Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Additionally, there's references to canon past trauma from both canons. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: So this is not a multi-chapter fic. It is, however, a small set of oneshots (at least five of them, probably not more than that) detailing a very long car ride from one side of Romania to near the other where a newly free Winter Soldier hitched a ride with a dimension hopping Master of Death.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 14); Mc4A (Year 4)
Individual Challenges: Culturally Inclined; Fix-It Felix; Gryffindor MC; Metahuman MC; Magical MC; Marvelous HP; Military MC; Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion; Ethnic & Present; Disabled; Immortal MC (x2); Setting Sail; Hold the Mayo; Gender Bender; Zed Era; Old Shoes (x2) (Y); Marvelous Cinema; In a Flash; Bucket Listing; Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 14 – Assignment 07
Subject (Task No.): DIY & Home Repairs (Task#2: Write about something risky or dangerous.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Fantastic Beasts [15](A Gift of Transportation); 365 Prompts [83](Gloves); Scavenger Hunt [08](5 Collected Same Setting)[01]; Pinata [Easy](Picking up a Hitchhiker); Salad Bar [Baby Spinach](Looks/Acts Young); Hogwarts Library [The Martian](Abandonment)
Other MC4A Challenges: SpB [3C](Baseball); TrB [2C](Unexpected Partners); Ship (Winter Lightning)[Sp Micro 2](Radio); Hunt [Sp Con](Sandwich); Chim [Isopra](Gender Bent)
Representation(s): Desi & Autistic Harry Potter/Bucky Barnes; Fem Harry Potter; Recovering Inherited Cultures
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Teat Juice; Machismo; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Wabi Sabi)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Terse; Toad); SN (Rail; Ameliorate)
Word Count: 978 words

(^^)
Outside Carei
(^^)

Harini picked him up outside of Carei, which was practically spitting distance from Romania's border with Hungary. She was meandering her way down to Bucharest with the half-formed idea of settling there for a while. She had had a few encounters with some pretty dodgy organizations already and while the most persistent thorn in her side (an American intelligence organization called SHIELD which tended to make people disappear) had been toppled a few months back, she was in need of somewhere she could lie low. Bucharest was as good a place as any.

Normally, she wouldn't have done something to risky. Hitchhiking was something she had done herself from time to time. After all, the dimensional shuffle thing didn't always leave her time to pack supplies and sometimes there was just too much difference between the dimensions for anything she did manage to take with her to be of any use. But it seemed to be a universal constant that a woman traveling alone had to be aware of potential threats. That went double if she was as dark as Harini was.

A bulky man in layers of hooded sweatshirts walking along the side of the road and looking to hitch a ride screamed all manner of threats. He wore leather gloves on both his hands. His long brown hair had been pulled back into a rough ponytail, as if he had needed it contained but didn't have the energy or time to take care of it. At least three days worth of beard covered the lower half of his face. His jeans looked well-worn in both the way of old favorites and in the sense that he had been wearing them a few days. Despite how clear it was that he had been traveling on foot for a while, his boots were visibly in good condition.

And to the secret core of her that was connected to Death, the man practically glowed.

So she picked up her first hitchhiker, despite how dangerous the practice was in general and how risky it was to be close to another being connected to the cosmic forces. He wasn't really a big talker, her hitchhiker. She had only managed to get out of him that he was willing to ride with her as far as she was willing to take him after he introduced himself as Yasha.

She lasted a half hour before she switched on the radio. The station the last person who had had the rental car was playing a commentary for some game. After a few minutes, she recognized it as baseball, one of the older games that old men always loved to reminisce about when they sat around on stoops and porches. It didn't seem to matter the sport. All of the best games had always happened at least twenty years ago, if not sixty or seventy.

"I know this game," her companion muttered, just barely loud enough for her to hear. She bit the inside of her cheek as she pondered if she should take that as a start of a conversation. She really wasn't good at judging that kind of thing. She had never been, if she was honest. It was usually easier to just keep quiet and pretend she hadn't noticed at all.

...but she was lonely after so many years of traveling and sliding.

"Was it a good game?" Harini asked. Her hands tightened reflexively on the steering wheel. At least driving gave the perfect excuse to avoid eye contact. That made the fumbling conversation just the tiniest bit easier to bear, especially as the pause seemed to be growing into a full-fledged silence.

"I don't know," Yasha said finally. His voice sounded just as flat as hers whenever she was getting tired or overwhelmed. He also seemed to be hunkering down into his hoodie. Harini's heart ached as she recognized what she would do if she was expecting to be hit. "I just know the game."

Without saying a word, she reached into the backseat (staunchly ignoring how Yasha's shoulders hunched at the motion) and popped the lid of the cooler she had there. It was filled with ice packs charmed to never thaw, which might need some kind of explanation if Yasha stayed with her for very long. She pulled out first one wrapped sandwich and then another. She dropped both in Yasha's lap.

"What?" he asked, despite how she knew that he had identified the objects. She hummed noncommittally. He pulled off his gloves with what seemed like exaggerated care until she saw that one hand was completely metal. A prosthesis? It was well-designed if so. She wouldn't have clocked it. Then he unwrapped one of the sandwiches, revealing the layers of tomato, cucumber, and cheese. She knew that each side of the sub would have a super-simple guacamole spread on it, even if it wasn't visible. "There's no meat."

"No," she agreed. Harini was tempted to explain about how she had drifted into Buddhism at one point, as it came from the same region that her family had and was more easily accessible, and that while it hadn't truly fit, it had meshed well with the kosher diet she had adopted after learning about her mother's side of things. (Not that Aunt Petunia had mentioned anything about being Jewish, but it wasn't like that was the only secret she had ever kept.) Maybe an hour of knowing each other wasn't the right time to start bringing up complicated family history.

"I think I like that," Yasha said hesitantly. "Meat shouldn't be eaten with cheese?"

"A man after my own heart," Harini quipped cheerfully. "Now eat up. You look like you could use a decent meal."

As they ate to the sounds of a long concluded baseball game, Harini thought her risky decision might not be such a bad one.