Winter's Touch

Three; Strategies.

{A Winter Soldier Fic}

You awoke to the sound of a deep rumbling, and squinted when you saw bright lights flashing in your face. It took a few moments to adjust to the unexpected turn of color, and your brows drew close when you saw a car's silhouette outside the room.

You sat up and swung your legs off of the bed carefully; gripping the sides of it with caution. You set your feet on the cold wooden floor of the motel and stood silently, beginning to take a step towards the window of the room.

You looked out past the curtains to see the man starting up the car, and then looked back to squint at the digital clock on the nightstand. 1:17. You knew it was a part of the lifestyle a murderer lived—up and leaving before anyone could ask questions. But 1:17 was not on good terms with you. Not that you had any say.

You watched as he shut the driver's side door and began to walk towards your room, swinging open the door and stepping inside. You backed away slowly and eyed him carefully. He paid no mind to you as he gathered up his things—the jacket and the many knives he had strewn about on the table in the small kitchen. When he was finished collecting his keepsakes, he grabbed ahold of your short sleeve and dragged you out of the door. You stumbled towards the car in your state of weariness and climbed in the passenger's side slowly as he went about his business. You watched warily as he went up to the window you'd been at last night and set something down on the counter. He came back at his own slow pace, which still frightened you.

You avoided opening your mouth as he got in and started off, down the road and into the early morning. You tried your best not to doze off in case of any erratic events to come, and instead focused on the luminosity of the street lights and the bumps and dips of a back-country road.

Before long it was getting light outside, but the hum of the car was still all you could hear. You watched as all of the familiar parts of your life swam past you. You watched on helplessly as the things you'd come to love were basically crumbling in front of you.

After a while of driving down a long expanse of curving road, you came to a small bank, between a Methodic Church and a pet store and watched carefully as he got out and walked towards it. Your heart dropped. He's going to murder all of those innocent people, you thought. But just as you were going to spring from the car and run to warn someone, you watched him stop in front of the outdoor ATM. He brought out something small and discreet—something you couldn't see—and went to work. About five minutes passed and he was walking back over to your unfortunately shared vehicle and climbing back in—a wad of cash as thick as the dashboard in his hands, as well as a tiny USB stick.

You stared at him in shock, but after thinking it over for a few moments, you became smug. "They'll find you. They'll find us," associating yourself with him in any way made you sick and nauseous, but you were striking gold. Well, dirt, more-so. You'd be home in an hour. "They'll track you down and arrest you. With the hard drive you just used, they know everything about you now," you theorized. He watched you as you did, and your heart dropped as the sickly sight of his own smug face beneath the mask infringed your theory. He reached down into his pocket and you flinched, but he only held up the drive. He held it out in front of your face and spoke with dark strides of his voice.

"This," he said, "Has an army of viruses larger than any country can spring up in forms of soldiers," he paused, correcting himself. "Had."
"No one even knows we're alive."

He placed the small weapon of enormous proportions in the cup holder of the center console and returned his attention back to the car and the road, leaving you to sit silently in the lost hope of your theory. You thought that was your home run—your ticket off this psycho ride. It seemed the odds were not at all in your favor.

*

After long hours of sulking in hopelessness and terror you watched him pull into a car lot lined up with hunks of metal. More like a scrap yard, You thought. To change out the obviously suspicious car with a busted and missing window. When he stopped the car and leaned over towards you, you jumped and leaned as far away as possible from him without falling out of the lack of a window. But he didn't attack you, only squinted at you in annoyance. He opened the glove box and pulled everything there was out, then turned to emptying the center console-not forgetting the small USB he'd left in the cup holder earlier. He growled at you to get out and grab your things from the back—which included your evidence-ridden jacket—and pulled you along in front of him. You stumbled along for a moment before he steadied you and walked you over to a small area near a mechanics table. He looked you in the eyes and held tight to your shaking arm.

"Stay. Here. Try and run, I shoot you. Call for help, I stab you. Do anything ridiculously stupid or arrogantly righteous, I run you over. Get me?" He demands. You stand there and nod your head quickly and swallow thickly. He releases your arm immediately and disappears behind the seemingly never-ending rows of cars. You wait for anything, anything that might save your life, but yet again your saving grace is nowhere to be found. A low rumbling suddenly sounds off in your ears and quickly turns into a small-scale wave of thunder. You glance around to see what it is before a decent condition silver Audi comes around the bend. On the back right you catch a glimpse of the print R8 Spyder and shake your head in disbelief. This guy may be a psychopath, but at the moment, he had some good taste. When he turns the car around towards you, you reach to grab the passenger side door's handle and hear his sharp bark of an order from inside.

"In the back," he says, and immediately you feel like a child. How long has it been since you've slid into the backseat of anything? You don't remember, but obey quickly before he gets angry. Throwing your things in first and then climbing in, you secure yourself before he sets off at a speed only described as insane. In fact you're almost thrown into the back dash. You sigh quietly as you watch him put everything back into the glove compartments and whatnot before heading out onto the interstate and farther into the world. As much as you hate it, the sky turns dark and your ears collect the sounds of real thunder as apposed to the rumbling of the car. Small pings of raindrops bounce off of the vehicle and you find your eyes gradually closing—drifting off under dark rain clouds and equally dark eyes watching you from the rear view mirror.

* "Сладких Снов."

A/N: *Сладких Снов.= Sweet Dreams.