verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
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It takes a stubborn mind to cling to their humanity when the world seeks to strip it away.
It takes a desperate soul to reach f...
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That afternoon in the snow stayed with Katrina. It played over in her mind in quiet moments, the dying man's hiss of 'Hail HYDRA' as she had tried and failed to help him, that senselessly blind devotion to the cause that had ultimately killed him - it had rattled her. She wondered, if it came to it, would she have the same sense of loyalty to this organisation? Would she be willing to lay down her life for HYDRA?
The correct answer, the one she had given in her recruitment interviews, was yes. Cut off one head and two more shall take its place. She should be glad to die knowing it would strengthen the organisation.
It wasn't until that day in the snow that she had truly seen the extent to which that statement was actually believed.
She wondered if the Soldier believed it. She wondered if he set out on his missions, ready to die for HYDRA if it came to it. Not that it ever did, he never failed after all, but still she wondered.
She wondered too, about the hand on her shoulder, the way he had held her steady in the snow as she had laid, winded after being thrown. Karpov had made no order for him to protect her, in fact the last order he had been given was a violent one - to engage with the test subject - but in that moment he seemed to disregard that. Even as they had returned to the facility, he had shadowed her in a way that had almost felt protective.
Then, the morning after, when she had stepped into his quarters, she had seen him looking at the angry red scrape on her cheek left by the ice. For just a second, he had raised his right hand as if to touch her, those desperately blue eyes meeting hers, before one of the guards outside the door had called out a question to her, and the moment passed.
She couldn't linger on that thought though. After another failed serum test, tensions on Sub-level 9 were rising. She had never seen her father so strained as he reported that Zola's intelligence was informing them that some American weapons company had almost perfected a replication of the Super Solider Serum, whereas their scientists were still stuck on the formula that the last subject had rejected - violently.
"Karpov is demanding results and we're not seeing any." He had muttered to her, one day in her office as his flask of coffee had sat between them and she was mindlessly tinkering with a prototype grenade. "He's looking to me for answers and I'm no biologist, Kat."
"But the last test was still a step in the right direction. You said it yourself, that was the longest it's held stable in a subject." Katrina reasoned as she tucked the fine flathead screwdriver that she had been holding behind her ear so she could reach for the cup of coffee on the table. "Surely that counts for something."
"Not when the Americans could have a functioning serum within the year and we're still burying test subjects."
She grimaced through her mouthful of coffee at that; "And Karpov won't test it on Josef and his team until it's stable?"
