verb.
To come or go back to a place or person.
noun.
The firing of a weapon to counter a shooter's shot.
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They recoiled from their pasts, and in doing so found each other.
But the universe isn't kind enough to let a moment of peace last.
It took se...
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As a fist was roughly rammed between her shoulder blades, forcing her already bent frame lower to the ground, Kat almost choked on her breath.
There's something familiar about this one.
Panic, white hot, stomach-turning panic surged through her. She couldn't think.
Because right now her arms were being twisted so painfully by another of Hydra's many heads and all her eyes could see was snow. The rush of blood in her ears mingled with echoes of her own screams. Metal was closed over her wrists, locking them in place.
They were going to put her back. They were going to put her back in the ice.
She could feel her chest heaving with frantic gasps, desperately trying to draw in enough air to force back those terrified thoughts. Demanding that her mind shove back the memories of that day in 1992.
"Kat? Kat report, where are you?"
A voice in her ear. A demand she couldn't answer.
Steve.
She had to breathe. She had to focus on what was happening now, or she'd never make it out of this year.
"Kat?"
It was concrete that her knees drove into, not snow. It was the blare of an alarm echoing through the stairwell. Not screams. Not yet.
He knew. The man stood over her, the man whose shoes she could just see within her field of vision knew who she was. Or he suspected something. She should have known better – if there was anyone in the world who knew every single one of Hydra's dirty secrets it was Alexander Pierce.
And he had the case. He had the Sceptre, the stone. He had the very thing she had travelled back to this wretched year to find.
"Rollins, scan her."
The shoes moved, the sound of Pierce descending the last steps to the ground floor fading into the sound of heavy boots approaching.
"I'm almost at the alley, are you close?"
Steve was still looking for her – she couldn't reply or she would jeopardize the whole mission. They couldn't know she wasn't alone.
A small bleep over her head warned her of a device being prepped. Whatever they were going to use to scan her face would pull up her Hydra file. They would know who she was in seconds if she didn't get herself out of this.
And then she really would be put back on the ice. Or worse.
The heavy boots she had heard appeared in front of her limited line of vision, a hand grasped her ponytail roughly to jerk her head up – and she moved.
Throwing her body with the motion of her hair being tugged, she managed to roll to the side – just enough to free her legs from where they were trapped beneath her and kicking out at the shins of the man in front of her. Rollins, Pierce had called him. He evidently hadn't been expecting the explosive contact of the soles of her boots as he staggered backwards, his feet slipping from under him as he met the edge of the landing and crashed backwards down the stairs with a yell.
