Homeplot: Border Crossing

It's a long damn time before they manage to get a moment to themselves. The ride to the border had been miserable, dealing with awkward explanations in between jibes and taunts from a man who seemed more enamoured with the idea of killing the two of them than the target of his mission, so much so that by the time they came across Romanova's car abandoned by the side of the road about twenty miles out, Sean had been ready to put a bullet between Creed's eyes and try his luck on his own with Meredith. Still, the prospect of wandering stranded through Soviet territory with no reason for being there, legal or otherwise, struck him as marginally more insane than playing along with all of this, so he reined in the impulse.

They almost snagged a minute alone at the guard station, but Wolverine had vetoed his request to stay with her in the back of the truck at the last second, leading to an argument that had ended with his taking her along as they ventured out. It had ended both far better and far worse than it could have; the guards had all been dead, which made things pretty easy for them, but the perpetrator had insisted on tagging along with them the rest of the way, and if there was one person he trusted less in all of this than Creed, it was Mystique. Any chance they'd have had to break away from the group to talk after that had been lost when their hostage and driver, Ivan, had made a break for it and needed to be chased down.

All in all, the idea of ditching the lot of them and getting as far as his scream will go is starting to look more and more appealing. Eventually, though, they get their chance.

They're stopped at a small village for supplies to get them the rest of the way to Minsk, where Ivan's informed them the Black Widow is heading. For an interrogator, he sure doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut. Stashing the truck behind a two-storey box of a building (the biggest one in the entire town), a discussion ensues about how to split everyone up to get everything they need. While splitting up at all strikes Sean as a truly terrible idea, given all the unknown factors in the group, it's exactly what he's been wishing for for hours, so he's not about to complain. It's another matter entirely to get them to agree to let he and Meredith go off on their own, but he's nothing if not persistent, and eventually, they strike off under the pretense of securing breakfast for everyone with a plan to meet back at the truck in half an hour.

Finally.

Homeplot: Endgame

The rest of the ride to Minsk seems to go by absurdly quick, but Sean knows that that's got to do with nothing but the fact that he still isn't sure what the hell he's going to do once they get there. It isn't exactly a situation he ever thought he'd get to be in again, not in a long damn time, anyway. Not since he was a whole different person.

Or was he?

Faced with the looming, unsettling prospect of finding out just how far he hasn't come, Sean does the only thing he can think of in the meantime: he stalls. Between the wait for Mystique after her insistence that she stay behind with the remaining soldiers to solidify their cover (surprise, surprise: she never shows back up) and the detour into the city proper for Igor, the interrogator, to get them access to a safe phone line so Wolverine can secure their eventual extraction, he winds up with plenty of time to convince Team X to let him hang back with the truck while they do the initial storming of the castle, so to speak. Given how fortified the safehouse no doubt will be, it just makes sense to keep an ace in the hole for when the bullets start flying (technically, that's supposed to be if, but they all know better than that) instead of throwing everything they have at the place all at once.

So here he is, standing outside the truck with Meredith just before noon, Igor still sitting in the driver's seat (he'd grown much more cooperative after finally agreeing to defect instead of letting himself be inevitably executed as a traitor to mother Russia) as the others sneak off to ambush the Black Widow. This is the endgame. Do or die, and all those cliches. He'd better not screw it up.