He prayed it wasn't real, that maybe all of this was another nightmare, but he wasn't waking up. This was real. This was the cruel truth.
The Winter Soldier still struggled with getting up but nodded at the directive he'd received.
"Get out of here", Natasha translated.
Just then, the main lights turned on, revealing an angry Wanda. Clint came rushing in too, with a pulled arrow. Red streaks of energy surged through the air. Wanda did good, wrapping them around the intruder, entering his mind. He stood still when she had him in her grip, but suddenly, her expression turned from triumphant to worried.