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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She couldn't breathe.
She must have been able to, but it didn't feel like it.
It felt like she hadn't drawn a breath since that day in Wakanda.
Not since she had felt Natasha's hands gently shaking her shoulders.
"Kat- Katrina c'mon- wake up Kat."
Not since she had fought through the rolling waves of nausea to force herself to open her eyes, to sit up, and then stagger to her feet. Spurred on by the words of her friend.
"They need us."
Not since she had forced her feet to stagger past the roots of the tree she had fallen between.
Not since her wavering vision had glimpsed something strange passing through the air before her face. Like ash from a fire, twirling slowly on the breeze as it disintegrated.
Not since her eyes had fallen to Steve as he stood amongst the trees. Since she had followed his haunted, horrified expression to the smattering of that ash that littered the forest floor, and the fallen rifle it coated like a layer of dust.
"Steve... Where is he?"
Her hesitant, sluggish words were met with a silence that twisted her gut with fear. Pure, white-hot fear that cut through the fog of the concussion.
"Where is he? Buck- Steve where is he?"
Her frantic scan of the trees had given her no answers. Only more ash in the air. Rising from the ferns. Drifting silently amongst the branches. And when she had looked back, Steve's eyes had remained locked on that position. On the abandoned weapon, and the debris that surrounded it.
"Bucky- Bucky where are you? Steve- where is he? Where is he?"
No, it didn't feel like she had drawn breath since that anguished scream had ripped from her throat. As the realisation had closed around her. Suffocating her. As she had fallen to her knees, her hands frantically scraping over the earth, coming away with nothing but that grey dust. As her body had crumpled with the force of the howl of grief that tore through her.
As she had realised that they had lost.
Three weeks was a long time to go without breathing.
Perhaps if she had actually been able to force her body to give in to that despair, it would have been a relief. Instead of sitting here, staring at the grey, soulless walls of a place she didn't know. A place she couldn't call home.
Because the last place she had called home was gone. The people she had called home.
Shuri. T'Challa. Nobomi and her boys.
Her home in Wakanda was gone. Their home.
They weren't the only ones. Their full losses were still uncounted, but there were those that could be felt tangibly, without a figure being assigned to them.
