verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
•
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...
She couldn't drown them out. Those words were seared into her mind with such aggressive force that even days later, the sound of her father's record player couldn't block them out as she worked. Katrina had heard them before, of course. It would have been impossible to work on the Winter Soldier program for as long as she had without hearing that string of emotionless, seemingly senseless words.
But she had never seen them used in tandem with the machine before.
Even now, that image lingered, ready to haunt her the moment she closed her eyes.
Watching the Soldier being hauled from the chamber, seeing him being restrained in that dreadful machine that lurked there – she would never forget it. Nor would she forget the anguished screams it pulled from him, his hands flexing uselessly in the restraints as the machine crackled, forcing waves of shocks directly to the metal bands set to his temple. Had she not stood watching from the control room, her father at her side and his hand reaching to clasp hers as she watched in horror, she might have intervened. She might have begged Karpov to stop. Instead, she could only clutch her father's hand like a frightened child.
The cries of pain, muffled by his clenched teeth forcefully reminded her of that very first day, when she had watched him endure the torture of the arm being reconnected. He hadn't screamed then, but this... This tore him to pieces. She couldn't begin to imagine the pain being forced upon him.
Though, of course, now she knew exactly what it did. She couldn't force herself to disconnect from that image of the young solider in the file. James Buchanan Barnes. She couldn't stop herself from picturing him, forty-six years ago, enduring this procedure for the first time. Terrified, lost, in pain, feeling the man he was being stripped away.
Then the words had come. Karpov had prowled around him like some predatory creature, watching its prey struggle in a snare, the red book in his hands open as he read.
"Zhelaniye, rzhavvy, semnadtsat, rassvet..."
As the Soldier's screams had quieted, the headpieces of the machine disconnecting with a low hiss, he had continued to jolt, aftershocks rippling through his system.
"Pech, devyat, dobroserdechnny, vozvrashcheniye n rodinu, odin, gruzovoy vagon."
As the last words were read, he stilled. Any struggle, any trace of humanity that Katrina had seen within him was wiped away, leaving only a compliant shell, ready to receive whatever orders Karpov saw fit to give. Part of her wondered why the Colonel even required the red book, when the ten triggers were so violently seared into her own mind that she was sure she would never forget them.
"Ya gotov otvechet."
Ready to comply.
Part of her wished that her father had never shown her his file. Part of her wished she didn't know the name James Buchanan Barnes. Perhaps then she wouldn't feel so gripped by guilt and grief as she watched him receive his orders, or even in the days that came as she wandered uselessly through the lab, waiting for some report from the mission. She wondered, if she didn't know who he was, would she have felt quite so sick on the 16th of December, when Zola relayed the SHIELD report on the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark.
