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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The layout of his room was much the same as hers. The wall opposite the door consisted entirely of glass, the view of the city beyond the palace grabbing Kat's gaze as she stood in the threshold, before she let her eyes wander, searching for him. For the man seated at the foot of the large bed that dominated the wall facing the window, his back squared against her. The sheets were still pulled perfectly taut against the mattress, only creased around the edges where he seemed to have sat. The pillows were still plump, positioned symmetrically on each side of the vast expanse of breathable, white linen. It hadn't been slept in.
It wasn't the bed that held her focus though, of course it wasn't. It was his hunched shoulders, the way he sat facing the view but not looking at it, instead staring at the ground beneath his bare feet – the colours and fabric of his clothing nearly a perfect match for hers – his right elbow braced on his knee, his one hand fisted in his hair as he held his head up. It was a painful image, one that radiated despair – a feeling that was only heightened by the sight of the fractured, full-length mirror visible through the open bathroom door. A spider's web of cracks marred the glass, the dark grey backing visible where a few shards had fallen to the floor. The damage stemming from a singular point of contact in the middle of what had once been a glossy, flawless surface. A contact point that was, roughly, the size of a clenched fist.
Blinking momentarily at her own warped, splintered reflection from across the room, Kat slipped her hands back into her pockets, glancing back to the unmoving figure at the end of the bed in an attempt to avoid her own image. She didn't like it, that picture of a person looking so lost, so isolated and unsure. She didn't have the strength to be confronted with that image right now, not when there was another image to focus on. The image of him, and all of the agony he carried with him.
He didn't look like Bucky. Not her Bucky, anyway. In the way he seemed to be actively shrinking into himself, not looking at her, not acknowledging her presence in any way. In the way the darkness of the room seemed to be radiating from him, a crushing, aching darkness that wasn't even punctuated by the slight sounds of his breathing. Shallow, quiet.
Perhaps that was what it was. Even in their most peaceful moments, there had always been the familiar, comforting soundtrack of his arm. Softly whirring and hissing, the metallic sounds of plates contracting against one another... It had always been there, in all the time she had known him. Constant, dependable. If those sounds had ever changed, it had meant something was wrong. Now they were just absent entirely. Even the remaining plates of metal that protruded from his left shoulder were deactivated, useless. Merely a relic of HYDRA's creation.
She didn't know how to ease the pain that seemed to seep from his very pores. The anguish that she could almost taste on her tongue as she opened her mouth to speak, before realising she didn't have words brave enough to fight off this silence.
She didn't even dare step further into the room. The very air itself seemed to have built a tangible wall around him, a cold, unforgiving barrier that she couldn't breach. Not without him offering help from the inside. Whether to break it down or offer her a hand to let her scale it, it didn't matter, but she couldn't do it on her own. Perhaps that was why she had remained at the wall of the room as the door had closed behind her. The wall that she now pressed her back to, her eyes wandering from his excruciatingly tense shoulders to stare out at the city beyond the glass.
