verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
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It takes a stubborn mind to cling to their humanity when the world seeks to strip it away.
It takes a desperate soul to reach f...
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Kat huffed out a soft breath of effort as she hauled the doors of the elevator open, her heart clawing its way up her throat as she once again found herself stepping into the corridors of sub-level 9.
It was all so quiet. She didn't know what she had expected upon her arrival here. The sounds of a fight, some sign that Steve and Bucky had made it this far, at least – there was nothing. In fact, it was all so eerily identical to what she had seen through bleary eyes four years ago that an involuntary shiver ran through her body.
Almost instinctively, her hand reached to slide her pistol from its holster at her side, cradling the grip between her palms as she stepped out into the corridor.
She remembered everything about the layout of this floor. She knew the route she had to follow to reach the silo – she had just hoped she would be doing so with some information. Some trigger or useful code that would help them take down the five super soldiers that were waiting to tear them limb from limb.
She knew that if she took the first branch to the left, it would lead her to the lab where serum had been pumped into her veins. Where sixteen glass vials of failed experiments had been displayed as a warning that she never heeded. Beyond that, the isolation wards where she had spent fevered nights fighting the effects of that serum.
The next corridor would bring the observation room where she had first been introduced to the Winter Soldier. The room where years later he would cling to her shoulder and whisper in her ear as she frantically tended to his mangled left hand.
The next... Her father's office.
Unbidden, her feet hesitated as she stared down that shadowed hallway, her eyes catching on the open door halfway up that corridor. The door of the lab attached to the office that had once been her haven. The lab where she had worked and built and naively constructed the chamber that would form her own prison. The lab she had stumbled from four years ago. Had it only been four years? It felt a lifetime ago. Before she'd even heard of the Avengers, before Amsterdam, before Bucky...
A heavy blink alerted her to the mist gathering in her eyes, clouding her vision as she realised that somehow, her feet had carried her to that doorway, her hand reaching for the light switch just inside the doorframe – muscle memory, a routine she had followed too many times.
Of course, the light didn't come on. The power failure in this room was the very reason she was currently breathing.
Still, the lab hadn't been cleared. She had been left to rot here by Karpov, he had simply watched her freeze and then locked the door behind him – all of the tools were still here, meaning that when she moved through the gloom to open a drawer, the flashlight she had been anticipating finding was still nestled exactly where she had left it.
The beam of light illuminated a familiar landscape. A desk, benches – the dusty shell of a monitor that had once been an active AI... The chamber.
