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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Perhaps he was delirious. After so long spent floating in space with limited oxygen, food, water, contact – after so long spent marinading in the trauma of losing to Thanos and watching the Snap play out before his eyes, Tony Stark had to be delirious. That was the only thing that let Kat justify the notable softening of the man she sat beside, keeping vigil over his sickbed whilst his partner slept.
He hadn't entirely abandoned his personality, though the frantic fire she had seen in him the night before was absent. He still had a few quips to throw out once she had finally settled herself. Once she had dried her tears and they had slipped into the silence of mutual loss, he had watched her unfold the blanket that she had still clung to, drawing it around her shoulders as she huddled in the chair.
"I thought Russians were used to the cold."
"Not when you've spent almost a year living in Wakanda." She mumbled, tugging at a loose thread that protruded from the fabric.
"So that's where you were?"
Glancing up at Stark's question, Kat swallowed back the urge to backtrack on her words. The whole reason they had been in Wakanda was to hide Bucky from Tony and the rest of the world. But that didn't matter now. "Yeah." She admitted softly, "It's where... After Siberia." She shrugged through the awkward explanation.
"Ah."
The silence crept back at his exhale. The shared discomfort that came with the mention of that last interaction.
"I'm sorry." Kat was the first to break the silence. With the words she would have said that day, had things ended differently. "For all of it. I didn't know... What you saw that day- if I'd known..."
"You'd have tried harder to hide it?" The small note of accusation in his voice wasn't lost on her as she continued to focus on unravelling the fibres of the thread between her fingers. It was easier to look there than at his face.
"It should never have been hidden." She whispered, "What HYDRA did- what I was part of..." Sighing, she tugged roughly at the thread, snapping it from the seam it had escaped from. "We should have been held accountable long before that. You deserved to know what happened to your parents. They should have gotten justice." The words were stilted, catching. It seemed strange to discuss old wounds when there were so many fresh ones openly bleeding over those scars, but the words needed spoken.
"Didn't think you much liked the thought of him being held accountable." He couldn't even say Bucky's name. That much was evident in the tense way he alluded to him.
"He..." Swallowing thickly, she shook her head. "It wasn't him, Stark. Blame me if you want, I made my choices. He didn't – and it still killed him. There wasn't a single day he didn't blame himself for everything they made him do."
"Then maybe I do blame you." He shrugged bluntly after a beat of thought. "If you could think for yourself then what the hell were you thinking?"
