She had almost forgotten how blue his eyes were.
It wasn't the first thought that Kat should have had in that dimly lit stone corridor, clutching the Sceptre in one hand as she stood utterly paralysed by the stare of the Winter Soldier.
But even in this hideously grey place, his eyes were still so blue.
"Bucky..."
Her lips had formed the name before she could stop them. She could feel the shock reverberating through her body, her head spinning as she tried to remember how to breathe. How to move, when she hadn't glimpsed those eyes for five years.
No.
They weren't his eyes. It wasn't him. Not the mind she loved. Not yet.
The man stood before her was still under Hydra's control, dressed in those restraint-like combat leathers, his face unmasked, clean-shaven, likely operating under orders to retrieve the Sceptre in her hand.
And, she recalled with a sickening jolt, operating under the order she had given him in 1992.
The next time you see me, you kill me. Break my neck, shoot me, it doesn't matter, but you have to be fast.
She had always promised Bucky that those words wouldn't come back to haunt her. He would never have hurt her.
But the Winter Soldier would. He didn't have a choice. It would be another year before he broke from his programming and ran from Hydra.
Each of those thoughts passed through her over the course of a few seconds. A few frantic beats of her heart – before he moved.
Lurching to one side, she managed to dodge the bullet he fired into the door behind her, at the exact level her head had been positioned. She had barely even seen him draw the weapon. She had forgotten how fast he was when he wasn't holding back. Rolling, she glanced up looking for something – anything – in her environment that would help her get out of here without hurting him, eyeing the cracking stone of the ceiling and aiming her pistol up at it.
The gun in her hand only offered her a dull click in response to the pull of her finger. Her magazine was empty, and her spare one was tucked beneath the layers of an oversized boilersuit. Inaccessible. Useless.
"Shit..." She exhaled, leaping out of her crouched position as another bullet embedded itself in the wall behind her – he was walking forward, steadily covering the ten or so metres that lay between them as he held his gun aloft in his right hand, once again aiming for her head.
Frantically, Kat did the only thing she could think of to throw off his aim, hurling her own useless pistol at him with all the force she could muster, wincing as he easily blocked the projectile with his left arm.
The same arm he had taught her to fight, she realised in the split second she bought with the reckless move. The same arm she had spent years perfecting, the one she knew like the back of her hand.
She needed to separate him from that gun before she tried anything, she thought as she clumsily used the head of the Sceptre to shield her face as he fired again, the shock of the bullet's strike vibrating down the shaft to her hands. She couldn't do that with his focus like this, so singular-
"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes you stand down now!"
Her yell came with more fire than she knew she had, thrown so thoughtlessly as he raised the gun again, mere feet from where she stood trapped at the end of the hallway – and hesitated.
It was all she needed.
Spinning to sweep the blunt side of the Sceptre in a wide arc, she brought it down hard on his outstretched right arm, knocking the gun from his grasp, but giving his left arm an opening at close range.
Gasping, she felt her body jerk back before her mind could process her mistake, as his left hand reached over her to grasp the Sceptre, using the way she held it across her body to drag her off her feet. Kat could hear the whirr of the plates in his arm contracting as her back slammed into his chest, the rigid shaft of the Sceptre trapping her in place. And iron bar that he gripped just as tightly as she did, crushing her body against his.
Her cry of pain was lost to the air being squeezed from her lungs, her legs kicking frantically as she tried to move, to push her arms forward to overcome his monumental strength – but she couldn't. She couldn't even get her feet to the floor to give herself any purchase, he had lifted her off her ground with the crushing pressure of his arms.
"Bucky-" She wheezed, her knuckles white around the Sceptre, her teeth gritting against the pain flaring in her ribs as he waited for them to crack. "Bucky please..."
Her words didn't touch him this time, not in the way she needed them to.
You know how to get out of this.
No I don't. She cried to the voice in her head. The voice of the man she loved. The man who was about to kill her years before they got the chance to love one another.
It didn't make sense. It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that he was trying to stop her from saving his own goddamn life.
You know how to get out of this.
Again, she heard him. An echo of a day he had been going easy on her. When he had let her twist and slip out of his hold because it wasn't real that day. It was just a game, a way to get her to practice the motions it would take to deactivate his arm-
Abruptly, she gathered her strength to glance up and shift her grip on the Sceptre, pulling it up towards her chest with a painful jerk – but sending the cutting edge of the blade driving down into the plates of his left bicep.
She didn't know what the Sceptre was made of, but it sliced through the titanium alloy like butter.
The sudden release of pressure sent her crashing to the floor, her body landing heavily atop the Sceptre as he released her, staggering back as she coughed through the blinding rush of oxygen that flooded into her lungs.
She didn't have time to recover, bracing her shaking arms against the Sceptre she forced herself up, driving the end of the staff into the ground to help her balance as she watched the Winter Soldier attempt to regain control of his spasming arm, staring down at the deep gauge she had left in the sculpted plates.
She was lucky, an inch higher and she'd have missed the internal control panel.
Clenching her jaw as he raised his head, she tried not to crumple under the quiver in his expression. The minute flex of his muscles that betrayed the depths beneath his blank obedience. She couldn't identify what it was, but she had caused a reaction. Rage, fury, determination, fear... Whatever it was, it wasn't strong enough to overcome his orders.
"I'll make you a new one." She muttered between exhausted pants, trying to glance beyond his rigid form. He was still blocking her escape route. "Y'wanna get out of your own way and let me save your stupid life?"
His step towards her indicated that even if he understood her words, he wasn't prepared to make things easy for her – even without a fully functioning metal arm. The words didn't matter though, the fire and sarcasm she weakly summoned was a poor front. It couldn't distance her from the fact that her heart was fracturing painfully behind her ribs, that agony becoming more acute with every second spent in his presence.
There was, of course, her other option. One she hadn't wanted to touch. Not after everything they had been through. She hadn't burned the Red Book with him just to use the triggers again, five years later. She couldn't use them again, not when she knew every awful, intimate detail of how they had been programmed.
But she was running out of time, Steve could already be on his way, she needed to get to him.
Whatever it takes.
The Soldier had drawn his knife, holding it before his body as he advanced on her, his eyes darting to her posture as she lifted the Sceptre once more. Calculating her every move before she could even make it. She knew how lethal he was – it was sheer luck that had carried her up to this point. She couldn't count on it lasting much longer.
"I'm so sorry, Golubyee glaza." She breathed, feeling her heart clenching in her chest as she held her ground, letting him approach as she found the courage to make her lips form the first word. "Zhelaniye."
He stiffened at that first word. His body a coiled spring, practically wavering with tension as that word forced him to halt. As his mind slowly wrapped around what hearing that word meant.
"Rzhavvy. Semnadtsat." The words were so harsh, so foreign on her tongue and yet so painfully familiar – because she never could have forgotten them. Even with the knowledge that they could never be used again in her own timeline, they remained. Branded into her mind by trauma and fear. She heard those words in her nightmares, both in her own voice and in the voices of others. They were always there. Haunting her. Yet now she called upon them as if summoning a demon from her past. Bending them to her will to save the man she loved. To save everyone.
She didn't look away from him as she spoke, not once, and that was why she was able to detect the slightest change in his hardened gaze. That momentary flicker of fear, that tiny crack of something – something breaking through. A deeply instinctive need to resist what was about to happen.
But the Soldier wasn't about to let him go.
The speed at which he launched himself at her was astounding, his blade surging towards her through the air was only stopped by her hands driving the bar of the Sceptre up to block his swing.
"Rassvet – ah – pech, devyat-" She barely forced the words past her lips amidst the effort of forcing back his weight, digging one heel into the ground to turn her body, letting him forcefully push her backwards down the hallway. Away from the door, in the direction she actually wanted to go.
With a frantic shove of her arms, she managed to push him back with the Sceptre long enough to scramble backwards, one hand reaching out to push herself off the wall as she tried to remember how many turns she had taken on her way down this corridor. Darting around the fist corner, she just managed to duck in time to avoid his blade whistling over her head as he threw himself after her, his left arm handing limp at his side, his fingers still spasming slightly as they frantically tried to reconnect to his nervous system. It had to be agony, she realised with a twist of her gut.
"Do-dobroserdechnny-" She gasped out, swinging her own weapon in a warning arc, trying to drive him back as she attempted to run backwards down the hallway, bouncing off the walls like an exhausted pinball.
A cry of pain escaped her as – in a moment she had taken to glance over her shoulder – the swing of his knife caught her knuckles where they gripped the staff. Hot, scarlet blood already welled to fill the slices he had left in her skin as he pursued her relentlessly. Those eyes were cold again, focused so singularly on her. On her neck, Kat realised with a flare of panic.
Shoot me, break my neck.
She had already ruled out one of his options. He was only following her orders.
"I didn't tear apart time itself for you to kill me in this shithole." She panted out through gritted teeth, using the shaft of the Sceptre to lay a heavy blow across his chest as he lunged for her once more. "Vozvrashcheniye n rodinu."
Each word tasted of bitter betrayal. Of steel and blood – or perhaps that came from where she had bitten her tongue when he had tried to crush her.
Her hands were slick with blood, her hold on the Sceptre slipping as she looked back to glimpse a doorway with a broken lock. The door to the corridor she had landed in.
"Odin." She spat out as she grasped for that tiny chance of escape, the hooked blade of the Sceptre meeting his knife as she threw herself back towards that door, daring to reach with one hand to jerk it open.
A yell behind her had Kat spinning, her body instinctively dropping to the ground beneath the doorframe just as the crack of a gunshot sounded from the other end of the corridor.
"Don't hit the asset-"
The other guards had caught up with her.
And a foot had just come down hard on her leg.
A startled cry left her body as she twisted like a trapped cat, rolling onto her back to at least be able to hold the Sceptre between herself and the Soldier as he looked down at her. Cold, calculating, spinning his knife in the fingers of his right hand as he looked for the most convenient way to end her life, his heel driving a bone-snapping pressure down on her ankle.
He had her. Trapped like an insect on her back, he forced back her attempt to strike him with the Sceptre by dropping to one knee over the weapon, driving that joint down to pin her in place beneath the unyielding metal as she yelped like a wounded animal.
"Gruz- gruzovoy-"
Her attempt to force out the final trigger was stifled by the hand that clasped over her mouth, the clatter of his knife being dropped beside her head the only indication of his choice to not slit her throat.
For a moment he watched her, head tilting as he met her wide, frightened eyes. As he felt her chest heave beneath him in an attempt to claw in another breath of air, her bloodied hands slipping over the staff uselessly. He watched her frantically try to cling to her life. To her one and only chance of putting things right. He watched her eyes desperately try to plead with him. To beg him to find a single atom of recognition amidst his clouded memories.
And then he slowly, slowly, shifted his warm hand, his hand of flesh and blood, to close over her nose, cutting off her airway.
A terrified, choked sound scraped through Kat's chest as her body jolted fearfully. Every rational thought to conserve her air and energy, to stop and think was lost to the instinct to panic. To thrash and fight in a vain effort to escape. She could feel her feet kicking uselessly, her blood-slicked hands still trying to push against the weight of his body on the Sceptre, her blood roaring in her ears as her view of those cold blue eyes began to waver. As his large hand held steady over her face; tight, unyielding. Simply waiting for the struggling to cease.
Bucky.
There wasn't room for her lips to form the word. He wouldn't even let her die with his name on her lips.
Blurry, black spots danced across her vision as her lungs screamed, her muscles spasming in response to the unfulfilled need to draw in a breath, her spine arching painfully off the ground as he stared down at her, obediently fulfilling his orders.
"Kat!"
That painfully blue stare was broken as the Soldier's head snapped up at the yell somewhere beyond Kat's darkening vision. A sudden flash of light and the blur of an object passing over her head the only warning she received before the Soldier was flung backwards – an agonising gasp tearing through her as the pressure of his hand was removed.
She couldn't move – she could barely see as she choked on the oxygen that flooded her lungs, but she did feel the strong arm wrapping around her chest.
"I've got you."
Steve. Steve's right arm was hauling her to her feet, his left grasping for the tracker on her bloodied hand, activating her suit in the second it took her eyes to focus on where the Winter Soldier had been knocked back by Steve's shield, into the corridor beyond the doorway where he had almost succeeded in ending his mission.
Kat's breaths were still ragged as she slumped in Steve's hold, unable to support her own weight and cling to the Sceptre at the same time, incapable of looking away from where the Soldier was rising to his feet, his eyes locked upon her.
"Hold on tight." Steve ordered firmly, his left arm raising to activate the shield's magnetic return, the object snapping back to settle on his forearm before the Soldier could reach for it – just as his right hand pressed a phial of red particles into place on her hip.
The last thing Kat saw as Steve clasped her hand to activate her tracker was the form of the Winter Solider lunging for her throat – before the world disappeared in a flash of light.
[A/N: Sorry Kat, sorry Bucky, sorry readers! X]