Time to go

Exscape

It seemed like there was a little bubble surrounding Clint and the Hydra agents, every ear splitting noise had faded away to a dull hum. Balisk was lying limply on the floor, deader than a six pound bag of rocks.

As the air around Clint seemingly froze everyone in place, he felt a familiar whoosh of air on either side of him. The sniper had made another shot, or more accurately two shots.

The agents that were holding Clint's arms went limp and hit the dirt floor with a sickening thud and squelch.

That thud of two men hitting the ground dead shattered the bubble of silence and for the lack of a better term; all hell broke loose.

Without a seconds delay Clint dropped into a crouch and fired of two arrows right off the bat into the nearest agents. One in the stomach and one between the eyes, most agents died within five seconds after crumpling to the ground. It was a quick and merciful death. Clint wasn't cruel, there was no point making someone lay in agonizing pain for a minute before dying, quick and quiet was more his way. Plus if there is a chance they could still fight back or their moans and wails be so loud that people noticed what was going on.

Around him agents began to pile up, all either with an arrow or bullet hole between their eyes. Soon without even really knowing it, Clint fired his last shot and the final agent fell with an arrow sprouting out of his neck.

Without anyone to shoot Clint was now glaringly aware of the sound of leather skidding down rope and the light cat feet of a trained soldier hitting the ground.

Tensing up quickly and turning around with his bow raised and arrow notched, expecting a fight. Instead he came face to face with a man near his age dressed in a worn leather jacket, matching leather gloves, thick military field style pants and scuffed combat boots. In his right hand he clenched a M4A1 sniper rifle, a rather common weapon for a sniper but his rifle had definitely been made custom just for him.

With his eyes still examining the rifle, he carefully began to speak,

"Вы расстреляли Balisk? You shot Balisk?" Clint asked in well practiced russian.

"Да, yes." He answered back with flawless russian, but his words seemed forced, like he wasn't saying them.

At the man's clipped words Clint's eyes wandered to his face.

The man's cheeks were slightly sunken in like he hadn't had a good meal in a while, his hair was brown and hung in a curtain around his face and his eyes were smeared black with a mixture of grease paint and bruising.

What startled Clint the most was his eyes, they looked like they had lived a hundred years in a single blink and it was that look that told Clint that this man had seen the battle field, had seen the light leave his comrades eyes and taken that light from men as well. He had seen that look in hundreds of men and women after a deployment or mission, heck sometimes it even looked back at him when he looked in the mirror in the morning.

"You speak English?" Clint asked, but he had a feeling that he knew the answer, this man had something distinctly un-Russian about him.

"Да." The man answered again simply. "Yes."

Isn't much for talking, is he? Clint mused.

"Why did you save me?" Clint decided to cut the crap and get to the point, there had to be some reason this man helped him.

Above the tent Clint heard the sound of chopper blades slicing the air, either hydra is sending backup or the news teams have arrived.

Apparently the man heard the blades too and instantly hefted his rifle over his shoulder.

"We need to go now, I have a car parked out front." He said curtly.

Clint frowned, "My friend, she would've heard the gunshots. She'll be worried, I promised her I would see her after I got out of the tent."

The man stared at Clint with a look that made him want to shiver. "Look around you. You are standing in a pile of dead bodies, half of them killed by the weapon you are holding. If you go out there the only way you'll see your friend is from behind bars. If the police catch you, you will be convicted of murder, even if these men are criminals. You clearly care about your friend, so don't drag her into this."

His words rung around Clint's brain.

He's right. Clint thought. I can't drag Aries or anyone into this. Clint had a thousand words spinning in his head, a thousand questions colliding in his skull, but he only said three.

"Fine, let's go."

__________________________

They drove in silence, the sniper at the wheel and the archer in the passenger side watching the circus tent, his life for almost two years disappear over the horizon.

Nothing lasts, not even lies.

Once the tent had faded out of view, Clint turned to analyze the man driving again.

"You never told me your name." Clint stated breaking the quiet that had filled the dark jeep for the last hour.

"You never asked." The man stated right back.

"Alright, what's your name?"

"I don't know." The man's eyes never wavered off the road, but Clint could hear just from the sound of the man's voice that he was tensing up again.

"My name is Clint." Clint tried ease the tension.

"I know."

"Okay then..... uh Sebastian
. Is it okay if I call you Seb ? You seem like a Seb..."

" Sebastian is fine."

"Good. Where are you from Sebastian?"

" Wherever I'm from, it doesn't matter now."

With that Clint decided to end the get to know ya part of the drive, Peter didn't seem to like to talk much and Clint wasn't sure he wanted to press him for how hard he was beginning to squeeze the wheel.

"Where are we going?" Clint asked instead.

"I have a hideout about another thirty miles from here, we'll camp out there for the night then we are leaving the country in the morning."

"Where are we leaving to?"

"Anywhere except Germany."

After that answer Clint stopped trying to talk at all and just stared at Sebastian out if the corner of his eye.

There was something about the man that Clint found familiar, not like he had seen him before but like he had heard about him before.

Where have I heard of him? Clint's head ached.

Sebastian shifted his hands on the wheel, letting one of his gloves slide up a fraction of an inch. Clint almost tucked and rolled out of the jeep right then. Sebastian's left hand was completely metal, and not just his hand but his entire arm.

Instantly a memory flooded Clint's mind. A late night stake out, a night so cold that Natasha and him had broken the radio silence and began to trade stories to fight of the cold and stay awake. He remembered the way her face paled even more as she described him and whispered the tale to him as the snow swirled around them.

" Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years. Five years ago when I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me. A Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis."

Clint felt like he was made of stone,the man who saved him, the man sitting under four feet away from him was the Winter Soldier.